Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain
A lot of entrepreneurs worry about people stealing their bright ideas. In my experience, ideas are easy - its execution that's hard. And even if your idea is brilliant, the best ones aren't necessarily so. Any really good new idea will seem either bad or mad to most people; otherwise someone in China will already be doing it. Your idea needs to be almost good and it helps if the world around you helps turn your fad into a fashion. Look at all the money going into green energy - its even got its own name 'CleanTech'. Most funders are driven by consensus, not just within their firms, but within their community. Surely that's exactly how the credit bubble happened - everyone was doing it, so it must be a good idea. Not.
And being too clever ain't necessarily a good idea either. My claim to fame is that my Ph.D was part of a research project that won E.J. Corey his Nobel Prize. That research itself never generated anything that was directly commercial. However, the spin-offs that were successful were infinitely less ambitious in their goals, but solved real-world problems in an explainable way. It’s a great case study of how a small change of perspective and focus on an addressable market opened up a commercial opportunity – and why trying to be too smart is not always a good idea in the real world!
So when the next small-minded person tells you what you are trying to do is bad or mad, breath a sigh of relief that maybe you on the path to greatness! Someone right now is probably telling the next Google why what they are doing isn't such a bright idea. And he probably works for a bank!
Monday, 15 December 2008
Monday, 8 December 2008
Bonfires, Dry Stone Walls, Clouds, Inches & Death Computing
Colin Beveridge spoke at the 20/20 Vision event organised by Sandford Technology/Virtronix on Fighting the Trillion Dollar Bonfire (effective information systems for the 21st Century). His conclusion seemed to be that system integration is the way forwards. I have to agree. Most IS systems seems like good old Yorkshire stone walls - they require immense intricacy to put them together and great skill to build, then they fall down after a while because there's nothing but air and friction holding them together. What we need is some 'cement' to hold the functional bricks together and facilitate process, workflow, data sharing and increased productivity. Yorkshire Forward seem to have woken up to the fact that each 'brick in the wall' they fund is replicating data and not sharing it effectively with each other. They are introducing a CRM that all agencies can tap into, leverage and generally use. Great idea! I have been saying this for three year's and every other agency seemed to wave the data protection act at me as to why we can't share information more!!!
The death of the corporate datacentre seemed to also be on the vendor agenda with all our data being entrusted to third parties (like this blog and my emails). Ian Weatherhog and Mike Briercliffe waxed lyrically about how the PC was the root of all evil when it came to data security (he also spoke at our recent TechTalk event). I can remember far enough back when I accessed the old cloud i.e. our corporate IT server from a remote PC and the data could be viewed, but not manipulated. We used to say all this valuable data was "an inch from the desktop" and spent ten years going that final inch and start turning data into information, albeit with security and integrity compromised. Now we seem to be poised to unify the competing factions with the eventual promise of network computing and Larry Ellison's vision of thin clients that all they do is the final rendering.
I suppose it's only a matter of time before we all have enough certainty that "till death us do part" our data is safe and backed up in the cloud and not deleted when our credit card expires. Now that's what I call security.
The death of the corporate datacentre seemed to also be on the vendor agenda with all our data being entrusted to third parties (like this blog and my emails). Ian Weatherhog and Mike Briercliffe waxed lyrically about how the PC was the root of all evil when it came to data security (he also spoke at our recent TechTalk event). I can remember far enough back when I accessed the old cloud i.e. our corporate IT server from a remote PC and the data could be viewed, but not manipulated. We used to say all this valuable data was "an inch from the desktop" and spent ten years going that final inch and start turning data into information, albeit with security and integrity compromised. Now we seem to be poised to unify the competing factions with the eventual promise of network computing and Larry Ellison's vision of thin clients that all they do is the final rendering.
I suppose it's only a matter of time before we all have enough certainty that "till death us do part" our data is safe and backed up in the cloud and not deleted when our credit card expires. Now that's what I call security.
Monday, 1 December 2008
Snow Report
‘Solutions for Business – funded by government’ is a package of business support to help companies start, grow and succeed. The launch event was fittingly held last Friday in a casino! Simon Hill from Yorkshire Forward explained how they have streamlined thousands of public-funded support products into a package of thirty. My take on it was that they have identified a set of product categories under which individual solutions would fit, which is not exactly the same thing! Like the fact that multiple inheritance in object-oriented systems is technically feasible, but not a good idea in practise, going forwards hybrid products that fit under two categories would disappear, which is perfectly sensible.
But let's remember this is just a conceptualisation of reality that dices and slices things to offer a palatable solution that hides complexity, maximised cohesion and minimises coupling (see my Keep it Simple Stupid post). For example, lets take business mentoring - it is valuable before and after investment but has been and probably will continue to be separated into investor readiness support and 'money with management'. And there's nothing wrong with that, but in another conceptualisation it could be brought together, but that would require closer coordination between organisations like Connect and the investment funds.
