Week 5:2

Half a day of what is called Thinking Digital University.  And I attended the Startup Panel which had the most attendees of any of the sessions.  This may have had to do with limited space on many of the other events, but nobody attending this would have been sorry.

First the panel members were introduced and interviewed by the host, Paul Smith, Renaissance Man.  What peals of wisdom were there?

Most startups will fail but some make it.  What is obvious is that few – even those who fail – few regret the process.  This is the nature of startups.

Joining the panel was Martin Bryant, managing editor of The Next Web. He writes very successfully about digital business.  He has seen everything but seemed reluctant to make a judgement on what makes for a good startup or success in business.  He did raise the fact that there are masses more start-ups now than there were even 2 years ago.  But one often does not hear about them because they are quietly going about their business, keeping their heads down.  Lots of people are talking.  London is well placed though the regions are at different stages and (then he flattered us) people think highly of North East.

Was the Industrial Revolution fuelled by start-ups?
How do we get breakouts into entrepreneurship?  There should be good service offerings, something fresh and new. And the advice, if sending marketing material to him (and this is probably generally applicable advice because I have heard very similar advice given by a literary agent on what to say in a covering letter)
Use a simple font. Don’t overdo it on the words.  Over explaining is awful, just three or four lines. Or bullet points. Then… we are talking about digital business here so – remember your URL!

What do the successful startups have in common? Maybe a certain… No nothing. Um…. Wait. Yes.
The most successful start-ups do their own thing, not a copy of someone else’s thing.

Mat Clayton, Co-founder of MIXCLOUD was next.

The founders are computer scientists and engineers from Cambridge. Founded in 2009 without any venture capital funding.  They bootstrapped the company, started out using a container as their first office and upgraded to a warehouse after 6 months. They tried to get funding but all VC’s rejected them and they later discovered that VCs will not fund anything in music.  Nobody believed their numbers.  But they focussed, persisted and broke even after 2 years.

They launch a lot of features and if it does not work they will kill it off.  Eighty percent of what they do fails.

Main mistake and biggest regret was not launching sooner because they were so desperate to get funding.

What made them?  The team is critical. Bright people. And don’t be afraid of failure.

And then Christen Duong, Product Lead for Foursquare

She has been working in software development (apps) for quite a long time; involved in various kinds of app development in the travel and movement of people space.  Her first involvement workwise was in a startup and she says, once you have tasted that ability to change the world, it is hard to take a step back.
{Nerd sniping means, to hook someone into solving a problem without paying them.}

She got nerd swiped.
Foursquare seems famous for not having a business model. How are they going to make money? They are working to tie everyday life into travel recommendations.
Then we met Tristan Watson from loveyourlarder.com; they connect artisan food producers directly with people wanting to buy this food.  The idea came from a baker, a friend who wanted to be able to sell online.  They used the difference engine business accelerator to get going.  This turned them from just a nice idea into a serious business. They got advice. Contacts…  But in the intensity of the startup they lost a co-founder.
Then took funding.  The lessons? Money goes, quicker than you think. Burn rate is very high at the start. And money does not make it any easier.  Starting up is still difficult.
Startup competition was done by listening to a three minute pitch by 6 startups.
Mexican moo should have signalled end of three minutes but only one presentation hit the wall.
International money transfer system. Transfergo.
Usable. IT project management tool.
Yossarianlives!
Inspiration engine not search engine.
Blooie
Recommendation engine.
Via

An app to help runners.
EmberAds

And the winners are

YossarianLives!

And

EmberAds

Via

An app to help runners.

EmberAds

And the winners are

YossarianLives!

And

EmberAds

Week 5:1

When google maps first loaded satellite images of my home country, there were curious anomalies in the resolution of available satellite imagery.  In long strips of aeroplane flyover the resolution was what I will call normal where one could zoom in far enough to tell during which season the photos had been taken because the trees had flowers or green leaves or were darker.  But then there was the area around the fertiliser factories near the seaside – these were low resolution and zooming in I quickly ended up with green cotton wool.  This was, I presumed, because the factories had had a previous life, being used to manufacture explosives… for war but also for mining.  Then, if one followed the highway over the mountain pass there was a line where the resolution became much higher, more detailed and crisp – because this was where the apartheid government had built a secret underground rocket building factory.  The images are now mostly updated and the resolutions normalised but that image, the picture of the history of the landscape captured through a secondary characteristic has remained with me.

I want to implement a secondary characteristic.

Every time that I need to find a new route through the city by bicycle I struggle.  There is no indicator:  

                 whether the roads have cycle lanes (this info is available on some websites but not on google maps… and where the routes are available they are said to be incomplete),

                 where the roads are that prohibit bicycles (highways),

                 where there are lanes where bicycles can go but cars cannot.

