A Bumper Edition – includes the Lost Weekend

Actually writing a 2-week version of my blog has confirmed what I long expected – that the writing up of any week cements the memories more firmly in the mind.  Trying to remember 2 weeks back is much more difficult that I thought it would be!  Note to self – don’t let it happen again!

It was Monday and I was in Swindon, so it was a “start the week” meeting.  FL was in the second week of his disease and had sensibly decided to come it later than usual, so the meeting went quicker and we were able to squeeze in our first update on the progress of the TICquest.  After a quick download from Jools about where I needed to be during the week – it was an easy week, so that didn’t take long – we ventured out weeks into the future to work out what was going on!

Then it was into a meeting with FL and the previous and current CEOs of TWI.  Ostensibly it was about introducing the new one to us but it inevitably strayed into TIC territory and how TWI could work more “more effectively” with us.  That moved forward into a strange meeting that was billed in my diary as a Governing Board De-brief, but which started with the Communications Man and the wife of Socrates taking us through a basic stakeholder mapping that showed that we didn’t connect with Number 10 and the Cabinet Office as well as we need to do and should do something about it.  That took 90 minutes.  Then we spent 60 minutes discussing whether the Board minutes should record the questions they asked or the conclusions we ended up with.  My surreal-o-meter was going off scale by then so the next 30 minutes, talking to a journalist about low carbon vehicles and the progress made in the UK over the last year was a real joy. 

After a time with Digital Man trying to nail down how we could explain our growing requirement to define “digital services” in a more codified manner, I joined FL for a telephone conference with Annette Doherty and Ruth McKernan of Pfizer.  The call was instead of a visit to Sandwich the week before that we hadn’t be able to fit in and was primarily for them to tell us that Pfizer would announce the closure of the Sandwich site the next day.  We discussed options, but quickly realised that i) it was not a suitable site for a TIC and ii) that a TIC would almost certainly be the first idea the Coalition would reach for to put a Band-Aid on this newly broken leg!

Tuesday saw the Executioners meeting up at Alexandra House for a 2-day meeting to think about how we could be better.  We had received the feedback from the Gravel-Pits a year or more ago, had been aware that the Management Development Courses had thrown up similar feedback and had now added more, similar feedback from the Strategic Task Force.  Anne and Jan coaxed us into a world where we looked at the mirror and agreed that we needed to step back from the addictive helter-skelter that our world has become and started doing some management of the organisation – perhaps even aspiring to leadership, who knows?

By way of a distraction, Cyrus took us out into Swindon Old Town in the evening to see how Swindonians have taken to Salsa dancing, but we all clung to the bar and I had interesting discussions with at least 2 Strategy Men!

Wednesday saw more of the same, but with an increasing degree of honesty and the glimmer of openness – and a very long list of things we need to do.  Mid-afternoon, FL, David Way and myself headed off to London for a Foundation for Science and Technology meeting on the “Allocation of science and research funding 2011/12 to 2014/15”.  It was a stellar event, with no spare seats and most the of the usual characters. Although it was primarily about science funding, we got the occasional mention in the side-lines until the questions – where we got plugs from several, including a question about our funding from the ex-CSA, which was batted away into the long grass by our new DG.  The inevitably more robust questioning after dinner and wine again got us several mentions, but all three of us (separately) decided that discretion was the better part of valour at this event and we allowed the heavy research council contingent to make their points about how important they were and how they needed more money not more help!

I shared a ride back with FL, which may well have been my undoing!

Thursday started with a normal Executioners Meetings, which was more snappy and impactful than normal, showing the short-term effect of the previous 2 days if nothing else.  I had to leave at lunchtime to drive to Heathrow to catch a plane to Berlin for a meeting on Regenerative Medicine our friend at UCL had stitched me into.  The drive, flight and taxi ride where all surprisingly efficient and so I made the hotel in time for the dinner.  I met interesting people from Johnson & Johnson, the Canadian Centre for (translational) Regenerative Medicine and lots of people who either researched or funded RM in America or Europe.

I awoke next morning to a curious tightness across my chest but was absorbed by the analysis of the various centres around the world, the governance models they had chosen, the way they dealt with intellectual property and so on, as it gradually dawned on me that – with the exception of the Canadians I had met the evening before – most of the centres were only translational in that they were trying to get more research money by pushing technology at an unformed market!  At the end of the day, I caught a taxi back to Tegel, and sat with increasing gloom and a feeling of impending disease as the plane was delayed – eventually for over an hour.  With the drive home from Heathrow, I managed to crawl into my bed just before midnight, feeling distinctly worse for wear. 