We all want things to appear as simple as possible, but as with systems biology, life introduces complexity as the thing evolves. That's not to say we shouldn't group together things - that's what an organ is. Eskimo's have twenty words for 'snow', because it's an important concept to them. Try telling them they don't need the other nineteen.
But let's remember this is just a conceptualisation of reality that dices and slices things to offer a palatable solution that hides complexity, maximised cohesion and minimises coupling (see my Keep it Simple Stupid post). For example, lets take business mentoring - it is valuable before and after investment but has been and probably will continue to be separated into investor readiness support and 'money with management'. And there's nothing wrong with that, but in another conceptualisation it could be brought together, but that would require closer coordination between organisations like Connect and the investment funds.
We all want things to appear as simple as possible, but as with systems biology, life introduces complexity as the thing evolves. That's not to say we shouldn't group together things - that's what an organ is. Eskimo's have twenty words for 'snow', because it's an important concept to them. Try telling them they don't need the other nineteen.
Friday, 28 November 2008
Something For Nothing
Grave concerns about personal liberties and freedoms are thrown up by the proposed national identity card scheme, but judging by the discussion at TechTalk 2008, advertisers are already tracking our every move. Andrew Burke, CEO of Amino Technologies and former CEO of BT Entertainment said that media companies would need to look at supermarkets who run loyalty card schemes so they know exactly what customers are buying and when. Already Google analyse email traffic to target advertising based on content and Phorn are seeking to strike deals with ISPs to monitor all Internet traffic to profile user interests.
One of the investment forum presenters, Prescient, have developed a electronic nose and a recent applicant to the Yorkshire Concept fund has developed a vision system to profile people by age, ethnic origin, etc. Maybe not perfect, but better than nothing. What then stands in the way of not only profiling people by their data traffic but also their personal traits as we stand in front of an advertising display or shopfront? Maybe I am getting paranoid, but the thought of being offered a voucher for body products or a discount on a zimmer frame based on my appearance or body odour sounds just a step too far in personal profiling.
One of the investment forum presenters, Prescient, have developed a electronic nose and a recent applicant to the Yorkshire Concept fund has developed a vision system to profile people by age, ethnic origin, etc. Maybe not perfect, but better than nothing. What then stands in the way of not only profiling people by their data traffic but also their personal traits as we stand in front of an advertising display or shopfront? Maybe I am getting paranoid, but the thought of being offered a voucher for body products or a discount on a zimmer frame based on my appearance or body odour sounds just a step too far in personal profiling.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Keep it simple stupid
Complexity and chaos surrounds us as we try to steer our organisations through these uncertain economic times. The Utopian solution seems to be simplicity and calm which has a compelling magnetism for those exhausted by the rough seas of change or the choppy waters of the stock market. So can we engineer simplicity in and complexity out of our lives?
As a former system designer I applied three simple principles to tame complexity:
1) Do as much as you have to and no more. Minimalism is good; don't add bells and whistles until someone says they will pay for them. Technical people always want to over engineer things.
2) Seek functional cohesion by solidifying related activities into one place or unit so complexity is hidden inside rather than exposed to the poor consumer of the service. It's better that every body does just one thing well rather than lots of people doing the same thing a number of different ways twice. I'm not saying redundancy is bad, rather replication is good!
3) Decouple things so there are not intimate links between components. If you then want to swap one thing for another the whole can be oblivious to the change as everything carries on working as it should.
The key is to hide necessary complexity from the end user/consumer, but remember doing clever things is difficult and complex otherwise everyone would be doing them. Removing complexity can have its costs and can be far from a simple matter. As Einstein famously said "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler". I'll take capably complex over stupidly simple any time.
As a former system designer I applied three simple principles to tame complexity:
1) Do as much as you have to and no more. Minimalism is good; don't add bells and whistles until someone says they will pay for them. Technical people always want to over engineer things.
2) Seek functional cohesion by solidifying related activities into one place or unit so complexity is hidden inside rather than exposed to the poor consumer of the service. It's better that every body does just one thing well rather than lots of people doing the same thing a number of different ways twice. I'm not saying redundancy is bad, rather replication is good!
3) Decouple things so there are not intimate links between components. If you then want to swap one thing for another the whole can be oblivious to the change as everything carries on working as it should.
The key is to hide necessary complexity from the end user/consumer, but remember doing clever things is difficult and complex otherwise everyone would be doing them. Removing complexity can have its costs and can be far from a simple matter. As Einstein famously said "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler". I'll take capably complex over stupidly simple any time.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Seeing Beyond The Obvious
Having got a PhD in business strategy, I must know what I'm doing, right? More accurately I spent three years trying to teach a computer to think strategically. Bad idea! The problem was seeing the bigger picture and having a holistic view ain't something that bits and bytes find easy to do. Neither is it that simple as an organisation gets bigger and more than one person has responsibiliy for driving things forwards. If this rings true for you, then tune into our webinar series that will kick of with a session on Business Planning for Growth on the 16th September.
