From gods, through demons to angels

It was Monday.  There was a “start the week” meeting. Is there more to say? There was also a TIC Update meeting but we ran out of time.

Next up was a meeting with the young padawan and the Media Dominatrix to discuss all our comings and goings with the design community over the last few weeks and draw them together into a narrative.  That’s what they wanted to do anyway.  I wanted to fool around for a bit longer.  They won!  Actually, it is getting to be an impressive body of thinking and acting.  From the early work of the Creative Industries KTN and our early competitions in the area, through the Design for Climate Change activities, both informative and competitive, our collaboration with the Design Council on “Independence Matters”, to the stealth launch of Design Options this week as part of the second Detection and Identification of Infectious Agents competition, we are definitely practicing – the trick was to work out what we should preach.

This segued into a monthly catch-up with the young padawan prior to his extended summer holiday.  Then came my first PRP of the year with FL.  We talked about the translation of the strategy “we wills” into my personal and team objectives and agreed that, in addition to the things we planned, I needed to come up with 3 things “that surprise him” during the year.  Only three?  After FL’s monthly staff update, a spot of courageous networking with someone from Operations and a quick chat with Healthcare Man to work out what we could and should do on our planned “East Coast Road Trip” this Fall, I caught the train down to London.

The evening was double booked but with timings just flexible enough to discharge both obligations (Thanks to Jools for pointing this out! ).  First was the celebration by Ford of 100 years of manufacturing in the UK.  There was a nice introduction by Joe Greenwell, the inevitable video (with more iconic images than the current Vauxhall one), a cheap polemic from Stephen Odell and a rather clever and amusing riposte by Philip Hammond.  Then there was the schmoozing.  Transport Man and I collected Richard Parry-Jones, Graham Hoare, John Lippe and whole bunch more, all of who seem to be interested in TICs or the Innovation Platform!  It’s nice to be liked!

Then it was off to the UK Manufacturing Professors Dinner.  FL had snorted a bit at the “start the week” meeting when I said I was going, but no-one else was there to back him up.  I assumed it had come from my talk with the nice bloke from Cambridge the week before, but when I arrived I found a TSB cast of thousands already in attendance and felt a bit like our usual co-ordination of attendance at such events had lost its way.  Happily I was sitting between Jon Dennison of GKN and Peter Fielder of BAe Systems, so I had a good time and then had short chats with Anne Glover and nice Mike himself after we stood up, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

The next day I had been due to trek out to Oxford for one of my other jobs, but it had been cancelled late last week, so I got some quality time to catch up with e-mails before a couple of impromptu meetings.  Before I got there however, I got a phone call from Spain.  It was my old friend Max Boisot calling to ask me if we might be interested in the work he was discussing doing with MacLaren and Chris Crockford.  It appears that when Chris isn’t trying hard to piss us off with his FoI requests, he is actually going out there and trying to understand how innovation is done in successful companies and codifying it up into a process.  He even seems to be doing a good job!  The first proper meeting was with Nick Pelling, scourge of cant and hypocrisy and part time Director at Nanodome.  I had wanted to talk to him after a series of posts (see - https://nanodome.wordpress.com/2011/https://nanodome.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/technology-strategy-boards-tech-city-launchpad-1-launch//06/technology-strategy-boards-tech-city-launchpad-1-launch/, https://nanodome.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/tech-city-launchpad-1-round-one-has-now-closed/ and https://nanodome.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/tsb-grants-funding-where-now/) which were less than complimentary about our LaunchPad activities.  In person, Nick is articulate and polite – and with experience in the field of digital “things” that most start-ups would die for.  His blog voice is quite a way from his real world personality.  We talked about the Technology Strategy Board, the LaunchPad and (his choice) the problem of getting “angels” to understand what was going on and invest in novel ideas.  He is quite “anti” angels and strident on the fact!  I guessed he might, but he did in fact post on our meeting (see – https://nanodome.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/the-tsb-and-baby-elephants/).  I think we come out of it okay, but I might not be able to go to BIS for a while!

Then I met up with the guy from Rockpools who led their project to find us new Board members 2 years back.  He had contacted me through LinkedIn to try to work out why they hadn’t got the gig this time and how it was working out.  He commented that the BIS people they had pitched to seemed to have very different ideas from the ones Guy and I were communicating 2 years ago and thought the specification was a more conservative – wanting CEOs of technology based companies, rather than successful entrepreneurs!   Another quiet time allowed even more e-mail replies.

