Government Leadership is such a good idea I hope we get it!

An early start in London on Monday morning meant that I had to go down the evening before, so I missed the “start the week” meeting once again!  The reason was a “workshop” to develop the idea of TechCity, as announced by that nice Mr Cameron on November 4^th last year.  Sponsored by Number 10, and run by McKinsey, it was a great example of how to take goodwill and squander it.  It started with the usual array of Government talking heads, this time leavened by the guy who started Dr Fosters – an interesting business case, because he started off using public data and thought there was a consumer market for it, but now runs a rather incestuous B2B business selling information on performance to the various health providers so they can compete on perception!  The (still unseen) McKinsey report on the opportunities for Government support in the Shoreditch and Stratford has apparently highlighted 5 areas for action – finance, networks, infrastructure, skills and communications – and the assembled people had to pick up a limited number of coloured cards to determine which syndicate they went to in 2 sessions.  The demographic was also an indication of McKinsey’s grasp of what small companies and entrepreneurs are and do!  There were a lot of “consultants” who helped companies, resplendent in sharp suits, and a small number of young, unshaven guys in pullovers, all looking a bit out of place.  I estimated there were about 5% women!  The first syndicate, on finance, was an organisational shambles, with no-one introducing the issues and no real facilitation other than there being 3 not very well articulated questions around the room.  In fact, the cross-section of people with a shared agenda meant that we spent all our time explaining what we did and used up most of the time.  At one point, I asked my group what they knew about the Technology Strategy Board – almost to a person, they had never heard of us but at the end of my 3-minute intro, every pullover in the place was my new best friend!  We reassembled as a group for a short talk from Willetts that was really quite good.  He talked about physical centres, clusters and virtual centres (the subtext was that he understood the first 2 but wasn’t convinced on the third) and then answered question about problems in Shoreditch and Stratford.  They were mainly tactical ones like visas and tax!  He obviously took his own notes and has a reputation for getting back to people with specific answers!  Back into the second syndicate session, the meeting went from bad to execrable.  There wasn’t even an attempt to facilitate despite there being 3 McKinsey people in the room and the question about definition and scope of TechCity got everyone, including UKTI, saying that someone in Number 10 got it, but hadn’t explained it to the rest of them.  The group split, more or less on suit-pullover lines and I went to listen to the pullovers.  There is a growing feeling that they are being hijacked by the politicians who don’t listen to them (at this point I put on my “attentive” face) and the involvement of corporates was not good.  Google come out quite well, Cisco seem to be duplicating things that already exist but with their logo on them and McKinsey are seen as the antichrist!  The wrap-up had no content and I suspect that it will be more difficult to get even the supportive East London locals back to another similar event!  We come out well with those who know us, but our market penetration of this sector is still very low.

I then had to taxi across London for a meeting of the core group of the Low Carbon Innovation Group – the Carbon Trust, Energy Technologies Institute and us!  The expanded group is having problems with DECC trying to use it to impose its lack of imagination on the low carbon community.  FL had seen this before Christmas when the presentation on our joint analysis process had included an early DECC slide on priorities that we had agreed at the working group should not be shown because the rest of the community didn’t agree with it!  We discussed the TINA process and what we wanted from it and agreed to work together to provide a more co-ordinated pushback.

As I left, I got a phone call from an ex Chair of a KTN asking about TICs and purporting to not understand how the prospectus will work.  I gave him the party line and he seemed satisfied!

A more leisurely and therefore cheaper trip back (£2.50 plays £9.00 but 35 minutes as opposed to 15) to Tracey Island for an interview for an Aerospace Lead Technologist – not a convincing one, but we will revisit.

Then up to RIBA for the inaugural BVCA Venture Capital Entrepreneur Lecture, given by Joanna Shields of Facebook.  With a sprinkling of the mornings people in the audience, the pre-lecture mingling gave an opportunity for comparison of prejudices.  No-one likes McKinsey – there’s a surprise!  The lecture, a version of which can be read here - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8266144/Start-Up-100-The-person-centred-internet-revolution.html started with some fluffy stuff about people wanting to communicate and share, before the steel fist in the velvet glove got revealed and Facebook started to earn my respect!  During questions, the Shadow BIS Minster from Newcastle asked why there are no Venture Capitalists in the North-East of England and why Facebook doesn’t have their headquarters there.  Joanna did a nice line in polite put-downs involving pointing out that Facebook is a global community – and a large one – and can more-or-less do what they want but what they do is to work where the talent is!  This picture - http://www.flickr.com/photos/40043147@N06/5366585795/in/set-72157625852500024/ shows the question being asked and me hiding in the row in front in case she asked me why we aren’t headquartered in Newcastle!  The drinks and nibbles afterwards were great for networking and lasted long enough that getting home was a mobility challenge.

The next morning it was down to Swindon to think about how we can explain the strategy to the Governing Board and a general catch-up after a week out of the office. In the afternoon, junior TIC-Man and I met 4 people from Malvern, who want to have a TIC as part of a master plan to set up a new university, a TIC and a science park on some of the land Qinetiq are selling because they can’t make money out of the technologies that they have developed in Malvern!  Their presentation was high level, inconsistent and moderately unprofessional and their business plan was non-existent, and they couldn’t manage the hour they had booked with us.  I left for my next meeting profoundly depressed that the core technology guy in the group had probably read our body language and was beginning to realise his partners were not very convincing!

Next up were 3 Funders Panels – on Manufacturing – High Value Chemicals Feasibility Studies, Harnessing Large and Diverse Data Sets and the Mainstream Metadata competitions.  In some we were unable to award all the allocated money because of the quality and I was struck that we can still give away money in the old-fashioned areas but don’t yet have the connections into some of the newer and more imaginative areas.  Cyrus on the other hand was pleased that some of the impending overspend would be mitigated by the same set of basic facts!

