This week of snow has been a great one for me, with some truly chilled out events put on by good friends. On Monday, Gerald Avison of TTP got a fun crowd together (including Peter Taylor of TTP, Simon Galbraith of Red Gate and Robert Marshall of Marshall of Cambridge among others) so Terry Waite could inspire us to work with Emmaus, his favorite charity. And last night I got together with other McKinsey Business Technology Office alumni to talk about the state of the UK and what to do next.
Terry Waite is a giant. He stands about 9 foot tall and has big hands to match. So when he came over to talk to us after his presentation, I felt a little intimidated. I mean, what do you say to someone who is practically a saint? This guy was kidnapped, tortured, kept in solitary for 4 years, moved from place to place wrapped in masking tape (I guess his captors were intimidated too ;-) ) and chucked in a car boot or a pipe under a lorry, and finally released after many of his fellow captives had been summarily executed. He bears little rancour to the folk who did this stuff to him, and certainly has a good sense of humour about it all. When chucked in a car boot with John McCarthy, he managed to get the masking tape off his mouth to utter the first words he had spoken to someone who wasn't pointing a gun at him in 4 years:
Waite "Gosh, there isn't much room in here, is there?"
McCarthy "It was just fine until they chucked you in!"
I mean, you couldn't make that stuff up, could you? He was there that night to remind us all of another group in solitary, the down-and-outs in Cambridge and other successful thriving towns. His address reminded me of George Orwell's own tales of tramps, this saint-like preoccupation with the excluded and the marginalized. Gerald Avison brought us back to the commercial reality of the situation - investing in Emmaus saves us all money. Petty crime, civil unrest and all the other minor irritations which go with leaving folk on the street to self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs cost everybody too much. Recalling our homeless to hope just makes commercial sense. Gerald has certainly put his own money where his mouth is - as Terry helpfuly pointed out (to Gerald's embarrassment ;-) ) he has put in quarter of a million to Emmaus personally so far. With such amazing sponsors, no wonder Emmaus is growing like blitz across the UK, setting up new communities based on the template piloted in Cambridge. Really great to see some French ideas, imported through Cambridge originally, changing the rest of the UK.
Last night I skidded and shivered my way cycling down to Parliament Square for a McKinsey Business Technology Office reunion. Before you start with the consultant jokes, I co-founded McKinsey BTO London back in 1996 and I am very happy to see them growing so well here, having served major bluechips around most of the developing world. But I am obviously delighted to receive any NEW consultant jokes as comments on the blog ;-) We had a presentation from the McKinsey Global Institute, their version of R&D. Frankly I thought it was a bit lame - for instance, they looked at GVA by region and concluded that London adds most value (whereas it just goes right ahead and consumes it too - unsurprisingly given that all our taxes get spent from there). They hadn't done any analysis of exports by region, which is far more interesting given how badly the UK needs dollars, and which shows that even in the boom years London financiers weren't as important as the South East. An even more interesting analysis would be what the actual margin and British content of those exports is. I mean, the North East may be assembling great cars for the Japanese and shipping them all over Europe, but it hardly leaves huge amounts of margin or creates a great culture for our brilliant graduates to build British products. I heckled a lot, as did my old boss David Bennett (who used to run UK domestic for Tony Blair) and Petri Allas (who is pretty cool himself, but whose wife Tera is even cooler having just taken over as Chief Economist for BIS working with Vince Cable).
The presenters gave as good as they got, so everyone was happy. In particular, my old mate Paul Wilmott (once a lowly associate, now a Director leading the practice - time flies when you are having fun) came out with the bold statement that McKinsey would love to come and share what they had learned about embedded software with the Cambridge cluster. That sounds like fun, because they really are active in a lot of developing markets and will have an insight into the business case for embedded that we may not know. Besides, it will be fun to hear from a DIFFERENT mafia for a change!
So another great week in this amazing town and associated capital cities ;-) Hope you've all been having fun in the snow too - and keeping those Cambridge ideas changing the world!
very powerful blog, really enjoyed it. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years economically with all the new policy.
Posted by: Liam | January 10, 2011 at 10:59 AM