12 July 2018
The week started in the middle of Sunday afternoon, with a drive up to the Lake District. This was not a cunning plan to get as far away as possible from the “start the week” meeting, but as part of HEFCE’s Research Assessment Exercise.
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05 July 2018
At last, I have broken the tyranny of Monday mornings – I missed the “start the week” meeting. Instead I drove down to visit my old university at the invite of the alumnus vampires. It was an interesting and somewhat dispiriting day.
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28 June 2018
I think I’ve become addicted to “start the week” meetings – that’s 4 in a row!!! It was followed by another go around “Directors Issues” but finally we got to Richard Max-Lino’s review of opportunities in high value services. Having now heard the final presentation, I am intrigued by some of the way-points Richard must have gone through
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22 June 2018
Starting another week with “start the week”. Is this a record?
Next came the planning for the July and October Board meetings, the second Innovat08 planning meeting and interviewing someone with Ian. Along the way, David and I spent some time thinking about how an Innovation Platform on the aerospace area might be constructed, what sort of a challenge would be involved, what level of funding would be necessary to make any impact and so on. The focus on aerospace as part of the manufacturing strategy and a number of e-mails going around made it necessary for us to have a position!! We agreed that I would share our early thinking with the BERR Aerospace guys – of which more later.
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16 June 2018
Monday was unusual in that I actually attended the “start the week” meeting. It was followed by the pay review meeting, which showed what the value of preparation would have been, a telephone interview with Technopolis about the KTNs and a lot of paperwork.
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07 June 2018
The week started with my customary missing of the “start the week” meeting!!
Instead I was down to London taking part in an ETI Energy Efficient Buildings Working Group meeting. Participation is down to a small core group, the EDF Chairman, EON, Carbon Trust and ourselves.
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31 May 2018
Luckily, starting on Tuesday saved me from the ignominy of attending two “start the week” meetings in a row, but we made up for it with an extended, two-part Executive meeting. We did get a respite in the middle with the lunch and learn by E S R I Inc.. I took two things from their visit. One was the fact that they saw an opportunity to describe what they do to the Technology Strategy Board as an opportunity worth 4 of their fairly senior guys time and the other was the pervasive, but often unseen, nature of their products and services.
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25 May 2018
The week started with a big milestone – my fourth “Start the Week” meeting. We then added a quickie on the rules for inviting people to the HoL meeting – and I have been playing with spreadsheets ever since. It doesn’t feel right that every event starts the same process again – what is the opposite of a learning organisation?
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17 May 2018
The week started with the Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platforms Steering Group meeting at Aston – Julia chairs it!!! Jamie Turner brought one of the Lotus multi-fuel cars (and didn’t understand why there hadn’t been one at our Strategy launch).
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11 May 2018
A short week. But a busy one…
It started with the Microsoft Innovation Day at their clandestine UK offices in Cardinal Point. There must have been about 400 people there. Over lunch we got to look at a display of the various technologies Microsoft were pushing into any available market. Thinks – can we trademark “challenge led innovation” and train others – to help companies like Microsoft achieve their full potential?
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