Winning the war for talent

Great Battle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With employment running at over 2.6 million and companies like HP announcing major layoffs it may seem a strange thing to say, but we’re currently in the middle of a real war for talent. Lots of technology companies I speak to are desperate for good quality staff at all levels and hotspots such as Cambridge have extremely low numbers of people signing on. And this isn’t just CEOs and star programmers – there are equal shortages of technicians and product managers.

So how do we meet this need as a country, particularly given David Cameron’s push to make us the world capital for innovation? There’s clearly a major role for government to encourage re-training and make sure that pupils are leaving school, college and university with both the right skills and the right attitude to getting stuck into work. I don’t just mean churning out legions of identikit technobots, but delivering well-rounded individuals with the get up and go needed in the world of work.

But given that there’s an inevitable lag in education, how do companies make sure they are getting the best brains working for them in the short term? I think they need to understand two very different trends – the rise of startups and Generation Y and Z entering the workforce. When I left university, creating a startup (whether it was a tech business or a corner shop) wasn’t a mainstream choice. Now for many it is a badge of honour, so even the most staid of companies needs to inject the fun and excitement of startup life into its corporate procedures. Whether it is encouraging staff to work on side projects (after all Vodafone was originally a Friday afternoon project at Racal) or providing a fast-moving working environment, established companies need to compete with startup life.

They also have to cope with an alphabet soup of generations. Generations Y and Z are now entering the workforce – tech savvy, mobile and with a sense of entitlement, alongside Gen X with its ‘me generation’ philosophy and the remaining Baby Boomers that need to work longer in an era of shrinking state pensions. Balancing these groups within the organisation, keeping them motivated and not pigeonholing people is key to achieving a happy medium.

So companies are in a tough position and they need to differentiate themselves if they are to succeed. Employees today are too smart to be taken in by HR speak and fluffy benefits. Forge a cohesive culture, set out core principles and make sure that they run through everything you do. Then apply ongoing marketing principles to recruitment and retention – create programmes that reach your target audiences (inside and outside the company) and ensure you are building a good reputation for delivering on your words. Achieve this, pay at market rates and you’ll have the weapons you need to at least compete in the battle for talent acquisition.

Farcebook and internet bubbles

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve found it difficult to watch the recent Facebook flotation, subsequent drop in share price and clamour of litigation without shouting “I TOLD YOU SO” at the top of my voice. Way before the flotation many analysts queried Facebook’s $100bn+ valuation given its relative lack of revenues but their voices were drowned in the hype. Just look at the number – with 1 billion users that’s a hefty premium per subscriber.

Obviously the growth statistics behind Facebook are impressive and there is still potential for it to grow in different areas around the world and by offering new services. But this is all potential rather than actual. A good comparison is Google – when it IPO’d in 2004 it had a valuation of $23 billion. Most of the services we now know Google for simply hadn’t been introduced, and the stock was priced according. Google has since increased its share value six-fold, giving it a market value of  $196 billion, helped by annual revenue of $39 billion.

There’s a decent chance that Facebook can ‘do a Google’ and monetise its users, probably through services that Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t even thought of yet. But equally it could languish in limbo in the same way as LinkedIn post-IPO without really demonstrating a vision for charging customers without losing them.

The bigger worry for me is that Facebook is continually held up by the likes of David Cameron as a posterboy for what British tech businesses should aspire to. And consequently we have a move to create frothy, social media driven businesses without clear business models, inevitably HQ’d in Tech City. It reminds me a lot of first generation dotcoms and the bandwagon that became. While some of these businesses may succeed, we need to look at what will create real value in the UK tech scene (the likes of ARM, CSR and Sage all spring to mind) and focus the best minds on solving real business problems rather than simply another cute network without any revenues.

So if the Farcebook float can change people’s perceptions that user numbers are good, revenues are not essential, then I think that’s a price that the gullible should have to pay. As the old saying goes, if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

Related articles

• Farcebook (washingtonsblog.com)

Where’s the money going?

In a week that saw the publication of the long-awaited Cambridge Phenomenon book, celebrating 50 years of innovation in the area, some more sobering figures concerning continued investment have been published.

Punting in Cambridge, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Research from tech-focused investment group Ascendant found that while generally VC investment is up in Q1 2012, money doesn’t seem to be coming to Cambridge. £307m was invested in tech companies in the UK and Ireland – with £188m going to London-based outfits, and £27m to Irish ones. Cambridge (and Oxford) saw very little new money.

