Saving lives and making money

This Wednesday I was a member of a panel judging the best business ideas emerging from the UK's medical sector, the culmination of the annual Medical Futures innovation awards competition. It was a real eye opener as I knew nothing about the health care sector and unlike so many web ideas that claim to change peoples lives, every one of the ideas I heard really would, literally!

For example, a British chap called Dr A. Brain (yes, it's true) invented the anaesthesists mask in the picture in his bedroom. It's now used in millions of operations around the world and Archie Brain is living in the lap of luxury.

The judging panel was very impressive (present company excepted), Sir Anthony Jolliffe the former Lord Mayor of London, Sir Chris O'Donnell, most recently Chief Executive of Smith & Nephew, Dr Ian Goldin of Oxford University and former Vice President of the World Bank and several others of equal stature.

The handful of pitches we saw were the best of the best of literally hundreds of ideas that have emerged from all corners of the health sector over the past year and been pitched to judging panels up and down the country. It is amazing that this staggering wealth of innovation is going on out there and is largely unrecognised and unharnessed. However, the sector has some real challenges for entrepreneurs.

Firstly, like me, the average entrepreneur has no idea what these Doctors are talking about. I spent several hours squirming away as the Doctors displayed various new devices and explained what was going to go wrong with me and how they could delay my demise by a few years, if only I give them a few £million. Mine you, it's a powerful pitch!

Secondly, in this medical game it seems that you create your proposition and then spend the next two years getting regulators around the world to approve it. Imagine if us tech entrepreneurs had to get someone to approve our propositions for two years before we were even allowed to launch them. We'd all be out of business before we started!

The big problem though is similar to a problem that us UK tech entrepreneurs have. If you want to build a large scale medical business then you have got to get in to the huge USA market as early as possible. Listening to the challenges that these businesses face opening up the US market, its exactly the same as the rest of us, except with higher stakes. I heard pitches involving ideas that are clearly better - as in "will save more lives/relieve more pain" - than what's available now but unless they can get the funding, team, approval to penetrate the US market then these amazing ideas may never see the light of day. It's shocking.

So, good luck to all the medical industry entrepreneurs and I would really encourage the VCs out there to take a good look at what's going on. The easiest way to do that is to get in touch with Medical Futures - they seem to pretty much see every promising idea coming out of the UKs health sector.

And I really hope one of those ideas in particular makes it out in to the market. Then at least I can save my money on answering those junk emails :)

Eat sorbet before your meetings

It is not often that I go to a meeting and experience a technique for running the meeting that I have never come across before. I did yesterday meeting.

A group of us met to discuss some issues related to a large charitable project that I am involved in. There are many stakeholders with multiple agendas. Big money and big reputations at stake and strong, divergent views being expressed in the run up to the meeting. So it had the potential to be a fractious meeting and a lot depended on how it got started.

The Chairman kicked off with an unusual statement, as we rolled up our sleeves, put on our boxing gloves and stuck out our jaws, ready for action. "We are going to start with something that I learnt from Dr Anthony Seldon, the Headmaster of Wellington College" he said. "We will start the meeting with one minutes silence". And sure enough, to everyones astonishment he looked down and fell silent.

Well, everyone fell silent for what seemed like ages. The tension flowed out of the room. People pushed back their chairs. Some doodled. Some reflected quietly. Some looked bemused, even uncomfortable. But at the end of what seemed like several hours, the Chairman looked up and, without further explanation, quietly said "right, back to the agenda".

The meeting flowed smoothly. Issues were raised in measured tones, explored and discussed. Ways forward were found. I can't put it all down to the minutes silence but I can say that there was a definite calm about the room as the meeting started and that seemed to set the tone and create the space for a good dialogue.

Fascinating. Afterwards, someone described the experience as akin to bowing heads and saying a prayer before a Church meeting or eating sorbet to clense the pallet between courses over dinner. But I have never seen it done like this in a heavyweight, high stakes, business meeting before.

Try it !

Shame on you, Sequoia

Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's A-list venture capital firms seems to have turned in to Jack Jones, that character from Dad's Army who runs around in a moment of crisis shouting "Don't panic Mr Mannering", whilst panicking like crazy, causing everyone else to panic too and achieving precisely nothing.

