The Cambridge Network Blog

best behaviour

That I had a world to do
Ere I could set up my rest,
Where to choose and choose the best.

Last night we heard from Paul Kenny and David Symonds on how to manage performance in Sales. The common theme was that you need to observe and give feedback on the behaviours that connect to customers, rather than simply rewarding results.

David went into more detail in the case of SAS, rated the best company to work for in the US by Fortune, contrasting it with his own previous experience of Oracle. SAS make statistical software for decision making, and David serves Retail clients like Tesco, where it is used to analyse the Clubcard data and make merchandising decisions; Waitrose, where it is used for forecasting and preventing stock outs; Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and others.

SAS and Oracle are roughly the same age, but while Oracle is publically listed and grew rapidly through acquisition, SAS has remained private and grown mainly organically.The pressure of quarterly reporting to the markets drives heavy discounting at end of quarter and year in Oracle, while there is little discounting in SAS. Oracle spends around 12% of turnover on R&D while SAS spends 23%.

Interesting stuff for technology entrepreneurs trying to understand how to attract and retain the best people - and connect to customers around the world.

patenting life

Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
    He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree

Tonight we heard from Ananda Chakrabarty about the issues of patenting living organisms and his latest research trying to make new drugs based on the effect of bacteria slowing down or reversing cancer and AIDS. Bioengineering is of particular interest to InCrops, who both sponsored the session and introduced Ananda.

Diamond vs Chakrabarty in 1980 established that an oil-digesting bacterium for use in cleaning up oil spills could be patented, in 5 to 4 majority decision of the US Supreme Court. The voting was similarly close in the audience, considering the potential of such innovations to bring wealth and advance to society and the danger of later innovations involving enslavement of human life. According to Ananda, a similar vote in a talk he gave at the European Patent Office in Munich was two thirds against patenting living organisms.

The controversy continued afterwards in networking with Life Science University researchers, local lawyers and medical research charities. People questioned the science of the current research and the logic of the legal judgement. But they agreed we were lucky to get a chance to hear Ananda's experience first hand and debate the issues.

free will

A man that looks on glasse,
        On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
        And then the heav’n espie.

Last week we heard Dan Pink talk about motivation, part of a thread of discussions on how to lead knowledge workers in our Hi Tech industries. Knowledge workers are more productive when they are free to pursue their own interests, as Google's 20% time, 3M's 15% time and Zappo's unscripted customer service show. 

Dan illustrated different levels of motivators from basic needs for things like food, through "carrots and sticks" like money to the higher level needs for autonomy, mastery and purpose by handing out first a sandwich, then £10 and last a long period of Q&A. Simple "sticks" like a fine for lateness doubled the lateness of Israeli parents picking up their children from daycare - because it made lateness a service with a price. Simple "carrots" like paying students larger incentives to perform tasks only improve performance for mechanical skills. Once thinking is involved, students perform poorer with monetary incentives - even when the experiment is moved to India and the same incentive is now worth a couple of month's salary.

Local founders, technologists and academics from local organizations including Abcam, Anglia Ruskin, ARM, Bango, CSR, Illumina, Imerge, Marshall, Qualcomm, Philips, Polysolar, RAND, Red Gate, University of Cambridge had plenty of questions. How do we drive ourselves and our teams to do the necessary drudgery that makes up much of technical work or learning to play an instrument? Our audience was more talkative than earlier stops on the book tour like the RSA and Amazon according to the minder from Dan's UK publisher, perhaps a reflection of its diversity.

Our Hi Tech cluster depends on the pride of its workers to make those distinctive products that embody Cambridge ideas for the world. It is good to see so many people taking time to think about what drives them and their colleagues.

Half life

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare

Last night I attended an packed networking and discussion session for local CEOs organized by PA Consulting. Most of the audience were in biotech, pharma or cleantech. Their first speaker described a zombie half-living, half-dead economy: banks too weak to lend, governments who cannot fund expansion, consumers unable to consume and companies unable to grow. PA think winning companies will be those that maintain liquidity, adapt to a funding desert and stay flexible. The investors and CEOs in the audience voting between the talks certainly didn't seem very optimistic that 2010 would be a much better year than 2009.

Perhaps some of the downbeat response was due to a high mix of post-bubble biotech companies dependent on long investments before getting product to market, keen to see a trade sale. In contrast, a positive message came from Hermann Hauser, who spoke of the quality of the deals coming across the desk and the high proportion of serial entrepreneurs leading their latest investments.

