Seeing, not just looking

One too many Mondays, but a pleasant enough drive down to Swindon for the “start the week” meeting, then the “oh my god, we’ve got so much to do” TIC update and then a briefing by Richard Kemp-Harper and the Media Dominatrix about the upcoming Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Showcase event so that my head would be in gear by Friday.  Next came a (sort of) interview with an ex-Airbus person for the interim role in the Aerospace bit of the Transport group.  Good catch too.  Next FL called me to join a meeting on the branding exercise for the TICs.  Now he has joined the select group of those who know the proposal, he is keen to bash on and translate the idea into reality.  The main debate was more about when we should tell David Willetts – with the majority siding on “early” so that he could become a convert too.  We now need a plan to make it happen.  Over lunch it was an Innovate Steering Group, where the major decision was to add a couple of completer-finishers to the group so that we did something – but Huw had provided Krispy Kreme donuts, so I was happy.

The main visit of the day was by a couple of guys from 3M.  One was a youthful and enthusiastic one from “renewable energy” the other a more measured, older hand from “oil and gas”.  Although we saw a lot of 3M through the old ITSS Innovation Platform and I was able to name-check about 10 people from Bracknell, neither of them seemed to know much about us and I ended up going through the non-existent corporate presentation without slides to educate them.  They were moderately surprised about what we did and have since joined _connect.

A quick telephonic catch-up with Declan from the MRC mainly about the burgeoning number of Cell Therapy TIC proposals and the mythical “extra money” John Bell has his sights on.  Both moderately sobering topics!

Finally it was the last interview for the Head of Technology and the trip home. 

Tuesday saw a trek down to London.  Because the travel was a bit disrupted, I managed to take my first telephone meeting (about the upcoming interview with Ben Rooney of the Wall Street Journal) on a bench in the middle of Green Park.  As I finished I got a text from Jools telling me she had arranged another call immediately afterwards with the BIS Automotive Unit, but since I was almost at Tracey Island, I decided giving Ashley a shock was more fun and we had the discussion mano a mano.  I clarified that their proposal for a joint automotive-aerospace bid for supply chain support from the Regional Growth Fund would not mean any compromise of our independence but that they would ask us to be the delivery agency with clear terms of reference, so agreed to take part in the further discussions.  They seemed please, so perhaps I didn’t negotiate hard enough?  

Then it was a telephone version of the Heads of Innovation Programmes monthly meeting, with Healthcare Man, Energy Man and Programme Incubation (only joking, I meant Development) Man in the room with me, first Transport Man and then TIC Boy on the telephone and everyone else either on holiday, sick or embroiled in the HVM TIC summit!  We discussed the progress of the TIC programme, the increased number of complaints we are all getting about delays in project starts and (on a positive note) how the coffee in BIS has got better of late.

I took a quick call from a recovering Bob Driver of UKTI while I waited around a bit for Strategy Man (not Process Man, I have to remind both myself and you that he is not just Process Man) for our epic trip to St Albans to visit the renamed Home Office Science Development Branch (it’s now the Centre for Applied Science and Technology, although neither the road signs nor their internal signage has changed!).  This was part of our re-engagement with them after several abortive early starts and a lull.  As well as Kabi (Satyamoorthy Kabilan) and Jenny Stewart, there was Neil Cohen, Graham Smith and Marek Rejman-Greene.  We did the usual “what we do” bit and then had a moderately free-wheeling conversation about technologies that could be developed to answer their needs but also have application in other markets, a long discussion about what personal safety might mean in both the physical and cyber worlds and some sharing of methodologies about horizon scanning.  Kabi conveniently took action minutes, and we’re on them!

I made it back to London in time to join the dinner of the Emerging Technologies and Industries Steering Group at the Royal Society.  Although I missed several of the Group members who couldn’t stay for dinner, I did have good conversations with those that did – and the dinner discussion was positive about what we are trying to do and the process we are evolving to do it!

After the dinner, that nice Mike bloke from Cambridge bought me a beer in a nearby hostelry and asked me lots of hard questions.  The first was about some money he seems to have squeezed out of David Sainsbury to look at how innovation actually works and was basically asking if he could use our Technologists as his laboratory rats (not quite the right comparison, but you get the point).  Since we are always worried that we don’t capture (with the necessary rigour to make them useful) our case studies, I thought adding a bit of process to selection and analysis might be useful so gave a cautious assent.  He will now revert with a plan. Next came a long discussion about “sustainability”.  When I explained our project with Forum for the Future to define what a sustainable economy might look like he got very excited – and so I offered to put him in touch, first with Sustainability Man and then, through him, to the Forum and Jonathan.  Next came a couple of gnomic questions which seemed to be aimed at how hard we were wanting to drive the HVM strategic landscape work we are doing with IfM into the broader community after we have used it to brigade the HVM TIC hordes.  I was totally ignorant that we were even trying but it seems likes an eminently sensible idea, so I said I would talk to Will about it.  That led inexorably to a discussion about imbedded services.  There was a diversion to describe the ICT for Manufacturing and Construction competition that had just opened (a sidebar in that we have to get people to look beyond the title of the competition to see relevance!) but he is obviously interested in understanding our views on defining the right service wrapper for any physical goods. We then discussed how the West Cambridge campus would make an interesting “smart working place” and how the academics wouldn’t mind being monitored 24/7 – right?  Finally, I asked whether he had been approached to be part of the Cambridge Cell Therapies TIC – he didn’t know there was one!  It worries me that many applying to run TICs are firmly in the academic mind-set and that the decision we might make will be contested for all the wrong reasons because we are not firm or clear enough about what a TIC is and isn’t!