Last week, as has by now been widely reported, the firm called about 100 or so CEOs of its companies together and in outrageously dramatic style, with pictures of tombstones and dead pigs, tried to scare the living daylights out of them about how terrible the market is going to be over the next two years and how people should start slashing and burning their costs now or crash and burn within months.

Talk about playing to the gallery. They must have known that the "story" would end up all over the web, so I guess in that repect it probably achieved its objective.

Now, I'm not saying that times aren't going to get very hard over the next couple of years. Of course they are. Everyone knows that and certainly every entrepreneurial CEO knows that. One would hope that the CEOs who managed to raise money from a firm of Sequoia's quality would know that better than most. I talked about this as far back as February and it has played out exactly as expected. You don't have to be a genius to figure this stuff out.

The actions you take are obvious too. Anyone who was anywhere near the Dot Com crash knows the game. To make a big song and dance about all the facts and figures and then deliver some blindingly obvious action points at the end - well, what was all that about?

I wonder what it was like being one of those CEOs. If any of what was said was any news to you then how on earth did you manage to get money from Sequoia in the first place? If you were the type of CEO who actually ran a company during the dot com crash and came out the other side, then you must have been biting your tongue as these guys strutted around. Perhaps you actually gave the Sequoia guys some advice (although I doubt it, I bet everyone kept their heads down and pretended to take notes as the pearls of wisdom rained down).

If I had been present I might have tried to help by offering the Sequoia guys some advice, from the CEOs perspective. Here are my 5 points (in case anyone bumps in to them over in the Valley :)

1) at a time like this and assuming we both have the same objective of surviving, it's not about YOU (Mr VC) it's about me (Mr CEO). The question you need to ask yourself is "what can I really DO to help your company, Mr CEO?" not "what can I SAY to make me look tough and clever?"

2) last time in the dot com crash, there were hoards of VCs trying to keep busy by engaging extremely busy CEOs in updates, pitching, updates, pitching. Eventually the VCs firms realised this, got rid of the time wasters and everyone's happy. But it took you'all a long time to sort that out last time around. So, Sequoia, this time, cut deep and cut early to keep all those time wasters away from your CEOs who are engaged in hand to hand combat in the market right now.

3) Speaking of cutting, every person lost at a VC firm probably saves at least $250k, so every 4 bodies you can lose at the VC firm frees up an extra $1m and saves another one of your portfolio companies. And please let's not talk about your office space (unless you are going to allow me and my 20 guys to come and take a chunk of it over at no cost for the next 18 months? Now that WOULD be useful).

4) Where's your rolodex now? VC's talk about being "more than money". Well it's easy to be "more than money" when everyone is buying and everyone is doing deals. That's like saying "I'm good at getting wet" when it's raining. Ok, if you are really "more than money" then now is the time to show it. Now is the time when you sit down with your CEO and say "here are the 5 concrete things that I can do for you right now". If you can't do that then leave the poor guy alone and let him do his job.

5) The only reason why companies survive times like this in decent shape is because their leader decides that come hell or high water he or she is going to make it happen. It's about confidence, commitment and bloody-mindedness. It's not about lists of obvious actions. Calm. Grit. Determination. Has anything you have done or the way you have done it helped to instill in your CEO that determination and commitment to survive come what may? Or have you just suceeded in chipping away at it with all your tombstone talk?

I remember being at Goldman Sachs in 1994, in the fixed income area. It was the worst bond market that year that anyone could remember. At one point in the year one of the senior Goldman partners pulled the division together. In a calm, steady tone he laid out the situation. No shocking slides. No shouting and arm waving. Steady, clear, coldly realistic but confident and determined. Expect cuts. Focus on the customer franchise. Hit the singles. Work together. Stay very close. We came out of that meeting as one team, clear, determined, knowing what we had to do. That's class.

And before you go around patronising your own CEOs please remember, just because you are panicking, it doesn't mean we are. We do what we do because we are entrepreneurs, we love it all, the ups, the downs. We are not afraid. We don't panic. This is what we do. As Omar says "It's all in the game, yo".

Gordon Brown thinks I'm a role model

This evening I attended an invitation only meeting in the Locarno Suite at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a informal speech, exhorting me (and 99 other people) to be role models for the black community here in the UK.

