HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light
This week I was privileged to listen in on some amazing conversations.
The first was Gordon Edge, presenting informally over lunch to a mission of international executives brought through Cambridge by London Business School. This man founded Cambridge Consultants in 1961, he founded PA Consulting in 1970, he has been involved with over one hundred spinouts in the region. He was a key actor in the whole "Cambridge Phenomenon". His perspectives on how to organize for innovation clearly lit up his audience, from the US, Brazil, South Africa to Manilla, here to learn how to build innovation inside their own corporations.Their questions drove the conversation further.
The second was Andy Hopper chatting to the guy running Open Innovation for a global industrial player on how to engage with the Computer Lab. This organization are already using Ubisense and RealVNC in many of their business units, so they know Andy's personal history. It is just a question of how they engage more broadly with the other academic units in his lab. Clearly, they will need to put down some cream to herd these independent cats around their issues. But their global context will inform future research.
Cambridge ideas changing the world, the world changing Cambridge. Its an amazing thing to hear the story at first hand. A team seeks to understand the non-reflective characteristics delivered by nano-scale physics of a moth's eye in order to develop a cheap substrate that became the ubiquious CD. The same team creates a ubiquitous pregnancy test because it knows how hormones will change those nano-structures and change the light reflected. It is all in the interdisciplinary nature of the team, something inherent in the college system.
I'm glad that I had the chance to trace these threads in the fabric of Cambridge life. Visitors bring out the best in us.
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