Wednesday dawned nicely enough to be able to walk across the parks to Tracy Island and take my first phone call of the day – with the CEO of The Big Society Network (see – http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/). They seem to be doing small-scale support for social entrepreneurs and we debated the line between what they did and what we did and agreed to swap some names of companies – his list is smaller so he agreed to move first.  Yet another example of people doing things close to (or even in) our space without us being involved because we are not well enough known – even within Government – for what we actually do!  If it wasn’t for accidently shared friends, we might still not know of one another!

Then it was the Assisted Living Innovation Platform Steering Group – in the bowels of Tracy Island.  With the recent recruitment of extra business people and several academics leaving the group (one, famously, because they couldn’t justify taking part unless they won some of our funding!) is more balanced and the discussion more aligned with our business goals.  After updates from Mike on Independence Matters, Graham gave his talk from Glasgow to précis the project portfolio and then “unveiled” the standards wiki (see – http://alipinterop.wikispaces.com/message/list/ALIPinterop+homepage).  We have talked about this for a long time and it is good to see it lurch into life.  The theory is to bind the community into a set of common standards so that the goal of universal coverage isn’t stymied by short-sighted business logic.  Let’s hope it works!!  Then there was a description of our growing engagement with Europe in this area – and strong encouragement from the business people present to keep it up – because it is opening up opportunities for them to engage with what is the closest (geographically and culturally) market.  After lunch, the bulk of the discussion was about DALLAS.  The work is split between the Interoperability Task Force and the Lifestyles Task Force and it feels like real progress is being made.  The process of building the technology components and sub-systems and nurturing the community before piling it all into a demonstrator (used for Low Carbon Vehicles, Low Impact Buildings and Digital) feels like it is beginning to come right.  Mike managed to get a plethora of references in about the need for greater communications and then told them we had a plan.  Nicely done!

By total coincidence, I then went upstairs to meet Mat Hunter of the Design Council for our monthly catch-up.  We talked about Independence Matters (they are very proud of their part in it), the Forum for Innovation in Crime Prevention (where their representative has not yet fed back anything from the last meeting they can use) and the Design for Growth Summit next week (where they are concerned to ground outcomes in the real world).  

Then it was another mid Green Park telephone conference – this time a Funders Panel.  Even without the papers in front of me, it was easy to follow and – because the questions are beginning to become codified and part of the process – participate remotely!

I got back to my room in time to lie down for the next call – from Chris Crockford.  The latest salvo he is intending to fire is to question what the cost of the effort wasted by SMEs applying to competitions where the success rate is 1 in 20.  A back of the envelope suggested it’s a good reason we should have more money but doesn’t serve his stated aim of wasting our time as much as we waste his so we may escape.  In the sort of complete change of tack I am now used to from Chris, he went on to describe some work he is doing with Max Boisot (I put them in touch over champagne at the National Gallery before Christmas) using Max’s model to describe the innovation process as practised in McLaren and asking if I could recommend funding for the work.  Since this is an academic whose model I know from previous times can work in industry working with a fast moving and demonstrably innovative company, this would fall naturally into our “innovation gurney” strand and we could justify funding it – but we would have to have a competition and Chris might lose – is the view worth the climb?

The final meeting of the day was one I was really looking forward to.  A few months ago, the young padawan, the Media Dominatrix and I had been to a Meeting of Minds event at the British Museum about the link between design and technology.  It was organised as a debate between Chris Frayling and Deyan Sudjic but I had talked to Sebastian about it afterwards and (most recently) added Michael Wolff to the mix.  The goal of this dinner meeting (the only time I could get a majority of the main protagonists together) was to work out what we could do to draw the 2 communities together.  It will also serve as a warm-up to a meeting next month where FL and I will meet Sir Terence Conran with Sebastian and Deyan to discuss his letter about design involvement in TICs.  Needless to say, Michael and Sebastian are very hot on TIC-related issues at the moment, so we strayed there several times, but Paul described the design “not vouchers” approach and Deyan proposed a series of seminars between our Technologists and the relevant design communities – an extension of the MADE ideas? (see – http://www.iom3.org/MADE) and we agreed to meet again at the Design Museum in 3 months time to check progress.  MD will also look to place articles about the joint working between the design “thought leaders” we had with us and the Government Agency bureaucrats we represent into design related journals.