The event was the launch of this years 2008 Power List, a compilation of the individuals that the organisers consider to be the 100 most powerful black people in the UK today (50 men, 50 women). By powerful, the organisers actually mean most influential and they are careful to point out that they don't mean richest (that's certainly true!) or celebrity (very few musicians & sports people are on this list). They searched for individuals who are having an influence on their industry and wider and they decided to stick me on the list (that's my smug-looking face stuck behind Lewis Hamilton in the picture).

It was a grand evening at the FCO with. a hundred or more very accomplished individuals, and I think most of us were looking around nervously thinking "what am I doing here with these REALLY powerful people, when will they spot me and turf me out?". Baroness Amos, who chaired the selection committee, spoke first, followed by the Prime Minister. Brown spoke informally and humourously without notes and was well received.

Then a delightful lady, Baroness Scotland, who was listed as Number One on the Ladies list gave a very personal, warm view on what this meant to her. She was followed by the daughter of Mo Ibrahim, the telecoms billionaire, representing her father who was Number One on the mens list.

A reprentative of Thompson Reuters, who sponsored the evening, said a few words before Michael Eboda, the chap who compiled the list with his team, stood up to cheers and rounded off the evening with a host of thank yous. Michael was actually one of the most influential people in the room, given his ability to sit at the nexus of such a powerful network of individuals, and clearly should be at the top of his own list, if modesty didn't stand in his way. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned dictatorship? Does Michael think that Kim Jong-Il would have left himself off his own power list? No way!

One speaker asked how many people in the room were happy to be seen as "role models" to the younger generation. Surprisingly, in the entire room of perhaps 150 people, only about 3 hands went up. I thought that was interesting but understandable. It is quite pressurised being looked up to as a role model. You feel additional pressure to suceed, to behave "like a role model" to "be inspirational" at the drop of a hat. So, most folks avoid being a role model and just get on with the daily grind of doing what we do. It can even make you more risk adverse. You don't want to fail and let everyone down, so you start to play it safe.

But do you have an obligation to be a role model to a wider community who look up to you, even when you haven't asked them to? It's a tough question and I think ultimately it has to be a purely personal decision.

Personally, I don't mind too much. If it helps young people to look at what I've done and say to themselves "well, if that half-wit can do it then I certainly can" that's fine with me. Anyway I can rely on my family to keep my feet on the ground. I told my son this evening that I had appeared on this list and he said "why are you on there, Daddy, you're just an average sort of man and you're only my Dad".

So long as everyone understands that in reality I am just an average sort of man who will continue to play my own game full on, contine to be a risk-taker and may suceed and justify my presence on the list or may fail and crash ignominously out of next years 2009 list, then its all good. It's all in the game.

Speaking to strangers

I am puzzled by the reaction I have to the prospect of speaking to strangers. Note I say the "prospect of speaking". The actual act of speaking to strangers is fine but it's my reaaction to the the prospect that I find interesting.

For example, on Tuesday morning I was a keynote speaker at a conference in London, Innovate08. This was a high profile conference with an audience of about 1,000 executives. I shared the stage with Richard Farleigh, one of the "Dragons" on BBCs Dragons Den, Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board and the event was compared by BBC Newsnight's Kirsty Wark. Mine and Richard's keynote speeches were followed by an address by the Government Minister, John Denham MP.

I was fully prepared for my 25 minute keynote. Remember the rules? 4 minutes per slide, so I had just 6 punchy slides. I had practiced, practiced, practiced with a stopwatch so I was complete fluent and had the timing down to the second. However as I sat there on the stage, staring out at 1,000 (mostly) men in grey suits, and Kirsty introduced me I felt my heart accelerating and thumping harder and harder. As I was wearing a microphone I wondered whether there was a sound engineer at the back somewhere fiddling with his equipment, wondering what the hell was going on.

Strangely I didn't actually feel nervous at all. I was quite relaxed. But my body decided that it was going to accelerate my heartbeat anyway. How odd. I found as I was sitting there that if I focused on it I seemed to be able to slow the beat down or speed it up, but I couldn't stop it happening in the first place. I decided to monitor this again later in the day.