Then it was up to Paddington, not to watch the chaos caused by a lightning strike, but to meet up with Digital Man, the Media Dominatrix, and external “account director” for mi liberty (note the lower case typography – very daring) and Ben Rooney, a journalist from the Wall Street Journal.   Things started going off script when I got an e-mail from Digital Man saying he was stuck at Reading.  Eyeballing the screens, I told him to go home rather than get into London and risk being stranded!  The MD turned up and we sat in the appointed place to wait and discuss tactics.  We knew Ben had quizzed Digital Man on why we even existed at the first meeting and we wanted to start the meeting on a positive rather than a negative tack.  With 5 minutes to go, the second act of tragedy arose – the mi liberty man called from BIS asking where we were.  We still don’t exactly know why, but he had decided that the meeting was at BIS (which it never was) and so was meeting Ben there!!  MD swung into action and ordered him to bring Ben to Paddington in a cab!  I had to meet them outside the hotel and pay the fare (obviously account directors don’t carry cash!).  MD ordered tea and tried to smooth an obviously slightly annoyed journalist down.  (Next time we take direct control of arrangement and don’t do things through a third party!)

The interview went much as expected.  I used my array of macro-economic arguments about government support for more risky projects  (it’s all part of the strategy, although not obvious in the document) in a global marketplace and we got into the nitty-gritty on several projects to showcase the ideas.  Ben pressed us hard on how we made choices, how the assessment process worked and how we measured our impact.  I think he went away happy, but you never know with journalists!

Then we taxied down to the Royal Geographical Society for the Innovation RCA talk by Christopher Bailey of Burberry.  As well as being number 32 in the Wired Top 100 and having a career that includes Donna Karan and Gucci before he arrived at Burberry, I had seen Bailey talk about his work before at a UKTI event (twinned with his CEO Angela Ahrendts) and he is impressive.  He is very much in the “design integrated into business” mould (cf Jonny Ive) and has thought through the use of digital communication tools in what is essentially a physical product, fashion based business.  Despite some at times clumsy questioning, Baileys thoughtful articulation of how design works in a modern business was a joy to listen to.  In questioning, he had an amusing debate with a guy from Aston Martin about whether luxury was equivalent of exclusivity, was polite when Mat Hunter made a rather obvious plug for the Design Council and even tried to chide a student into asking him a question!!  Someone observed that he gives a lie to the legend that you have to be a diva to make it in the fashion world.

After the lecture, the young padawan, MD and I wandered over the 2011 Show (you can’t miss it, the letters on the side of the RCA are quite large) and sipped champagne, grazed on the snacks and perused the work of the final year students for an hour or so.  Sebastian has taught me that the test of these shows is how many of the ideas you would like to buy and use at home, and the RCA show always scores high.  I met a young man who has invented a new form of fixings that Ikea ought to want, another who has developed a means of keeping fruit fresher for longer once packaged, the junior person in the idea that won our Assisted Living prize (handed out by Zahid earlier in the afternoon) and talked to all sorts of interesting young people with cool ideas – the very ideas we need to get developed by the sorts of companies we mostly interact with!  After a couple of hours, the sweatiness of the unventilated RCA main floor (and probably the champagne) started to get to me and I went back to the hotel to sleep!!

The next morning, the first task was to rendezvous with FL for a meeting with the SMMT – at least, that is how it was billed.  FL had warned me that there might be others.  As I entered Tracy Island an hour before the designated time, I found Graham Hoare camped out in reception – waiting for our meeting!  After a quick chat to make sure we had our basic lines correct FL and I met up with Paul Everitt, Richard Parry-Jones, Jerry Hardcastle, Mike Richardson (subbing for Tony Harper) and Graham Hoare.  They started on TICs but have come to accept that we are adamant and consistent, so they stole the “visible support” argument from TICs and proposed a “grand project” shared by all the UK based motor industry.  There was a definite feel of wanting to “get their share” of government money but done with more style and grace than most who try that tack.