Wednesday was the start of another London sequence, with the first meeting being with Google and the BCS.  Since both Anil and Ian had been at the TechCity workshop, we spent not a little time pondering why it’s not going that well and Anil realising that we are not officially involved and being a little puzzled by inter-governmental communications.  The main goal of the meeting was to discuss how BCS could work with us.  We have had a couple of meetings about support for small companies in the evolving digital services area and they are now proposing to supply “mentors” into our competitions, so Zoe will be pleased since that was an issue for her at the Funders Panel the afternoon before!

There was time for a phone call from an old university colleague to ask about the scope of TICs, because he claimed not to understand the prospectus.  I am realising that people will keep asking the question and claiming not to understand what we say until we say “here’s the money” to them! My sympathy for the TIC team inched upwards again!

I also got a chance to swap ideas with Coatesy about engaging the SINners, and watch in amazement as he made it happen!

After a quick interview about the impact of the Design and Technology Alliances “Designing Our Crime” programme, where I began to realise that the Home Office may be thinking of resurrecting it, I went down to the cellars of Tracey Island for a UKTI Nordic-Baltic Business Conference, where I had been shafted to be on a panel with Willetts.  The meeting was quite fun, listening to guys from Ericsson and Dong Energy talk about the real world I pine for.  The panel, on digital services, showed Willetts attention to detail well, he came in late but well briefed, seamlessly took over from John Higgins who had kicked off the meeting and then asked the pre-prepared questions.  At one point, someone averred that everyone cites Google, Facebook and Twitter as success stories but there were no European equivalents. My aside to John about Skype and Spotify got amplified and taken up by Willetts and used to challenge us with our own ambitions!

Sustainability Man and I rendezvoused upstairs in Tracey Island and moved around London having a meeting before pitching up at the LWEC Business Advisory Board dinner somewhere near Euston – where does Jools find these hotels?

The dinners are turning into the best bits of these meetings because they tend to be single issue but unconstrained by time and lubricated by alcohol.  Tonight was set off by a particularly avuncular John Beddington, talking about the challenges of water.  This inevitably led to a discussion about the progress of our evaluation and some smart interventions by the young padawan, comparing the problems of water to other industries.  Not surprisingly the guy from the water industry wants us to put money in!  John himself seems relaxed about our decision – possibly because he can use the story as an example of regulation inhibiting innovation!!

Another Swindon trek the next morning for an Executioners Meeting.  The use of the different formats of scorecards to spark discussion was balanced by Cyrus telling us that the auditors think we’re not very good at controlling our expenses and I was handed a paper on my way out – so the just in time principle seems to be in the ascendant!

I had to leave to go back to London for a meeting with the CEO of NICE.  Actually, it was one of those meetings you wish you could store up and use when things go wrong.  It is obvious that the Development and Healthcare teams have built productive and friendly relationships with NICE and to hear the CEO praise the teams was quite heart-warming.  Of course I beat Healthcare Man and the young padawan roundly for it not being better, but secretly, I think they have done rather well!

The rest of the afternoon was a PRP for the young padawan and then a meeting with FL (probably so that he could use my bathroom to change into his Aerospace Man uniform before the ADS dinner) before we went mob-handed to the ADS dinner to express our friendship and respect for those money-grabbing bastards from the aerospace industry (only joking!).  FL was on the top table, but the rest of us were distributed well below the salt.  I had an interesting evening with Bombardier – and refreshing change from the really big behemoths – and managed to get them to understand that we can’t just hand over the money and no longer care about the kid.  The representative for the BIS Aerospace Unit really doesn’t get it and made the job more difficult that it needed to be.  Transport Man and I will now go out to Northern Ireland see their factory!

High point of the evening for me was the discovery that used accountants from textiles companies can become the President of the Aerospace trade association and it was fun to re-connect with Peter Rogers – who in Courtaulds had a reputation and being Gordon Campbell’s consiglere before running the rump of the fibres business.  I have tales of management development course misbehaviour to use in the future!

Friday was back into Tracey Island for a meeting about NaREC and Project Fujin (although I am truly not sure when it got so named!).  The back-story is that ETI have been nursing a project to build a turbine test rig at Blythe for almost 2 years but they are increasingly of the opinion that it’s not a good use of their (the private companies) money and so are on an effective go-slow.  Meanwhile, NaREC are showing signs of poor project management (and management in general) and are up against the financial wall because of the abolition of the RDAs.  Cue a series of meetings, all of which result in a standoff and both sides blaming one another.  The shame is that this project and the infrastructure that goes around it stands a good chance of establishing the UK as a centre for offshore technology – which is predicted to be around a £165bn business by 2030 and therefore possibly worth some investment!  With the ETI representative restating that his Board wanted no downside but a financial return and NaREC pointing out that they have 5 potential customers (for programmes 3-5 years out) and cannot get any more until the project is approved and the work started, and the side issue that some of the Government money has to be spent (or at least inexorably committed) by the end of March – leaving an ETI Board decision until their March Board meeting felt a bit like taking the piss!  The solution continually suggested by ETI – that the Government guarantee the private members position to the tune of £10m, does not go down well in the current environment and Adrian Smith is beginning to look a bit haunted by the situation.  More than any other issue this points up the problem with ETI Governance model – where 6 companies can damage an UK wide initiative.

Next was the official Low Carbon Innovation Group teleconference where, once again, the rest of us tried to remind DECC what they had agreed last time and what we would be doing next.  

As I made my way home, I took telephone call from a woman in Denmark who seems to want me to speak at their innovation conference (and given the experience in Boston, I am tempted) and then another about the upcoming Economist Pharma Summit, which I have already committed to – I think!