While it can be misleading to generalise based on three months of data this could be a worrying trend as centralised government action to boost London’s Tech City draws potential funding (and talent) away from the Cambridge ecosystem. After all, as Rory Cellan-Jones points out in his BBC Blog, Cambridge has potentially a better chance of creating world-class tech companies than London as it has already developed an ecosystem with research at its heart to feed innovative ideas to the market. But investment funding for Cambridge is key – not just in ‘scientific’ spinouts such as Owlstone and ARM but the more internet-style businesses and the thriving cleantech sector that Cambridge also supports.

So how does Cambridge compete against the media-savvy Tech City community when it comes to gaining funding? I may be biased as a marketer, but really feel that public relations has a strong role to play. There is still a tendency amongst Cambridge startups to treat PR as an afterthought rather than an intrinsic part of how you create a company and drive its success. You need to know your audience and deliver the right message to it at the right time using language they understand to succeed. Otherwise the risk is that Cambridge will become seen solely as the domain of technical wizardry rather than as a driver of customer-focused innovation that leads the UK tech scene.

Related articles

• VIDEO: Views on the ‘Cambridge phenomenon’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Start-up Britain – Cambridge v Tech City (bbc.co.uk)

The internet – too much choice?

Bangor Pier, Bangor, North Wales (Photo credit: timdifford)

I’ve just been booking my Summer holiday and like most people nowadays turned to the internet to sort everything out. And some of it was fun – such as using my iPad and Google Maps to zoom in on unsuspecting French villages to check exactly how far a potential holiday home was from the beach and how close to major autoroutes. But after trawling through what felt like hundreds of properties on multiple websites to read reviews and get the best possible house at the best possible price I eventually wondered if it was really worth it.

Instead of spending extra hours surfing and comparing could I have just saved the time by walking into my local travel agent, giving some basic details and letting them do the rest? If it all went pear-shaped I had someone to blame (compared to which I’m on the hook if the villa of our dreams is next to a sewage works) and while I’d have paid over the odds I’d not have to experience some of the truly unhelpful travel/tourism sites that seem to litter the web.

I appreciate I’m coming over all Luddite here, but it made me think of a broader point. The internet has revolutionised our lives and made it as easy to book a weekend in Bangkok as one in Bangor but overall it hasn’t really saved us any time or removed stress. Think about car insurance – 15 years ago it was a question of going to a broker or renewing with your existing insurer. Now you can spend days tracking down the best deal and then playing off two companies against each other as you haggle to save an extra £5 or so.

Essentially we’re stuck in the middle – we want the benefits of the depth and scale the internet gives us, but even with search engines finding what you want is akin to locating a needle in the proverbial haystack. You’re more likely to find a cute kitten instead. What we actually need is a way of making the internet smart so it understands about us, learns what we like/dislike and uses this to run our lives – like an enormously powerful Amazon recommendation engine. Or alternatively I should find someone I can just outsource my holiday planning to……………

Bye bye angels, hello Kickstarter?

There’s been a lot in the press recently about crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Electronic paper watch Pebble raised over $3.4m for its smartphone linked timepiece while the first Kickstarter scam – trying to get backing for a non-existent video game has just been uncovered.

Kickstarter (Photo credit: Scott Beale)

At a time when money is tight Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites look like the perfect way for startups to raise cash. Essentially you pitch your idea to a receptive audience of people that want to be able to buy your product – and they fund your development in return for a small stake. Your product gets validated by the market, future sales are generated and you get backing – what could be simpler? It also provides another opportunity for public relations agencies to extend their reach by using press and social media campaigns to build a buzz and drive people to their client’s Kickstarter page. 

However while Kickstarter is great for certain types of products, it can’t replace more traditional types of funding. First off, the Kickstarter audience is comprised of early adopters – the type of people that are going to spend $150 on a watch that links to their smartphone and are happy to pledge money to get it built. It won’t work for mainstream products that need to appeal to a more conservative, mass market demographic.

Secondly, startups need a lot more than money to succeed – they need help, connections and business advice from people that know what they are talking about. This is something that angel investors and VCs both provide over and above cold hard cash. Otherwise the risk is that companies raise the cash on Kickstarter but then can’t make best use of it as they run into technical, marketing or sales issues that outside advice could have helped with.

So while Kickstarter is a good (and cheap) way of validating your idea for startups building physical products it can only be part of the story – if you want lasting success you still need to knock on doors, make the contacts and do the hard work. 