The speech and the Q&A seemed to go fine and I got good feedback, and then I dashed off to my next meeting - a pitch for Garlik to a venture capital firm in West London. This was a reasonably high stakes, tough meeting with one of those lazer eyed VCs who delights in disrupting the flow of your pitch, jumping around from point to point with a series of machine gun delivered questions and not letting you get in to your stride, but this was someone I have met a couple of times in the past. I checked. Not a stranger. No accelerated heart rate. Interesting.

On the underground to my next meeting, I found myself standing next to a lady in a tweed skirt. I noticed she had a random label stuck to her skirt that shouldn't be there. She hadn't spotted this. So, I thought "someone should tell her". But no one else had noticed. Just me. Suddenly I realised that I might have to tell her. My heart rate started to accelerate again. I was going to have to speak to a stranger again! Oh No. I tried to ignore the label. I tried vaguely making eye contact and then looking down towards the label but this just seemed to make her scowl and edge away. Finally as she started to leave the tube at her stop, I pounced "errr, errrr, label, errr, errr" I stuttered pointing. "Oh, thank you very much" she beamed and left the train as I collapsed onto a seat in a heap, drained, heart thumping.

I arrived at my final meeting of the day, which was a dinner for a handful of folk with Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty. It was an interesting group of fellow diners, including the Channel 4/ITN TV presenter, Jon Snow and the man who brought the Big Brother TV show to the UK, Peter Bazalgette. After Shami's erudite comments, we got in to a free flowing Q&A session about privacy an civil liberties issues. I knew I would be called upon to make a comment or two. But despite the fact that it was a small, informal group, as the host started to point in my direction, my heart leapt into life and started to accelerate again. Thump, thump, thump. I was completely relaxed, as far as I could tell, and I made my comments which seemed to land well, but despite considerable will-power I could not stop my heart thumping away.

So, come on. What's all this about then? Does it happen to anyone else or is it just me?

A busy day at summer Davos

Saturday was a busy day for me at the "Summer Davos" as the World Economic Forum meeting here in Tianjin, China is know. It started with a technology brainstorm and ended with a presentation by the Chinese leader, Premier Wen JiaBao and a Gala Soiree.

The first session that I attended was on "The Next Wave for the Web" and I led one of the group sessions. We "transported" ourselves to 2015 to imagine what life would be like for different characters. My group got an 87 year old Japanese lady, with family in the USA to play with. It was good fun leading a very lively brainstorm discussion about this, particularly when you have visionary folk like the founder of Wikipedia, the CTO of Cisco and the worlds foremost cybersecurity guru in your team.

Then off to a 20 minute interview with CNBC, where I was interviewed by the CEO of a $multibillion USA security company for a new series where the Chief Exec of a large established company interviews the Chief Exec of an emerging leader in the same industry, in this case McAfee and Garlik, to exchange advice and ideas. It was quite different being interviewed by someone who knows your industry inside out vs a normal presenter and I'll be interested to see the finished result. Apparently it will air on CNBC in Europe and Asia and possibly appear in the business clips that they put on flights too.

Next, straight after lunch I Chaired a panel discussion on Cybersecurity, with panelists including the CEO of the world's leading security company, the CEO of management consulting at Accenture, CTO of a large Swiss security company, CEO of a 10,000 strong global customer service company and the legendary security expert Bruce Schneier, currently Chief Security Technology officer of BT. Quite a panel and quite an exchange of views, with questions from an audience that included a Government Minister, Chief Exec of a telecoms company and many others. However it seemed to go okay, so I could breath easy after it was over.

Then off to a one on one discussion in the area set aside for business partner discussions with the VP of a large security company who expressed an interest in learning more about Garlik to see if there were areas for cooperation.

And finally into the big hall for a presentation and Q&A with the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The Hall was packed with about 1,000 people, chief executives, entrepreneurs, government ministers from all over the world plus a large group of Party members who were sitting up front. I was sitting next to one of China's top TV news presenters who pointed out all the main Chinese and Hong Kong dignitaries and powerplayers to me. Premier Wen was eloquent (or the translator was anyway) and seemed quite relaxed in the Q&A, raising issues himself and commenting on them in much the same way that most Western leaders would.

