The world’s biggest taxi company, Uber, does not own any taxis. The world’s biggest retailer, Alibaba, does not own any shops. The world’s biggest media company, Facebook, does not create any content. The world’s biggest hotel company, Airbnb, does not own any hotels. Furthermore, none of these businesses existed 20 years ago.

Digital businesses think differently about how the world works, and traditionally-structured businesses that want to continue to live in the same world as them are being forced to change their thinking too. Business models that have served them well for 50 years are being jettisoned as no longer fit for purpose.

The old comfortable divisions between manufacturing and services, producers and consumers, competitors and collaborators no longer describes what is going on. Friends and enemies blur into one as one minute they try to eat the other’s lunch while the next they share a picnic.

Very little of this is recognised in Westminster. There, a Brexit-fixated Government talks of rebalancing from services to manufacturing, oblivious to the fact the world is going the other way. It is fixated by manufactured exports sold to suitably grateful former colonies, and trade deals to open up those parts a kowtowing minister cannot reach.

Unfortunately, it is a policy designed for a world that no longer exists. It is Britain’s tragedy to be governed by ideologically-driven politicians locked in the analogue age just as the world embraces digital. It is unlikely to end well.

Official statistics do not measure what is happening. Their coverage of services has long been lamented upon, but less appreciated is that the manufacturing picture is wrong too because it does not capture the way the digital revolution is forcing manufacturing companies to develop into service providers in order to survive. The distinction between the two, and the statistics, are increasingly meaningless.

Forces other than digital are at work, too. Manufacturers cannot maintain high prices because competition is ferocious and intellectual property does not stay secret for long. Even today’s most startling innovations become tomorrow’s commodity. In seven years, the price of a unit of 3D printing have dropped from £40,000 to £100; drones have fallen from £100,000 to £7000, industrial robots from £550,000 to £20,000 and sensors from £30,000 to £80.

Most goods are oversupplied and difficult to sell in a low-growth world with depressed demand. Increasingly, therefore, the real value in a business lies not in what it makes but in how it uses its product as an entry point to own, develop and derive continuing value from its customer relationships.

Increasingly, the traditional supply chain is dead to be replaced by something more akin to a network — a platform where brains and data from all sides come together to solve problems, enhance products and create efficiencies based on the information flows provided by digital technology.

Applied in the right way — and companies are still grappling to learn what that is — digital information flows can drive unprecedented enhancements to business processes.

Interestingly, the academic world has caught on to this faster than many labouring at the coalface. The Cambridge Service Alliance is a collaboration between Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing and the likes of Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and Caterpillar. Yesterday, it held a conference led by Andrew Neely, the Alliance’s director, specifically to explore how digital technology is being harnessed by businesses such as Siemens to reinvent themselves as providers of services.

Behind this is the fact that cash-strapped customers no longer want to buy a bit of kit just because it looks good in the brochure; they will only buy something if it will provide a solution. They also understand that the way to get kit to perform is to give the manufacturer continuing responsibility for it under some form of outcomes-based service agreement.

For their part, manufacturers want to lock in their customers in ways that add continuing value. Increasingly, they see the sale as the beginning of the relationship, not the end. The real value to both parties comes from collaboration in a service company which makes it work, solves problems, improves efficiency and paves the way for further enhancements.

"Politicians want everyone still to paint by numbers when even David Hockney uses an iPad." Anthony Hilton

Such arrangements are, of course, easy to visualise but painfully difficult to put into practice. If it was just about technology, it would be difficult enough. But to work, these networked services companies also require the successful blending of different processes, multiple cultures and sometimes incompatible expectations. It matters so much that customer experience management is now cited as being the next big business battleground.

Talking to politicians, you get the impression they think business today is still like the Monopoly board, where standalone factories have chimneys and zigzag roofs, and companies rise or fall by the roll of the dice and intelligent cash management. They want everyone still to paint by numbers when even David Hockney uses an iPad.

We are moving into a world where businesses collaborate in one place and compete in another. Relationships are increasingly blurred, nationalities rarely matter, geographies are more and more irrelevant and borders simply get in the way.

The UK, with its advanced digital culture, strong grounding in consulting and knowledge-based manufacturing, international outlook and its powerful academic heritage, is well-placed to take advantage of this. Little England will find it rather harder.