I would love to have such an overlay on my maps program.  Would I develop it myself?  Are there many people such as myself and is that the only reason why this development would be done?    If it were 10 years ago, would I have thought that google maps would exist as they do now with satellite and streetview and routes?  When google maps came online, was it thought to be a business or simply a map, a free map?  I don’t have the knowhow now to make this a business but the google maps example means that nobody would pay for such a map.

Week 4:2

There are some job titles that are so perfect that they become less than the subject that they describe.  How about “Business Development Manager”, BDM?  The words are flat, like cardboard.  I used to work with one when I was a Business Analyst and this morning, at Working With Newcastle  a joint Newcastle Science City, Newcastle University event I met a bunch of BDM’s from Newcastle University; if the job title is cardboard then these people are the origami.  To be effective at the job a BDM must know: who knows what + and who needs what = bring together the “have knowledge” and the “needs knowledge”.

One has to find people with knowledge that wants to develop – one way or another.  It is all in relationships, the links between people, and active networks. Then you want to turn those links into business – into money – and that can so easily seem venal.  But it is not.  Mostly because the successful BDM relies on repeat business and repeat business relies on honesty, transparency and a willing seller, willing buyer principle.

Advice to Businesses by Tommy Lovell of Kablefree.  His point of view.  Universities have brilliant minds and knowledge that is different from yours.  When approaching a university for collaboration then you should have an existing conundrum, a problem that needs solving.  Work at understanding what strengths the University has.  Stay in touch with them even while you do not have a problem because then, when you do that, something can spark.  Keep yourself aware.  Then.  How do you work with the university and get a product out at the end?  You must know what you want.  Do not let them manage the project because if you let them run it you will end up with a research project.

 I wonder whether researchers on the whole would have a problem with this description.  Tommy is very positive about working with Universities; it’s just that he is clear about what he sees as the strengths that each partner has.

Week 4:1

What would the busy person’s MBA look like?  There are and have been fora, leadership academies that deliver short courses that people need, to fulfil acute shortcomings e.g.  I need leadership training now, get me leadership training now.

The removal of a compulsory retirement age in the UK (it was 65, and since Oct 2011 it is completely abolished) means that all companies need to re-assess every part of their (contractual) relationship with their employees.  Business schools have a job on their hands adjusting every part of business training and research to include this massive change.  Do you “force people out”, do you pre-agree an age?   How are the needs of older employees different from those of the younger?  I am not even sure whether the differences are meaningful.

One has factoids such as: the older age group is less faddish, they want to know what they are getting into, work for the longer term (in purchasing this means that they will take longer over decisions but are then more prepared to pay more).

How does one encourage entrepreneurship in the over-50’s?  This group is more reluctant to start new businesses than those who are younger however they have a much higher success rate.  Of course I can’t point to a study that says this and would love to, so at this stage it’s just hearsay (but I heard it said by someone who is very very busy, able and engaged in the field.  And it feels about right.

When I mentioned this stat to someone else she asked me whether the higher success rate was because the older person is more experienced or whether he/she has been trying and trying and is now, finally successful?  Anything is possible in the plethora of human experiences but there must be commonalities – frustrations or missed opportunities – that can be extracted and worked with.

Does one lower the risk?

Point being that not enough business interest or research interest is focussed on older age groups.  10% of advertising revenue is directed at over-50’s which is the group that owns 80% of the money.  Action point: I want to be able to get folk who have either been an older entrepreneur or who are doing new products for this market – or including this market – for the Conversaziones.

Week 3:5

I listened to a politician talk today.  And I wonder when it is that I start talking with so much jargon that the uninitiated simply zone out?  The topic was technology and innovation and the event was hosted by the YMCA.  The result was that from one end the politician spoke about policy (changing), productivity (going up) and the squeezed middle.  And from the other end the YMCA was talking about particular cases; speaking with startling granularity about getting the children of families which are the fourth generation unemployed into work.  Technology happens in the middle, between these extremes.

With some practise the squeezed middle should be able to become the toned middle.

Quotes from speakers:

(retired engineer, serial industrialist) There has been a linear decline in manufacturing since 1997 and, unlike Northern Europe; the UK has a negative balance of payments.  The UK should be making its own clothes, cups and saucers… pacemakers! We can now change to a 4 day working week.

(strategist at IPPR North) We must use what we have around us.  She has evidence of the benefits that accrue to companies who work with universities.  This should be made easier to do.  Example of Finland.

(catapult centre) We make progress by converting inventions into things that we use.  Practical things.  Opportunities exist in optimising processes for cost of energy / raw materials conversion to recycle or re-use waste / convert from fossil fuel sources to natural sources.  Where are the national labs that fuel innovation? “I need people who can do things and universities do not provide people who can do things.”

Medium sized (family) businesses need to be able to access innovation.

Local systems create local social capital.

And in other news.