Sitting at dinner afterwards with founders of local companies including Biowisdom and Owlstone, I  heard a less depressing story. They have product in market, and short-term plans on what they need to do to sell more. While they are a long way from the de facto standard native companies Hermann cited like ARM or Illumina, they have real customers. Some have recently secured more funding. It will be good to see them again soon - and hear more about the lively bit of the economy locally!

Technology funding

We have short time to stay, as you,
    We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
    As you, or anything.

This week another bank came to visit and find out more about the technology companies being formed here. They want to grow with the entrepreneurs, and help them through each stage of their funding, leveraging their angel round money, helping fund their cash flow as they start to do bigger projects and supporting them as they go international.

Technology stocks did well in 2009, rising 59% against an S&P average of 24%, and some are predicting an active year of technology mergers and acquisitions in 2010. Cambridge is a familiar place for technology funders - this bank has half a dozen technology clients here already - but they want to engage with more.

This is all good news for those of our members who identify finding funding as the main block on their growth. We'll hear more about the ways that technology entrepreneurs are finding growth capital in a debate on 16th March.

Prime time

Goe to my love, where she is carelesse layd,
Yet in her winters bowre not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time wil not be staid,
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take

This week we've been seeing businesses keen to raise their visibility in Cambridge. Over 10 non-members came along to the "Making the Most of Membership" event at Xaar today, and we've also had visits from a national private bank, a global defence player and an Indian industry membership organization. Perhaps New Year's resolutions include getting out more.

The visit today by the technology scouts from the defence player illustrates why getting out more in Cambridge makes sense. We met at St John's Innovation Centre and walked over to Xaar to meet some of the smaller companies. As we walked through the Cambridge Science Park (enjoying its 40th anniversary), I tried to explain what companies like Philips, Johnson Matthey, Cambridge Consultants (celebrating their 50th anniversary), Accelrys, and Ember are doing here. The density of innovative companies developing disruptive technology here was news to them - so they'll be back at our Corporate Gateway event in April.

The next month is already looking busy for Members resolved to get out more. Bookings are running fast for events on haptics, motivation, bioengineering, sales management in privately held companies, and real time diagnostics. Look forward to seeing you here soon -and hope the weather doesn't try your resolve too much!

Sniffing out a sale

Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives

Buying Christmas presents in Cambridge's Grand Arcade reminded me how hard it is to take the decision and close a deal. All around me other shoppers were caught up in the same process, scanning shop displays in the hope of inspiration. I wound up in John Lewis, which is apparently enjoying record sales - although it appears that many shoppers don't need inspiration from browsing, since their internet sales are growing faster than most of their stores. But I probably wouldn't have bought anything without the strong incentive of a short-term deadline - doing nothing is an easy option.

This week in the Sales Special Interest Group we heard about the same problem in selling chemical detectors from Billy Boyle of Owlstone Nanotech. They can detect chemicals with a smaller, cheaper chip, allowing detectors to be lighter and more portable. Billy described about the process of helping a customer understand the cost of doing nothing, and the way that converts into a Return On Investment that helps the buyer justify the decision. From his own account, he has changed from a technical evangelist yelling about the features of his product to now trying to elicit needs from customers and help them compare the options in front of them. He and a colleague have started a second company, Acaso Analytics, and he was looking for feedback from the audience of Sales managers from local companies including Plextek and Taylor Vinters. There were also good presentations from Red Gate and Trinamo, but Billy stood out with his frank and vivid examples of sausage manufacturers needing to sniff products at different stages of production.

Next week we'll see more of John Lewis in the Green IT seminar on Wednesday afternoon. Gary Hird, John Lewis' Technical Strategy Manager, will be presenting on how they reduce the carbon impact of running data centres to deliver all those internet sales, stores and logistics. We'll also hear from Cambridge University Computer Lab and TTP who are actively working on the same issues. Being responsibly green isn't yet as important as "never knowingly undersold" - but it is getting there!

Open kitchen

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom

Philips Research brought together a group of companies to talk about their experience of Open Innovation in MiPlaza yesterday. The analogy they made was that they invite others to "cook in their kitchen", using Philip's inhouse skills in processing, materials analysis, testing, prototyping and user acceptance to help other companies bring products to life. Around 20-25% of their R&D capabilities are available in the MiPlaza facility, and there is a continuous process of review to open up more for use. The invitation-only audience illustrated just how open Philips are, covering the whole range of scale, from other multinational members like BT, Nokia, Samsung, native leaders like Cambridge Consultants, CSR, CDT, and many small start-ups keen to start a collaboration. Philips believe that ideas Not Invented Here will help them create a lot of value. 