Transforming ideas over the weekend

Last weekend saw the first Idea Transform event, which aimed to uncover new ideas and projects that have the potential to change society for the better. As one of the founders of Idea Transform I’m obviously biased, but all the feedback I had was that everyone that came along learnt lots, worked hard in their teams and had fun at the same time.

Over 100 people attended the weekend in Cambridge, which saw ideas pitched on Friday evening and then teams formed to develop them before judging on Sunday evening. While four teams were selected as winners in the different categories of education, health, community and environment everyone deserves congratulations for the hard work and their achievements.

Rather than bang on about the success of the event, I’d like to share three things that stood out for me:

1              Amazing range of ideas
Over 25 ideas were pitched on Friday night, from mobile learning through technology to calibrate medical devices and an avatar for online clothes shopping. The nine teams that made it to the end of the weekend included charging electric vehicles through the road, experimental maths teaching and mobile phone based biometics. Not just apps and websites!

2              Commitment and support
For all these projects, the idea itself was just a start point. Thanks to their own hard work and the support of the team of experienced mentors, who gave up their weekends to help, projects had really progressed by Sunday evening and the final presentations were incredibly professional and well constructed.

3              Ideas with legs
The aim of Idea Transform is to support projects to help them grow after the weekend, with mentoring, support and advice for all the winners. Sim-Prints, the overall winners, were awarded three months membership of the ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator and two teams now have the chance to pitch for funding from the Cambridge Angels. Outside of this I saw lots of connections being made that will help projects meet the right people to progress and real enthusiasm amongst everyone to move things forward. I’m confident that at least one of the teams will grow into a fully fledged business in the future.

So it was an exhilarating, exhausting and packed weekend – finally I’d like to thank all the other organisers, our sponsors, particularly ARM, Red Gate Software and BlackBerry, supporters including the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL), mentors, judges, volunteers and speakers for making the first weekend to change the world a weekend to remember.

The eyes have it – do we need super glasses?

There’s been a slew of recent announcements trumpeting augmented reality (AR) glasses. First Google released a video about Google Glasses, which will pop up alerts concerning the weather, location and diary appointments, and now Oakley has got in on the act, talking about AR glasses for athletes. Not to be left out, the Pentagon has apparently ordered dual focus contact lenses, which allow wearers to look at a heads up display as well as what is around them. 

Amidst all the hype, it strikes me that quite a lot of the mooted benefits of these glasses could be accessed through the eyes we already have. Why flash up alerts to tell you it is raining, when you can see for yourself? And if you think getting stuck behind people staring at their smartphone apps is bad, imagine what it’ll be like if we all suddenly slow to a halt to read what’s projected on our smart glasses. It’ll only be a matter of months before someone creates a virus to hack the operating system and change what you ‘see’.

But the idea of smart glasses isn’t totally bad – here’s five tongue in cheek applications that I can see taking off:

1              Eyes in the back of your head
As a parent I’ve often warned my kids that I can see what they’re up to through the eyes in the back of my head. Installing a sys

Augmented reality - heads up display concept (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

tem of mirrors in smart glasses (or a camera on the back of my skull) could make this threat a reality. 

2          Anti-beer goggles
Apparently, the reason that members of the opposite sex look more attractive when drunk is that alcohol makes faces look more symmetrical. So some sort of reality filter could save those embarrassing morning after moments for both sexes………. 

3              Instant sporting replays
Amidst all the furore about goal line technology and poor refereeing decisions in football, what about equipping officials with glasses with instant video playback? They can then make quick decisions with the facts at their fingertips/eyeballs. 

4          TV on the move
We’ve all been in situations like presentations, lectures and speeches where we’re a bit bored but it would be a bit rude to pull out a phone/book and start doing something different. With smart glasses you can just catch up on TV without anyone noticing – though probably best not to watch laugh out loud comedy at funerals.

5      Remembering names
Ever met someone for the second time and can’t remember who they are or how you know them? Or get the names of your children mixed up? All it takes is your smart glasses to use facial recognition technology to pop up a handy reminder and you can chat away happily with confidence.

Given the weight of hype it looks like smart glasses are on their way – what would you use yours for?

Related articles

• Move aside, Google: Oakley has been testing augmented reality glasses for 15 years (digitaltrends.com)

Unlocking innovation for the good of us all

An unashamed plug this week for Idea Transform, an event I’m helping organise between 20-22 April 2012 (so just a week’s time, depending on when you read this).

