Balancing desirability and achievability

Although most of the reasons got cancelled, I went down to London first thing and so missed the “start the week” meeting.  As a replacement for all the meetings that got cancelled, I spent the morning sorting out data for the portfolio presentation to the Governing Board before half the EMT arrived to discuss it.  The exact amount of money we have to play with seems to keep going down so we have to keep trimming the total value of the innovation programmes and that means we have to answer a series of “value” question with increasing rigour.  The discussion of the proposal for the overall shape and detailed content of the portfolio produced some important decisions and that meant my plan for a relaxing evening with friends had to be re-arranged so that I could spend time adding all the extra information and capturing the intent of the various programmes.  Luckily I had the trusty ”grant master spread-sheet on my 11” screen laptop computer and so my only problem was eye-strain.  The next morning, I had to go up to Oxford for one of my other jobs, where I learnt something new about the philosophy of shareholders, but then came back to London for a series of “portfolio balance” discussion – first with Sustainability Man (a romantic tryst in the café at Paddington) and then Obi-wan (in the less engaging environment of Tracey Island) to refine the increasingly persuasive (although I say it myself) argument we were developing.  I had to take breaks from this endeavour, first for a telephone discussion with Suzanne Bond – Chief Executive of the Cornwall Development Company – which followed on from a chance meeting with Alan Livingstone and the devious machinations of Nick Buckland.  Other than money, I am not sure why she wants to talk to me.  Then it was off to Shaftesbury Avenue to meet a couple of people who have been stalking David Willetts about a TIC-based media centre (no, not Andrew Budd) in Stratford (no, not the TechCity crowd either).  Actually, they have a good idea about the use of the Olympic Media Centre after the Olympics, but they are confused by what the Government are saying about what a TIC is, haven’t read either Hauser’s original report of the prospectus, and so I got points by doing Willetts Private Office a favour and talking to them.  I also need a title for the media equivalent of a science or business park.

Wednesday started with a breakfast meeting with Chris Mason about the Regenerative Medicine Executive meeting in Berlin next week – Chris had stitched me into going and I wanted to know why and what he expected me to do.  Actually, it seems like a good opportunity to big up Healthcare Man’s programme and only takes a day, so why not?  I got back to my room to hear some guy coughing his guts up in the next room, and since I had noted on Foursquare that FL was staying in the same hotel, texted him to find out his plan for getting to the Board meeting.  The coughing stopped and he texted back!

The Board meeting was surprisingly benign.  With His Spittleness unable to attend, the meeting was masterfully chaired by Nick Buckland.  David got through his TIC presentation without anyone arguing with him and I managed to get only the questions we anticipated (about why we weren’t doing specific areas).  We had an interesting discussion about how we know what we’re not doing and the Board were veering towards expecting omniscience when we got back onto the more usual ground of why we don’t have a numerical process for making decisions.  They are always good questions, but it was interesting to hear later from other Board members that they thought the question asked too much of the team! 

After a break for coffee, we were joined by the (bulk of the) KTN Chairmen and the annual discussion between the Board and them started.  Unfortunately, our Chairman had been called away at the last moment and so he lost the ability to express undying support for the KTNs and the value they add to our total operation!  

Thursday started with a walk across Westminster Bridge in the biting cold for an OFWAT breakfast.  It commenced as a thought-provoking couple of presentations on the use of nudge economics in utilities.  Chris Starmer from Nottingham gave a charmingly patronising take on how behavioural economics differed frame conventional economics and Phil Hope from OFWAT made it relevant to the audience.  When the discussion started, it lost the plot quickly as the prejudices and lack of imagination of the audience shone through the intellectual challenges they had been served.  OFWAT continue to amaze me – they have such good intentions but always seem to lose the plot at the final phase.  Aside from a couple of cards, the main thing I took away from the meeting was Phil’s statistic that lowering the flush volume in most toilets from 7.5 to 6 litres had saved 9 litres person per day – which implies we all flush a toilet 6 times a day.

Next it was back across Westminster Bridge and along Victoria Street for our delayed meeting with the Foresight team at Kingsgate House.  After a sharing of how we had fared under the CSR, they described their “Global Food and Farming” report.  It’s a massive tome (just under 130Mb of pdfs), with satellite reports – and was only stopped from decimating a small Brazilian forest by the Cabinet Office ban on “marketing” which meant they could only print 500 copies and make a similar number of CDs!  After lunch (which they paid for, I think) we discussed how we could better co-ordinate out activities in future.  We suggested that our burgeoning interest in convergence needed a strong evidence base so that we could cross-pollinate our energy, sustainability, transport, healthcare and digital activities and that they needed a large and impressive “John Beddington Memorial” project.  As usual, it was fun to watch the team finish one another’s sentences like married people (presumably a bizarre homosexual Mormon cult) and demonstrate quite how far we have come as an organisation!

Back to Tracey Island for a couple of meetings with FL.  The first was the BIA Parliament Day, and consisted of us listening to a group from the Regenerative Medicine community tell us (again) quite how wonderful Healthcare Man’s programme in the area was and how it has enabled a number of companies not only avoid death, but to actually start to prosper!  Unfortunately, Zahid was in the room – so we had a problem getting his head out of the door afterwards!

Then it was another NaREC related meeting – this time just FL and me with their Chairman and CEO.  FL had been to an ETI Board Meeting in the morning where there was alleged to have been some kind of progress, but it was still left to FL to deliver some of the harder messages about funding and the strings attached to getting it.  Then we laid out the arduous path to TICdom and told them what we would expect to see in a successful proposal.  They kept nodding, but I got the impression that the CEO had other things on his mind and, at the end, I escorted him off the promises while FL delivered the final part of the feedback to the Chairman!

The trip home was broken by an interesting range of phone calls until the not-spot that is the Chiltern Line took over and peace descended!

Friday was a Swindon day and started with a catch-up between David Way and I.  Despite the fact that we had spent some time together over this week, there was plenty to talk about – in particular the need for very close integration of our activities in TIC World!

I met the new media person before being told where to go next week by Jools and then holding Zahid’s PRP over lunch.  Yesterdays’ meeting where part of his community had deified him was well timed (for him).  Then we went over to a depleted Strategic Partnership group meeting with a few people from RCUK.  They wanted to know about TICs and our forward programme, so we told them.  They then told us about a series of commitments we have supposedly made to them, but David Way and I left Kate to sort that out!

My final activity of the day was to sit with Chris and Suzy and work out just how much we could afford in programme commitments for the next 2 years.  The “Heads of” had been working to a target of £180m for next year – but not achieved it, I note – but there is increasing evidence that we have to bring it down further – to around £155m.  We inputted some draconian cuts to meet that level to see what impact that level of commitments would have on spend rate – it’s all down to the length of the intended programmes, cutting £1m feasibility studies cuts £1m from the spend in that year, cutting a £1m Collaborative R&D programme cuts £333k!  After the supercomputer that we provided Suzy for her worked clunked to an answer we realised we are still heading for about a £11m overspend next year!!  It’s less back to the drawing board than back to the chopping board!  One the way home I took a call from our friends in BIS about the TechCity LaunchPad competition idea and how Willetts was sending it to Number 10 because he now likes it!

2011
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