The day ended for me at a spectacular Gala Soiree in the Exhibition Centre, where I was seated next to the Chairlady of Mozilla and an MIT professor. Over a thousand guests were seated in front of a massive stage with Chinese dancers, singers, acrobats in amazing costumes. For some reason that I don't understand though we were served Australian steak. So I made my apologies and sneaked off early back to the hotel to ordered myself a chicken sandwich and chips and a nice cup of tea. Ahhhh.....

Waiting for Godot

As we were driving to the Binhai Conference Centre, Tianjin, China for Day 2 of the World Econominc Forum conference, I noticed someone standing out in a field. He stood looking quite relaxed, hands behind his back staring casually at the road. Fifty yards along there was another chap. Then another. Then another. They looked like they were waiting for something. Then I realised what they were waiting for. Us lot. Their job was to wait for us to go past. That's it.

China has a lot of people and it seems quite good at puting them to work. Quite a lot seem to be employed to wait. There is the chap who waits by the lift. His job is to press the button as you approach the lift and show you how to step in to a lift. You know he's there because the chap waiting in the lobby points you towards the lift chap. There is the lady who waits in the hallway to the restaurant. She shows you how to continue walking down the hall until you reach the other lady who waits to show you how to turn right in to the restaurant in case you keen walking straight and bump in to a wall or something. While you eat, a chap waits just out of eyeshot behind you. If you stop eating to breath, he sweeps in and whips your plate away.

At the conference centre, there are eight ladies who wait at the entrance. (I would mention that they are all stunningly beautiful ladies but I think my wife reads this blog sometimes so I won't). They wait. When you walk between them they smile. I have tested this. If you turn towards the four on the left, they smile and the others don't. If you turn to the right they smile instead. I thought for a moment that they were smiling specifically at me, handsome fellow that I am, but I now realise that they would smile even if I was a chicken.

There is something about trying too hard, I think. It can feel a bit forced and unnatural. But, I suppose if you have a lot of people then getting them to wait in an orderly fashion is no bad thing. And China certainly has a lot of people. A news item yesterday said that by middle of next year China Mobile is expected to have 500m mobile phone subscribers!

Blown to Tianjin by Typhoon Hagupit

It's not every day that you set foot on a new continent. In fact this is something you will do a maximum of 7 times in your life, so you should relish the experience.

Today I relished the experience of setting foot on the continent of Asia for the first time in my life, as I landed first in Hong Kong en route via Beijing to Tianjin, China to represent Garlik at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2008.

The journey to this "one small step" was not as smooth as it might have been. Typhoon Hagupit hit Hong Kong the previous day, delaying most flights. So I actually spent about 6 hours "setting foot" on every bit of Heathrow Terminal 3's departure lounge and barely resisted setting foot on the necks of the rather unhelpful Cathay Pacific ground staff who seems unconcerned about the connecting flight that I would miss as a result of the delays.

However after a 6 hour delay we boarded the 11 hour flight to Hong Kong, followed by a 3 hour wait at HK International, a 4 hour flight to Beijing and a 3 hour coach drive to Tianjin. Allowing for my journey from home to Heathrow at the beginning and it took about 33 hours door to door. Phew!

So, what are my first impressions of China? Well there's no sunlight for starters (but that might just be because it's night time. I'll find out in a few hours I guess).

And it feels very different. I have travelled in Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East so I am used to "different" but this is a new kind of different again which is very interesting. A few things have struck me already.

China is confidently big. We all hear the stories about China being big but it's difficult to appreciate until you see it. Starting from the international airport in Beijing which I am told (by one of the lead engineers who happened to be on the coach with me) has the largest roof in the world, you are hit with "bigness".

But it is confidently big. It doesn't feel like it's building big things just to show that it can (take note Dubai). It just has a lot of space, a lot of money, a lot of people so it builds really big stuff. When the coach rolled in to Tianjin at night and we saw the lines of top flight hotels and conference centres lit up and the huge straight roads stretching off in every direction the immediate impression was of a very new, very clean, very big version of Las Vegas without the gambling.

The second thing that strikes me is that I don't understand anything. Even though I don't speak any other languages (and believe me, I've tried) most places I visit I find that the odd word, phrase, written sign feel vaguely familiar and I can feel my way along. Even in the Middle East I got the hang of "hello", "thank you" and "is that my barrel of oil?" pretty quickly. But here unless there is a direct English translation, I understand nothing, I can read nothing, I have no sense of what things mean and left to myself I think I would come to a complete halt.