We were thrown out of the room dead on 10 o’clock, so I hotfooted it up to the Royal Society for the Google Executive Briefing.  It started with Phillip Schindler, the Vice President of Google for Northern and Central Europe, giving a short introduction to Google’s goals in the UK – at least it was meant to be short, but they had obviously lost their Executive Chairman and Schindler had to resort to some seriously amusing “busking” before he eventually yielded the podium to Eric Schmidt.  Actually, he didn’t yield the podium, because Schmidt ambled to the front of the room and sat on the front of the stage!  He started gently and firmly and gave a Masterclass in accessible leadership.  In a short talk peppered with well-considered aphorisms and stories, he wove a picture of a benign and friendly organisation whose only aim was to help people.  He was big on the support of Tech City – “every hub has a story that makes it work” – big on providing what people need – “technology has made all this information available and we are used to it, we can’t go back” – and big on the advantages of the current situation – “when you are always connected, you can never be bored or lonely” (actually that last one struck a bit of a bum note and showed his almost religious fervour about what his organisation does!).  I don’t think he skipped a beat.  Next came the Q&A session.  Robin Saxby asked what could be done about the major societal challenges and opened up a new vein of hope – “information enables us to tackle the right part of the problem and communicate its impact”.  Sherry Coutu asked what new companies should do to be able to compete with Google.  A gentle smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Bond villains face preceded the answer – “why would you want to?”  His main scripted criticism was about education.  He regards it as too conservative and not focused on the needs or desires of the children.  Sadly, Gove wasn’t listening.  Throughout the talk, he had been making back-handers about China, so when an expatriate Chinese (now living in London) questioned his attitude to the country, Schmidt let rip with some harshness about their control of access to information.  They were happy to expose the corruption of middle-ranking officials, he averred, but were bent on stopping anything that embarrassed them.  The response – that in the Chinese culture any embarrassment would undermine authority was dismissed – “they should be more democratic!”  All too soon, his time was over and he was whisked from the room.  I did note that he likes London – perhaps he’ll buy it?

Next up was Stephen Green who, by comparison, gave a slightly leaden performance, obviously reading from a script as opposed to living one.  Nevertheless, he did name check the TechCity LaunchPad as part of his list of what the Government does for technology.

Then it was lunch and we all spilled out onto the Royal Society balcony to eat Royal Society food and mingle.  After quick chat with Hermann Hauser (who was intent on slipping away to look at the Gordon Murray T27 launch at the RAC) I found myself at a table with some Google people.  And very nice they were too.  Once of them turned out to be the next speaker, Dave Burke, who described the “androidification” of the planet.  Nothing was technically surprising, but the integration of technology and usability (by design) was obvious!  

Although the meeting was still in full swing, it was running late and I had to get down to the Foreign Office for a meeting with Stephen Green.  It was a subset of the UKTI ICT Marketing Board, with added Gann and Tuttlebee!  The stated aim was understand and exploit what UKTI call the “technology” industry and what we call “digital services” – the growing capability and use of ICT integrated into market specific products and services.  Our host, Edward Oakden, was late and so we hurried through the main halls of the Foreign Office, marvelling at the architecture and artwork (as all humbled foreign visitors are supposed to do).  The meeting itself consisted of everyone making their own points (memo to self, organised meetings are much more productive), with the surprising exception of David Gann and I who seemed to be agreeing with one another a lot!  At the end, Green swept out of the room and, since Oakden has also left early, we realised we didn’t know the way out.  One of the assistants was persuaded to escort us out – which was through the seedier corridors that presumable were used by the servants!  Since my car was in Swindon, I remembered to catch the train there and drive home.

Thursday was a Swindon day, and since my car was still having its broken bits repaired, I was in the truck again.  God, it vibrates!  Anyway, the first meeting was supposed to be a telephone interview with Ben Webster of the Times and based on the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Showcase event of a couple of weeks ago.  About 5 minutes before the planned time, we got a phone call saying he couldn’t make it at 9, but could do so at 11.30.  Oh, the joy of unplanned free time!!

Next came the Executioners Strategy Meeting.  The main section (for me at least) was the second go at explaining how we saw the future of the Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform.  In February 2007, we had gained Board approval for a 5 years programme investing about £10m a year.  We have actually committed over £50m of our own money and added more from OLEV, EPSRC and the RDAs and are now 4 years into the programme.  It has become obvious we need to consider what we do next.  There is always the option of stopping the Platform and using the money to start activity in another area, but our initial thoughts do not go in that direction.  Tim gave a bravura performance setting out the achievements of the work to date and then set out the options for the future, but made the mistake of trying to engage the Executioners with a large piece of paper and sticky symbols!!  Just because we use these cheap facilitation techniques on you doesn’t mean we like them, you know!

At this point, I had to leave to do the interview with Ben Webster.  It started off starting about the Showcase event, but quickly got into a discussion about whether hydrogen was a serious contender for the “fuel of the future”.  We started with the transport position, going through our own programme (I even remembered to ascribe the last competition to DECC funding!) and some of the other activities both public and private funded.  We then wove the wider issues of using hydrogen as a energy store to balance renewable supply and consumer demand – making the “choice” of hydrogen as a transport fuel less black and white as a decision!  We even went back to the basic chemistry at one point.  If we didn’t know the answer, we offered to find out.  I think MD was a little worried that we were getting close to doing the work of others, but we definitely got the impression from Webster that he regarded us and honest and thorough sources of information.  After the interview, MD pulled together the information and fed it back to Webster – with a side effect that we also now know the current state of the art in hydrogen.