The keynote speech from Hermann Hauser showed just how effective this way of working has been for local companies. As he pointed out, when he was asked by the FT in the 1990s when Cambridge would produce a $1BN company, he crossed his fingers and said that there would be 5 within a decade, but actually there are now 7, 4 of which were his investments. Companies like ARM and Illumina enable new service levels from the mobile devices we use or the use of our own genetic information to personalize our medicine, working in partnership with other companies around the world.

Philips Research clearly feel at home here in Cambridge, and want our companies to feel at home in Eindhoven. It is great to see other divisions of the company engaging here - and giving more opportunities for Cambridge ideas to change the world.

Reason's rule

Let reason's rule now reign thy thought;
Since all too late I find by skill
How dear I have thy fancies bought

Last night we heard Adam Afriyie, Lord Drayson, and Evan Harris debate how their parties would approach funding and getting benefits from Science. It was the first time they had all appeared on the same platform, and apparently the first cross-party debate in the run-up to next year's election, so we were privileged to get them all together. RAND, who sponsored the event, also joined the panel drawing on their experience of advising organizations across Europe on Science Policy. We also had a strong Press presence - the FT, Nature, New Scientist and Times Higher Education give a much more detailed account of the debate. 

All of them said they would ringfence budgets for long term research, follow the Haldane principle that scientist themselves should judge where best to spend research funds, and respect the independence of scientific advisors. But the amount of money available within the ringfence beyond the current budgeting period of 2011 seems unlikely to increase, with levels of national debt from the banking crisis. When someone from the audience said that wasn't the fault of UK science, a panelist joked that the rocket scientists who had been recruited into the City clearly had something to do with it.

There were plenty of jokes, mainly about other politicians, citing the outcomes of particular votes or recent dismissals of scientific advisors. Cross-questioning from the audience was vociferous, particularly around the requirement for academics to submit grant proposals which predict the societal impact of their research or show the past track record of their unit. However all of the parties thought this is reasonable in a democracy where public funds are being laid out. 

These three political parties think Cambridge is important to the impact science can have for our society, and it was good of them to open up for questions here.

Sweet spontaneous earth

O sweet spontaneous earth
how often
have the doting fingers of purient philosophers pinched and poked thee,
has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty

Last night I learned more about how waste becomes a valuable resource, from Enval, Bio Group and Green PB. The problem these companies are tackling is how to process things that break down very slowly or which produce bad effects in landfill, and recover the valuable components which cost so much energy to produce in each one.

There was a lively debate in the Cleantech Special Interest Group. The companies are at very different stages of technology maturity and the degree to which the supply chain already separates their inputs or values their outputs also differs. For example, for Enval and Green PB, producing aluminium and lead respectively, there are well established world markets and high prices for the outputs. By contrast, Bio Group gas outputs will have to be collected into a National Grid if they are not to simply be burned to produce electricity and release the carbon anyway, so their anaerobic plants initially rely on high gate prices as the UK complies with legislation to keep organic matter out of landfill. The way the companies formed was also quite different. Enval and Green PB came out of University of Cambridge labs, helped by Cambridge University Entrepreneurs and I-teams respectively, while Bio Group is based on industry expertise.

What they all have in common is novel processes, low energy and low carbon, to transform these  byproducts of the way we live and keep them out of the ground. Laminated plastic and aluminium, organic waste and lead car batteries are going to produced in our society and we will have to dispose of them. Its great to see companies setting out ways that Cambridge ideas can change not only the world, but the earth we live on.

Hi Matt,

I saw your blog entry from the waste event - sounds like it was very interesting.

A pernickity point of accuracy: burning landfill gas to produce electricity is still good for the environment, even though CO2 is released. This is because the landfill gas is methane, which is roughly 25 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. In fact, just burning the landfill methane is good, even if you don't recover any energy from it (this is called flaring). Recovering energy is even better though, because it displaces fossil fuel use elsewhere, and that's why injection into the gas grid would be the best use of landfill gas, because it is the more efficient energy conversion. So burning for heat is better than burning for electricity is better than just flaring, but they're all better than letting the methane escape.

Rant over!