The third interesting things is that I am back to being a sub-group of one. In this day and age it is pretty difficult to go anywhere and be literally the only black person in sight, particularly in a very busy international airport. Last time I noticed this was in the 90's when I visited a place called Snellville, Georgia, USA, and the hotel staff kindly advised me not to go for a stroll in the evening for my own wellbeing. But this time the furtive glances in my direction are looks of curiosity rather than hostility.

However this has the potential to be a fascinating place. I am looking forward to learning more about China over the next few days and I hope I don't have to stay huddled with hundreds of other visitors in the conference centre all the time. In the meantime "míng tiān jiàn" as we say in China :)

The Silk Road

Today I am off to Tianjin, China for a World Economic Forum conference entitled New Champions. It's a gathering of a thousand or so business executives, politicians, volunteers with a focus on new emerging companies with the potential to have a global impact. The event will be opened by the Premier of China.

Garlik has been selected to attend and I will be leading a session on cybersecurity alongside some fascinating people.



Tianjin is a fairly small city in China, I think it only has about 12m people and ranks as China's 27th largest city. Phew!

I have never been much further east than Essex so this is a completely new experience for me. I am looking forward to sharing my first impressions, but I am not looking forwards to the 17 hour journey that I am about to embark on....

Near death experienced

I heard on BBC Radio 4 this morning that a new, large scale study into near death experiences is being coordinated by the University of Southampton. This is the phenomenon where people near death report of floating above the medical staff or seeing a bright light. The interviewer on Radio 4 was quick to dismiss all this nonsense and the scientist tried to tread a fine line between enthusiasm for the subject and not being seen as one of those loonies who actually believe that nonsense.

Well, I could save them a huge amount of money and time if they really want to know whether these things happen. They could just ask me.

36 years ago, I was travelling in various parts of Africa with my father. I stayed for a couple of months in a small, distant village in West Africa and, having acted as a hearty meal for a whole community of mosquitoes over several weeks, unsurprisingly I got malaria. I was laid up for a few days with fever and so on as I battled my first encounter with the potentially fatal malaria without the benefit of proper medication. A group of local women were dispatched to sit at my bedside and wait for me to either die or get better.

After several days it appears that things were going in the wrong direction because I can remember as clear as day hovering up by the ceiling looking down on the ladies and smiling to myself (as only a hovering, cheeky 9 year old boy can) thinking "hahaha look at them, they are looking down at my body crying but they don't know I am up here behind them all the time hehehehhe".

Whilst some of the ladies wailed at me, much to my amusement, one of them rushed out to get my no nonsense dad. Very no nonsense dad. A few minutes later he came steaming in, charged over to the bed and sat down.

"Yikes" I thought. "If he looks around and catches me messing about up here on the ceiling when I am supposed to be sick in bed, I am in big, big trouble!" I was scared out of my wits, or rather I was scared back in to my wits because next think I know I am back in the bed looking up nervously thinking "Did he spot me on the ceiling? Am I for it?"

I texted him today (he's still in West Africa) after listening to the Radio 4 piece asking if he remembers. He replied immediately "That was 1972 I believe. It is indeed the case that high fever and delirium usually accompanying untreated malaria causes hallucinations and terrifying delusions".

Hrruumphhhh. Dismiss my near-death experience just like that eh, like the cynic on the radio? I know what I experienced. And anyway, what sort of person writes long sentences like that in text messages anyhow? (Gosh, I really hope he doesn't read blog posts or I am in big, big trouble!).

Every passport tells a story

I got a new passport yesterday. I am off to China in a couple of weeks (more on that later) and I discovered that my old passport didn't have enough months left for me to get a visa.

I'm flicking through my old passport, looking sad, battered and mutilated with its ears cut off, listening to Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come and reminiscing about the places I've been over the past decade. A passport is like a diary. It's traces the tracks of your life in a tangible way. The bold and colourful visas from tiny, proud countries, the angled stamps piled on top of each other as Mr Immigration hunts for his page and stakes his claim. Each entry tells a tale and weaved together they tell your story. Here's mine...