If I have a business idea, what then?  The sorts of ideas that I have always have to do with problems that I encounter or particular needs that I have.  On the Magic Whiteboard above my desk I am collating information about a possible bit of technology that I call the bicycle friendly car.  That leads from my cycling (and driving) experiences.  But today’s problem… or rather yesterday’s problem that I was solving on my way in today… is: cycling to school yesterday I dropped my youngest son’s lunch bag and school bag (they had been strapped to the bike carrier but came loose behind me and leaped off.  I realised this when we reached school and I went back along our path where I found the lunch neatly put aside

Working with a team member.  How fabulous is that?  I forget and then remember because really I can’t know that I forgot something until I remember it.  Right?  There is a luxurious aspect to working in a team, at an office.  The desk is set up; the laundry does not need doing, and all that but the best bit, the bit that makes working good, is people.  There is a team and I don’t have to do all the bits.  She is doing the data mining and I am doing the crafting of the information.  And she says, this is good and we need a bit more there.  We create something bigger.  We create a piece of the universe that did not exist before.

Don’t Follow Me I am Breaking the Rules

Week 3:4 And What Enables.

If I spend a lot of time looking at what prevents I could be here all day, all week, all century, analysing, analysing.  But sometimes I reminded to look for what enables.  Enablers have a way of looking at a complex whole, the whole fruit as it were. Rather than saying the human body needs water and fibre and vitamins and trace elements and crunch and apple-ness… and then analysing whether one needs more of one than the other or working out which part one needs, you work out how to get apples to people.  How to grow trees, how to identify people who grow better apples.  Do not address the juice of the apple first, first address the apple.

Today I met an enabler, Carys Watts.  She runs the course BSc Honours Biomedical Sciences with Business which has the amazing (amazingly obvious when you come to think of it) characteristic of giving each student two supervisors: one from The School of Biomedical Sciences and the other from Newcastle University Business School, NUBS.  This model must exist in other parts of the university.  Cross faculty collaboration.

Have I missed the boat so completely with smart phones that I can’t even find a newbies guide to using my work phone?  Ah well… I have 12 days to become proficient and that should be enough, right?  But then I do want to do other stuff in my day day day day day day day

Best method of learning for me is to try and try and maybe succeed and definitely have unanswered questions and then get an expert to tell me and irritate me with superior knowledge.  That person may be a 10 year old.

When it comes to complex decisions, customers are not convinced unless they see all the steps that lead to a decision.

Week 3:3

I was in the BBTC (biopharmaceutical bioprocessing technology centre) of Newcastle University and was wondering the corridors peering into labs.  Labs with benches, test tubes, separating flasks and acids and chemicals… I felt deeply nostalgic for when I worked in that sort of lab.  When I would have to pay attention to the sign at the office that reads “lab coats may not be worn in the office”.  Labs are simple because the results are simple no matter how complex the preparation; once one does a test then things either work or they don’t.  Ah.

BBTC is part of and situated in the Chemical Engineers building and the corridor where the labs are contain what may or may not be a test.  The innocent looking radiator on the wall – the Chemical Engineer would call this a heat exchanger – is not connected.  The pipes that run to it, both inlet and outlet are blocked by end-caps… leaving the radiator isolated.  The unit might leak and had to isolated for its own good, and so that the floor does not become slippery.  With engineers there is always a chance that there was a leak and one of them capped the pipes {rubs hands} and that is the problem is dealt with.

But is the problem solved?  That depends on the definition of the problem.  It no longer leaks.  It also cannot do the job that is it’s only natural function.  If this heat exchanger were working and not blocked off from the network of pipes that run through the building – it would have hot fluid passing through the inside releasing heat into cold air through heat fins that increase the surface area from which the heat can be released.  The capped blocked sidelined radiator cannot call itself a radiator while it is in this state.  It is merely a wall ornament.

I will be working with Gavin and Lucy (they will be teaching me how to get this done because they have done this before) to set up talks, mini workshops.  It will be my particular job I think to involve/invite Business School facilitators or “questioners” in Conversaziones style talks and provide cross faculty exchange. I will also get to do the less important nitty gritties, the rooms and nibbles. An action exchanger.

Where do I find Natural Networks and can they be created?  Where they don’t exist, can people find collaborators both inside and outside the university and develop partnerships that feed knowledge, generate research ideas and lead to new, useful work for all concerned.  Can one arrange marriages or must academics and other practitioners find one another and fall in love?  All the pipes need to be joined up for the heat exchanger to work.

Clear vision. One of the RA’s in the office is doing research with a supervisor who has now relocated to London and the supervisor has offered the RA though option of also moving down south.  But the RA says that he now gets better supervision than he did when his supervisor was in the same building.  Also he would be moving at the same salary and of course London is more expensive to live in and travel in and eat in.  So he has made the counter intuitive decision (for now) to say in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.  One might say that he lacks ambition but I prefer to see it as a case of the RA having clear and present logical reasoning.