The next morning was slightly odd in that I had to rendezvous with Healthcare Man at Marylebone to go out of London at about the same time I usually come in.  I therefore suffered a mild form of commuting schadenfreude.  We were on our way to visit GE Healthcare in Amersham (technically Chalfont and Latimer, but let’s not get picky).  This was part of our “doing a Cisco” activity with GE, but was actually occasioned by someone at GE Healthcare contacting me through LinkedIn and us retrospectively telling the GE coordinators!  We caught the GE minibus and missed most of the torrential downpour that coincided with our arrival, and made our way to the old Amersham International site, where we met up with Penny.  As well as Kevin Buchan, we had the pleasure of the company of Richard Pither (Head of Medical Diagnostics R&D), Alex Gibson (Technology Sourcing Manager, Medical Diagnostics), Ian Wilson (Head of Discovery Portfolio and

Head of Biology, Medical Diagnostics), Cliff Smith (Head of Discovery Project Management, Medical Diagnostics), Jan Wolber (Clinical Development Technology Leader, Medical Diagnostics) and the inimitable Leonard Fass (Academic Collaboration Manager).  We started with an introduction to GE Healthcare and how Medical Diagnostics fits into the bigger picture, then Healthcare Man gave an introduction to the Technology Strategy Board healthcare programmes – but only after bouncing me into a quick overview of our wider activities!  Then we got a lab tour, with some great acronym quiz opportunities, a visit to the room where they “harvest” the animals and – at one point – an amusing scare when I tested positive to radioactive contamination!!   Then it was back into the meeting room (they had obviously been comparing notes and brewing up questions) for a Q&A session.  Once again, we had to keep telling them that it didn’t have to have the words “medical diagnostics” in the title of the competition to be relevant to their activities (there’s a theme emerging here, notice?).  Penny drove off into the sunset and Healthcare Man and I had the pleasure of Len’s company on the walk to the railway station – he drops so many connections and honours he has we had to be followed by a street cleaner!

I got back to the hotel in time for a phone call from Lynn Gladden – in response to my conversation with Mike Gregory – about the Cambridge Cell Therapies bid (it turns out to be bids, because they don’t trust the Scots).  We discussed the balance between political and business pressures and the need to be very industrially relevant.  We agreed to keep in touch.

The next morning I had to meet up with the Media Dominatrix early to make our way out to City Hall for the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Showcase Event – and the breakfast briefing for the journalists beforehand.  We got out to City Hall and met up with Richard Kemp-Harper and the guys from Intelligent Energy and ITM Power – parking the fuel cell black cab and setting up the skip loaded electrolyser respectively.  There were bacon butties for the journalists, but I was feeling a bit under the weather and they were for the journalists!  A small number of journos eventually wandered in – it’s a long way to City Hall on a damp morning – and MD told them what was going to happen.  Then I, Graham Colley (ITM Power), Dennis Hayter (Intelligent Energy) and Richard gave short pieces to set the scene and the journos asked questions.  To Graham Cooley, it was obviously a private ITM briefing and he tried to answer every question, but when he started making stuff up, Dennis and I intervened.  The range of knowledge in the journos was odd – one guy really didn’t get any of the technology at all and another had a debate with us about the macro-economics of power distribution.  Then we went outside to see the exhibits and meet up with Greg Barker and Boris Johnson.  Boris seemed more interested in the rugby players so Greg sat in the coffee shop reading his brief.  Then there was a photo shoot and some glad-handing and those with serious intent went upstairs to the meeting proper.  The room was actually quite full with people from the projects that had been funded under the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Demonstrator Call – paid for by DECC and managed by us – and quite a few “interested parties”.  Greg kicked off with a pretty standard politicians speech – blaming the last lot, congratulating the audience and then challenging them to do more for less money.  Since he could “announce” our next call in the area, the final challenge bypassed most of the audience who only had eyes for our cheque book.  Then Intelligent Energy, ITM Power and Diverse Energy reported their results from their demonstrator projects.  It was neat to see how much Alistair’s Diverse pitch has come on since his involvement in the Clean and Cool Mission last year – he would not go unnoticed in Silicon Valley with that style!!    Then there was a break for networking and we reconvened again with a speech by Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Mayor of London.  I was plumbing previously undiscovered depths of unctuousness in my introductions, and Kit showed a partial understanding of technology, so we moved on to presentations from Ian Williamson (Air Products), Amanda Lyne (ACAL Energy) and Paul Cullen (Ceres Power and the worst presentation of the day by many miles!).  Another break, this time for lunch, before going back to presentations by Ben Todd (Arcola Energy) and Martin Green (Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells) and a final short one explaining what our next competition was really about.  

By now I was feeling quite queasy, so I decided that a taxi was a better bet to get back to Marylebone than struggling on the tube.  Bad call.  There had been a fatality on Marylebone Road and London was seemingly grid-locked.  Biggest taxi bill I’ve ever paid!  Still, I’m worth it!