By the time I got back to the Executioners meeting, the discussion about the LCV IP had finished and everyone was on a comfort break.  The next item was about how to communicate the Strategy to a wider audience.  Although it is not a disaster, most people think our strategy document is a bit “boring” so we have been thinking how we could make the rigour of our analysis of the problem, our response to this analysis and the passion we bring to this response more obvious to those who do not know us.  We debated the idea of using a piece of origami but didn’t have any real insight into what we would put into it – there is widespread agreement that the priority map would go on one side, but the idea of characterising the “innovation journey” although accepted in principle has no real value until someone captures all the manifold ideas that we unconsciously mean when we use those words.  We are also past the deadline for action we agreed a few months ago, so we re-arranged the deadline to coincide with Innovate and look forward to some ideas next time we discuss the matter.

We then got down to discussing values.  Strategy Man had assembled a useful set of values from other organisations and we discussed them for a while before agreeing that it was really FL’s job to tell us what he thought our values should be!  There was a suggestion after the last item that on-time delivery wasn’t one of them but that’s just being picky!  At this point I had to leave to melt my credit card and reclaim my car.  I now know more than I need to about the secondary air pump on my car – including its replacement price!

Friday it was back down to London – for the British Business Angels Association National Investment Summit.  This was the coincidence of activities by Digital Man (to engage them in the TechCity LaunchPad Investment Showcase (or whatever we call it)), Strategy Man (to engage them in the innovation journey (once we can draw it)) and Finance Boy (because they are a part of the finance landscape we ought to know more about).  All these activities ended up in me giving a short presentation about us and the TechCity LaunchPad at this meeting.  The meeting was in the Chartered Accountants Hall off Moorgate, and was hosted by Mike Southon (@msouthon).  There were about 150 people in the room at the start.  After messages from the various sponsors, the first presentation was from an academic who also acts as an angel.  It is worth pointing out that he was from Seattle!  He has written a report on angel investing for NESTA (see – http://www.bbaa.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/files/bbaa_nesta_siding_with_the_angels.pdf) and summarised his findings for the meeting – most angels are really good at reading people and have no time for quitters, liars and jerks!  He also divided angels into two camps – those that don’t like to give advice but allow the talent they are supporting to flourish, and those who believe their advice is very good and will insist that it is followed!  He also pointed out that angel networks can slow done the angel process.  It was interesting to contrast this with view the image Nick Pelling had tried to persuade me held sway in the UK – that experienced angels had largely left the field and it was now full of people who wanted to make money but had no real experience of either small companies of the technologies they might support – but maybe that’s because he hasn’t been funded yet!  Who knows?  Next up was an interesting panel of 3 angels who talked about what they were looking for.  They made the important point that “valuation” has no meaning unless money changes hands.  They did seem wholly focussed on digital plays, and my innocent tweet observing this impression was picked up by one of the few “entrepreneurs” in the room, Paul Johnson from Menareuseless (actually, you have to check out the website – http://www.menareuseless.com/Default.aspx) at which point they all quoted at least one non-digital company they were funding.  Right!

After the coffee break I tried to cram our strategy, activities and the LaunchPad into 15 minutes – and was followed by Simon Carter describing Tech City in 5 minutes.  He shouldn’t have read the slides so slavishly – everyone can read faster than anyone can talk!  Then it was a commentary on whether Government activity helps.  First up was a guy from the North East who promised original thought and failed to deliver, but nevertheless made some important points.  He was followed by Rory Earley, from Capital for Enterprise, who described the new Angel Co-investment Fund (which isn’t really a fund).  He obviously has similar problems being an agency to us and both Strategy Man and I realised we ought to have been closer to this organisation that we have been – but he had made the same observation about us so we met each other half-way!  Then there were signs that angels thought about non-digital (analogue?) businesses.  Hugh Campbell from GP Bullhound gave a nice (but longer than billed) review of opportunities in the mobile and m-commerce world, Luke Rashino confused the shit out of everyone with his bizarre version of the healthcare market (where everyone buys soaps and health drinks, and we all learn from developing countries about how not to spend money!), Chris McAtominey and Rob Wylie talked about cleantech and Jonathan Jenkins and Sally Goodsell talked about social entrepreneurs.  At this point we broke for lunch (very nice too) and I was hit on by a number of real angels and a number of people from RDA organisations that used to interface with angels.  After lunch, the first presentation by an accountant was so low level, I gave up and made my way home.  The young padawan kept sending me things – he was obviously clearing his “to-do” list before his holidays – and Digital Man was also seemingly on an efficiency drive, so the journey home was full of interesting thoughts and questions.  It was also very nice to get into a vehicle at the station that didn’t rattle and require 90 foot-pounds of force to declutch!