May 1999 Jamaica
Oct 1999 USA
Feb 2001 USA
Oct 2001 USA
Nov 2001 Nigeria
May 2002 USA
Aug 2002 USA
Aug 2002 Jamaica
Nov 2002 USA
Aug 2003 USA
Apr 2004 USA
Aug 2004 Mauritius
Sep 2004 South Africa
Sep 2004 USA
Oct 2004 USA
Oct 2004 USA
Jul 2005 USA
Jul 2005 Jamaica
Aug 2005 USA
Aug 2005 Uganda
Sep 2005 Nigeria
Aug 2006 USA
Nov 2006 USA
May 2007 USA
Jul 2007 USA
Aug 2007 Kenya
Aug 2007 Uganda
May 2008 USA
Aug 2008 USA
Sep 2008 USA

Can you read my life? Were you there? Shall we all lay our passports out and see where our paths crossed?

Physics: The one true science

Today, with the commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider, marked the rise of the Physicist. Forget about those other so called sciences (or as we think of them "arts"), chemistry and biology. Forget about that lapdog tool of the physicist, maths. Today is all about (us) physicists for we have build a really big thing in Geneva that makes really small things go really fast. Coooooool.

It's funny how physicists all over the world are walking around with their (our) chests stuck out, wearing "One Science To Rule Them All" t-shirts. Even those of us who studied it 25 years ago are joining in the gloating and pretending we know what's going on.

Physicists are even getting funny. You may have hear the series of knee-huggingly hilarious particle physics doing the rounds. No? Let me fill you in. But be careful. You may burst out loud laughing in the middle of the office or riding home on the tube. Ready? Ok, here goes.

A neutrino walks in to a bar. "How much is your beer?" it asked. The barman looks up. "To you, mate, no charge".

MWAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

Still standing? Try this one

Female physicist to male physicist "Do my bosons give you a hadron?"

OHHH MISSUSSS. WAAAAHAHHAHAHAHA

Ok, here's the killer.

Two photons walk in to a black hole.............

Geddit? GNRAAAFFPHPHPHPHAAAAAAAAA.

Perhaps we physicist are getting carried away! Oh well, this was our day in the sun. You won't hear from us for another 15 years. Well unless we create a black hole, but even if we do all you will see is thousands of smug looking physicists getting sucked into it, shouting "We did iiiittttttttttt......"

A Forumla for Innovation

The final day of the WEF 2 day conference on innovation held at Stanford University commenced as horribly early as the first. Fortunately we kicked off with a warm up exercise that got us out of our seats.

Today's topic was collaborative innovation i.e. how to generate ideas for your business by inviting suppliers, partners, customers and "the crowd" to get involved. All 100 of us were asked to stand in a line against the wall (shades of "The Usual Suspects") on a scale of 0-100 to indicate how much we use collaborative innovation today, and then move to where we felt we needed to be in 5 years time. As one wag muttered "that's the first time I have actually been a bar chart". Interestingly, the pattern did not follow the standard "normal distribution", which may say something about the cautious way that even innovative business leaders are adopting techniques like open source and crowd sourcing.

Mckinsey's model of collaborative innovation assessing a company's degree of openess (culminating in a 2x2 matrix as any good consulting model must) was quite insightful and provided a framework that help put things in to context.

In groups, we debated issues ranging from ownership of intellectual property if you use these models of collaboration, how to incentivise communities to get involved and platforms that facilitate collaboration. The conclusion I came to was that even amongst these innovative luminaries no-one really knows the magic formula for getting a huge, wise crowd of strangers to do all your innovative work for you (mores the pity!).

However, Geoffrey Moore, the celebrated author of Crossing the Chasm, closed the conference with an excellent fast paced session developing a formula for innovation. This was the best session of the two days as he presented his proposed formular (Innovation = A + B + C... - D - E) and facilitated a quick fire, interactive session with us all to challenge and enhance it, whilst the amazing graphic artists sketched furiously away on the walls in the background.

All in all, this 2 day innovation conference was great for networking, good fun and quite thought provoking. My key take away was the power of collaborative innovation, but also the feeling that its okay to experiment as no-one really knows how to do it yet, so you can expect to see Garlik experimenting with some large scale collaborative innovation ideas over the next few months.