I don’t remember much of the weekend, but on Monday morning I had the standard “how long have you been ill – come back when it’s longer” discussion with my GP before having a series of Skype and telephone discussions with various people where I took notes so that I could remember what I had agreed to!

Tuesday I had agreed to talk at a meeting in London, so I stocked up with palliative medicines and took the train to London.  The meeting was moderately high powered.  The kick-off was by Janet Finch, then Fergus stood in for David Roe (and gave a very interesting talk on how Government is not very good at innovation that I mean to steal!) then Hermann Hauser gave his standard Clerk Maxwell talk, then it was my turn.  I must have remembered to give the right nuances to the standard slide set, because Hermann was my best friend and I had several requests for autographs (on cheques for TICs!).  After the break it was our DG who again managed to make the point that the TSB was not the only link between universities and businesses in a tone that made me feel bad for even trying to join in, and Richard Holdaway who gives a cracking talk on the relevance of Space to the everyday world.  At lunchtime, with the fever breaking through, I escaped to the train home and collapsed.

Wednesday morning I had a telephone call with Mat Hunter who seems intent on taking over the David Godber role at the Design Council but started by apologising for how they had almost thrown away the opportunity of Independence Matters that we had gifted them by concentrating on revenue generation not eventual outcome.  We have sworn to be friends!  The rest of the day was spent preparing for another trip to London.  The reason this time was the Economist Pharma Summit and the speaker dinner the evening before.  Although I wasn’t feeling great and had to decline the Ernst & Young sponsored wine, the table (senior guy from Bayer, senior guy from Novartis, senior guy from Medco, practice leader from E&Y in Zurich and practice leader from E&Y in Barcelona) and the bizarre pre-dinner sparring between Pfizer, GSK and Novo Nordisk made for lots to think about and distracted me from feeling sorry for myself.

The next day, the drugs once again got pressed into service and the day went well.  I talked to journalists from the Times, Wall Street Journal and a specialist paper called EP Vantage, heard more of the sparring between big pharma companies all claiming that they, and they alone, had got the right strategy (this time Lilly bested GSK), missed the panel on emerging markets (by which they mean countries they don’t have locked up) but did follow the panel on openness and transparency and how more of it was needed – apparently, the pharma industry is down near tobacco companies and bankers in terms of public trust!

After lunch there was a fascinating talk about “orphan diseases” by the head of the Alkaptonuria Society – see http://www.alkaptonuria.info/en/home.php.  He had discovered that there were rare diseases when his child was born with one and he was a passionate and articulate advocate for greater focus on such diseases as a means of elucidating metabolic pathways and understanding more common diseases.  One of the questions was from some guy at the Technology Strategy Board who made a fascinating point about his experience of design and foot fetishism in San Francisco the month before.  That led into a panel on stratified medicine (or rather personalised medicine) that I was speaking on.  I had just started my homespun introduction relating my palliative medical regime and the tacit belief that over-the-counter medicines were universally effective (as a contrast to the reality of limited efficacy of most drugs), when 2 people broke into the room shouting about Huntingdon Life Sciences.  No-one moved as they made their way towards the podium continuing their chants and indicting Astra Zeneca as supportive of HLS and offering to show us all videos of monkeys being tortured.  Then two very big men with walkie-talkies entered the room and “persuaded” them to leave, all the while continuing their chants.  We waited until the noises off had ceased before we started again.  I resumed my introductory remarks before handing off to the man from Astra Zeneca (who presumably was the target of the protestors, not me?), the man from Sanofi-Adeventis and the man from Medco and some questions, first from Tom Standage and then from the floor.  It was interesting to note that there is still an implicit belief that stratification will only work if the current pharmaceutical companies make it happen, but the Medco guy pointed up that their information management system was what was enabling them to play in the space, and that, as a pharmaceutical intermediate, they weren’t pushing their lack of blockbusters or orphan drugs.  My final interview meant that I missed the talks about PatientsLikeMe – see http://www.patientslikeme.com/ and about rebranding the pharmaceutical industry by a guy from Elmwood – see http://elmwood.com/flash/?#/home/ (but you need Flash installed!) so I once again bailed for home – and so missed the siege of the reception at the Irish Embassy by the same animal rights protesters that meant Zahid didn’t get his free drink.

I really don’t remember Friday at all much, but slept a lot.