It was an "I'm getting bored with the M1" sort of week

Another missed “start the week” meeting, because I was driving up the MI at that time to Sheffield. I seem to have become the Chairman of the Molecular Engineering Translational Research Centre - http://www.molecularengineering.co.uk/- and this was their second Board Meeting. It is strange affair, because it sort of competes with the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry - http://www.materialschemistry.org/kcmc/index.html. METRC is supported by the Northern Way and KCMC is backed by NWDA, which is part of the Northern Way. At some point Carol Boyer-Spooner and I got involved and are shooting for some kind of amalgamation, or at least joint working. In the meanwhile, I am showing solidarity with our northern cousins. Aside from the fact that N8 seems to have fallen to pieces, all I really got from the meeting was the chance to help select where they spend their money, and the projects were quite fun. On the other hand, feeding onto the M1 South to see the signs say “M1 closed between Junctions 26 and 25” when you are going to junction 23 is one of the more depressing sights in the middle of the afternoon. It took well over 4 hours to do a journey that usually takes 2, so I plugged in my hands-free and called people randomly to break the monotony. 

Tuesday, on the other hand, was an Executive Management Meeting, so there was lots of fast-paced decision making and good-natured joshing, followed by a fast exit down to London. The reason was a reception held by BERR for the biotechnology industry. Whether this was supposed to follow on from the previous Thursday response to BIGT meeting, or be a prologue for the launch of the IB-IGT, it meant that a significant number of the biotech great and good were quaffing wine and eating nibbles in Lancaster House. I managed to work the room well, meeting Declan and John Jeans (MRC) on the way in, hook up with Liam and Monika from OSCHR on the way up the stairs, then discuss the (now apparently infamous) GSK dinner with Mark Walport. Brian Collins then introduced me to the new Permanent Secretary of BERR, bigging up the TSB. I moved on to Aisling Burnand and got a quite a long way through my pre-emptive strike on our real activity levels in life sciences before she introduced me to someone who used to work for GSK but now does something with race horses – there followed a bizarre conversation about the potential role of the TSB in horse racing which I wish I could remember!! At this point, the Dark Lord, the VC of Oxford and Peter Perfect gave speeches about the Governments opposition to animal liberation terrorists and support for the animal testing that made British bioscience great. From the amount of people kicking their heels and looking bored, I would venture to suggest that they severely misjudged their audience and gave them the wrong message!! The Dark Lord did make reference to a “good discussion with David Cooksey last week” so I guess he is still thinking whether or what to do? The final discussion was with Ian Shott about the upcoming IB-IGT launch before I have to leave to catch the dream express back to Swindon, where I had stupidly left my car!! Later that night I discovered that I had either been the victim of a devious BERR plot to poison people, or eaten too many of a nibble that didn't agree with me, but it did mean Wednesday didn't really exist for me!! 

Thursday meant a drive to Cambridge to talk at the European Institute for Technology and Innovation Management – I should learn to distrust Mike Gregory more!! http://www.eitim.org/  It is basically a network of European academics who study innovation management, and the Forum is an event where they bring in people who do (or have done) innovation in the real world to check calibration. The first talk after lunch was by an ex-entrepreneur who now lectures so it started well and then a Volvo VC guy made some interesting comparison between VCs and corporate VCs. The next few speakers were a little more high level and the questioning was along the lines of “your theory sucks because it isn’t the same as mine”, so I started wondering whether I could slip out before my slot and retrospectively claim illness. I was billed as “public sector funding” and I gave a more or else standard talk. From the questions, I realised that their claimed knowledge of what we did – I asked before I started – was a lie. They really didn't get our activities, and questions turned into a long back telling of our story. The highpoint was when a German guy told me that our model couldn’t possibly work because it missed the key activities that his work showed had to be carried out. This caused an amusing reaction from the Brits in the audience. First Miles Eddowes of Unilever pointed out that we had facilitated a connection with Tesco that made their packaging project a more credible business proposition, then Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal of BAe testified that we made them think hard about their business and added real value to the funding process. As I was preparing to be knocked over by a feather, Steve Battersby of Philips then laid into European funding mechanisms as being sprawling and slow and commented favourably on our focus and speed. Lastly came Christophe Wiesner of TWI who said we were unique in Europe in our business approach and responsiveness. The coffee break interrupted this paean to our wonderfulness, but it was nice to see it! After the break, we returned to the more academic approach, but the day ended with Miles doing his “open innovation means having an open mind” talk – I had seen it at Norwich a few months ago, so I knew the trick. It is good and he would be a credible Innovate 09 speaker. 

Escaping dinner, but secure in the knowledge that most of the industrial people weren’t going back for the second day, I headed up the A1 to Leeds. 

Friday saw the second workshop in the development of the “water” innovation platform. Ably organised by Brains, it gave us the opportunity to explain to a wider cross-section of the water industry what was involved in building an innovation platform and how it might progress. We had a speaker from Ofwat (who used to work for Yorkshire Water), one from Yorkshire Water and one from a company that supplies technology to water companies around the world. The young padawan and I squeezed in the main messages and we ran 2 workshop sessions (ably assisted by Em and John Whittal) with questions designed to make them discuss the issues. There is real baggage between the regulator and the main water companies and, although they tend to blame the regulatory framework for the lack of anything above incremental development work, there is an innate conservatism that we need to address. That said, the very act of holding these workshops is building the community and, given that the lack of water causes people to die within a few days, the societal impact has to be there. What, for me ,was telling was that at 3.30 when we finished. Easily 90% of the attendees were still there, and then many hung around afterwards talking to one another or us. The week would have ended well except that I had to go down the M1 again and, although this time the motorway hadn’t been closed by lorries playing chicken in the road-works section, the heavy rain added about 45 minutes to an already long journey.