Last week we hosted a wonderful seminar on vitality in Consumer products, and this week we have events on Corporate Social Responsibility and Entrepreneurship.
The Health and Vitality debate between P&G, Cambridge Consultants, Sonovia and HealthUnlocked tackled some major issues. Who will consumers trust long term to manage their health? The healthcare providers like NHS East, whose doctors are sworn to do no harm? The major pharmaceutical or drug device providers like Medimmune, with their deep research insights? Consumer product companies like P&G, who know how to design holistic services? Or social media companies like HealthUnlocked who connect them to other people who suffer the same condition?
P&G know quite a bit about consumers, and they see a segment of roughly 1/3rd of the population - the "healthy wealthy and wise" and "healthy wealthy and healed" who are well-off individuals who will pay for consumer health to maintain an active lifestyle longer. This a baby boomer generation that refuses to grow old gracefully and insists on doing marathons and generally spending the kids inheritance having fun. By contrast, Cambridge Consultants surveyed a technology landscape of new devices and internet connected services to help with exercise and fitness, eating healthily, good sleep, monitoring and preventitive medicine, cosmetics and beauty, and social engagement. The availability of cheap, low-power sensors (accelerometers, biosensors), remote monitoring and embedded processing offers all sorts of companies the option to deliver new health and vitality services. Sonovia is one such service, an ultrasound application that drives healing gels into the skin to cure psoriasis and regenerate ageing skin, a key concern for those baby boomers. Finally, HealthUnlocked dug into the issue of how social media is reshaping the way people suffering conditions connect to their peers, learn about treatments and take positive control of their lives to everyone's benefit. While clinical endorsement and regulatory testing will remain important, people just trust other people like them more.
I'd promised to up the Twitter profile of our conferences. I was delighted to see so many colleagues contributing. But I myself was left making notes - having lost my mobile phone! Real life. It's what happens, when you had other plans!
Monday dawned, and with it an all day session on how ARM, HSBC, M&S and Red Gate sustain their success by engaging their people with the community through corporate social responsiblity initiatives. Lots of good hi tech businesses and social enterprises came along (see the website for the presentations and the audience). They discussed 4 pillars of a sustainable business (Environment, Community, Marketplace and Workplace), listening to presentations by big blue chips and then debating how CSR is implemented from local Cambridge companies, including the events main sponsor, ARM Ltd. The day was wrapped up by a panel session where delegates could closely question panellists representing local companies. From the workshop I participated in, the local 3rd sector organizations in the area are keen to work with the local high techs but struggle to communicate how improving village life for children, sustaining families struck by cancer or returning dignity to homeless people through refurbishing donated goods relates specifically to their high tech missions.
We're interested in working with the 3rd sector to deliver our Local Enterprise Partnership, because so many of the things we need to get right to retain talented people are actually public goods. The days when most Trinity Nobel Prize winners were British are past. An individual like Cesar Milstein may come from a country without the rights we take for granted, but many countries want to host such genius and emerging markets are reclaiming their geniuses. I managed to catch up with Warren East over lunch and hear more about what ARM is doing on Twitter and blogs. It was a great pleasure to introduce him to Shen Wei, the incoming president of Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, the student club that runs the University's business plan competition. I helped found CUE 11 years ago and went to ARM to raise funding for a prize. I came away with Gold Sponsorship and a PhD topic in which I worked with Warren and Jamie Urquhart. ARM have generously supported the competition continuously ever since, the only one of our original sponsor group to continue every single year through the dotcom crash.
And on Monday night we helped launch CUE again for the 11th year. We're sponsoring at Gold ourselves this year, part of our commitment to give back to this amazing community that we all share. We'll be working closely with CUE and other student societies across the UK to help improve student access to internships and jobs here in the cluster. I sat in the front rows with a set of Cambridge Angels and former CUE presidents and participants, listening to Billy Boyle, Hermann Hauser and Stew McTavish pitch the audience on why entrepreneurship could be a good option for them. All too soon, I had to speak. I was choked up with the memories of our own first launch of CUE, back in 1999, which also had the theme "if not now, then when".
The only thing I could think to say was how important it is that entrepreneurs continue to employ people here in Cambridge. ARM wouldn't be here if Hauser hadn't founded Acorn to build the BBC Model B here, and many ex-Acorn people remain active here: Andy Hopper, Sophie Wilson, Chris Curry, Peter Robinson to name but a few. The jobs our entrepreneurs offer retain talented people for this region who have been gathered from around the world by either the Universities or one of the bigger local companies. Every technical job creates opportunities for spouses and local residents to work in management, marketing or other support roles. This is the recession-proofed engine that can absorb great people released from quangos and the Universities as the government rebalances the economy towards export-orientied industry in this region. We should all cherish our entrepreneurs - and encourage more people, young and old, to take that challenging path.
It is fun "citizen journalizing" this rich tapestry of Cambridge hi tech life for you. But it is even more fun actually meeting with you at these events and around town. Broadcasting ideas is all very well - but we have to meet and accomodate each other to learn anything new. Look forward to seeing you too soon.
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