Running a business is all about having a bigger vision that the various 'factions', however you have diced and sliced the pie operationally, can understand, buy into and get behind without necessarily being 100% happy. In my experience, a decision that one department loves and another hates in invariably the wrong one for the organisation as a whole. This is what you get when silo mentality and operation detail dominates. But if decision makers don't know what the overall strategy is or what constitutes success in the longer term, i.e. the organisation is rudderless and going nowhere fast because there is no bigger picture, then all they can do is make the decision that's best for them, right here right now.
Unfortunately, the correct strategic decision can be often less than optimal tactically or indeed downright wrong from a short-term perspective, so devolved decision making has its risks. Seeing beyond the obvious and doing the right strategic thing is what differentiates the long-term winners, but equally empowering employees to make decisions is also crucial to success. So not surprisingly this is a tricky balance to strike - and if you are running a business it's your job to do this!
After once canning a development project because it was the right strategic thing to do, my technical manager said to me at the time: "We are the thoroughbreds in this space and this decision sucks. Apparently, horses can't vomit, so pardon me for the cliche but I am as sick as a very refined parrot".
Remember, if you are a business leader, feeling bad that you have had to make the right but difficult strategic decision is better than feeling good about making the obvious and easy tactical one. But if you ain't got a clear long-term business strategy, do the latter then sign up to our webinar on the 16th!
Running a business is all about having a bigger vision that the various 'factions', however you have diced and sliced the pie operationally, can understand, buy into and get behind without necessarily being 100% happy. In my experience, a decision that one department loves and another hates in invariably the wrong one for the organisation as a whole. This is what you get when silo mentality and operation detail dominates. But if decision makers don't know what the overall strategy is or what constitutes success in the longer term, i.e. the organisation is rudderless and going nowhere fast because there is no bigger picture, then all they can do is make the decision that's best for them, right here right now.
Unfortunately, the correct strategic decision can be often less than optimal tactically or indeed downright wrong from a short-term perspective, so devolved decision making has its risks. Seeing beyond the obvious and doing the right strategic thing is what differentiates the long-term winners, but equally empowering employees to make decisions is also crucial to success. So not surprisingly this is a tricky balance to strike - and if you are running a business it's your job to do this!
After once canning a development project because it was the right strategic thing to do, my technical manager said to me at the time: "We are the thoroughbreds in this space and this decision sucks. Apparently, horses can't vomit, so pardon me for the cliche but I am as sick as a very refined parrot".
Remember, if you are a business leader, feeling bad that you have had to make the right but difficult strategic decision is better than feeling good about making the obvious and easy tactical one. But if you ain't got a clear long-term business strategy, do the latter then sign up to our webinar on the 16th!
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Academic Commercialisation: The Third Way?
In an earlier post, Fail Fast Fail Early, focused on healthcare companies optimising their pipeline development, I asked whether there was a better way of commercialising medicines. Well GSK and Cambridge University have come with an interesting alternative development model using “academic incubators” to optimise the early clinical development of new medicines.
Cambridge will dedicate a team of academic experts to develop drugs with therapeutic potential, as well as bearing some financial risk for which they'd be compensated if the programme is a success. GSK will provide operational support, access to its in-house clinical research and imaging facilities, and background preclinical data on the drug. The agreement is fully aligned with one of the key recommendations of the Cooksey Review of UK Health Research Funding that consideration should be given to alternative drug development models, such as Public Private Partnerships, to optimise effective collaboration between industry and academic sectors in the development of effective new medicines.
Whether this is "ground-breaking approach" or just a sensible way of outsourcing development of low priority orphan drugs is open to debate. It does however establish a joined up pipeline from academic research towards commercialisation that may university inspired projects lack - despite their efforts to bolt on commercialisation activities. Also the fact that the projects are GSK sponsored gives a commercial focus to the activity from the outset that will undoubtedly benefit the eventual business outcomes. As we have seen with the Enterprise Fellowship projects backed by Yorkshire Forward, having some commercialisation DNA and focus at an early stage is invaluable.
Cambridge will dedicate a team of academic experts to develop drugs with therapeutic potential, as well as bearing some financial risk for which they'd be compensated if the programme is a success. GSK will provide operational support, access to its in-house clinical research and imaging facilities, and background preclinical data on the drug. The agreement is fully aligned with one of the key recommendations of the Cooksey Review of UK Health Research Funding that consideration should be given to alternative drug development models, such as Public Private Partnerships, to optimise effective collaboration between industry and academic sectors in the development of effective new medicines.
Whether this is "ground-breaking approach" or just a sensible way of outsourcing development of low priority orphan drugs is open to debate. It does however establish a joined up pipeline from academic research towards commercialisation that may university inspired projects lack - despite their efforts to bolt on commercialisation activities. Also the fact that the projects are GSK sponsored gives a commercial focus to the activity from the outset that will undoubtedly benefit the eventual business outcomes. As we have seen with the Enterprise Fellowship projects backed by Yorkshire Forward, having some commercialisation DNA and focus at an early stage is invaluable.
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