Essentially Idea Transform aims to support people with bright ideas that use technology to benefit society in general – whether in the fields of healthcare, education, environment or the community.

While technology has lowered the barriers to turning ideas into reality, the majority of potential projects still come unstuck along the way – either because they are missing a crucial skillset or lack the mentoring support to help overcome inevitable hurdles.

Idea Transform will help these ideas through a combination of events and ongoing mentoring. The first weekend bootcamp event (20-22 April, Cambridge Judge Business School, tickets at www.ideatransform.org) will bring together those with ideas and people with business, development, marketing and creative skills to help them. People pitch their ideas on Friday evening, teams form and then work on ideas over the course of the weekend, before a high profile judging session on Sunday evening. Winners get the opportunity to develop their ideas through mentoring, support and the chance to potentially pitch for funding from the Cambridge Angels.

And for anyone worried that it will just be a weekend of hard work, there will be the chance to network, have fun, listen to high profile speakers and get advice from a team of experienced mentors. We’ve already heard about a whole range of ideas, from mobile health tracking using biometric technology to mobile and experimental maths learning to mapping the disused rail network so we can put it to better use, and there are bound to be many more pitched on the evening itself.

It promises to be an exhilarating, exciting and enjoyable experience – take a look at www.ideatransform.org and I hope to see you there.

Related articles

• Owlstone, Raspberry Pi and Pneumacare join keynote speaker line-up! (ideatransform.org)

California Dreaming

Silicon Valley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There have been innumerable attempts to understand and replicate how Silicon Valley has become the centre of the tech industry – with Tech City being the latest one in the UK. What is the secret sauce that makes California in particular and the US in general such a fertile breeding ground for innovation? 

It’s something I’ve often wondered about, so it was great to hear a first hand account of a learning journey to Silicon Valley. Speaking last week at CamCreative, Liz Weston of Weston Marketing talked about what she’d learnt on an organised trip that saw her visit the likes of Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com and Stanford University. She shared four big lessons from the tour:

1              The difference between an opportunity and an idea
Everyone has a different take on what makes an idea viable, from an addressable market to a strong founding team, but the big difference between the UK and US is the willingness to have a go, fail and come back stronger. If we can change attitudes in the UK to say it is better to try and then fail rather than fail to try at all, it will radically shift how companies operate for the better. 

2              Four key opportunities for business development
Execs in Silicon Valley outlined the environment, security, human health and digital/infrastructure as key markets for growth. Anything that reduces complexity in these areas and makes people’s lives easier has potential. Probably not a surprise to most people but worth bearing in mind when pitching any business ideas to investors. 

3              Look at the relationship between the customer and your product/services
It isn’t about the technology per se, but finding an emotional trigger with your customers. Serve a purpose and do it in a way that delights your customers and turns them into your advocates. So, in the same way that when Orange launched in the UK it positioned itself as the cool brand you wanted to be part of, LinkedIn offers the chance to be part of a cloud of intelligence, rather than simply positioning itself as a jobs site. 

4              The importance of innovation
Next year’s revenue won’t come from this year’s cash cow. So everyone in the business needs to be innovating – which can involve changing people’s mindsets. Encourage ideas and capture them – while they may not be immediately useful, they could be in the future. 

I’m sure most people have either heard or tried to put into action some of the lessons above. For me, the main takeaway (and potentially the big difference between the US and UK) is always be open, always be learning and don’t be afraid to take risks. This may not be Silicon Valley’s secret sauce but it is a better way to run a business.

 

Weird Science

We’re continually being told that innovation is critical to our future as a nation – indeed, last week’s Budget included plenty of talk about encouraging research and development, technology and bright ideas.

Getting kids interested in science is vital to this – and after all it shouldn’t be too difficult, given their love of things that explode, make a mess or beep loudly (or all three). However at the moment not enough children see the link between studying science and doing cool stuff – just look at the stereotypes of white coated, glasses-wearing, techie nerds if you don’t believe me.

So as the parent of destructive but inquisitive boys I had high hopes of the Cambridge Science Festival, the annual two week series of 180+ events put on by the University of Cambridge to show everyone (not just children) that science is vital, fun and something they can get involved in. We went along to just some of the festival last Saturday and I can’t help thinking that it was an opportunity not quite delivered on. I’m not sure if they were expecting fewer people but both the Centre for Mathematical Sciences (a building I never knew existed) and the Institute for Manufacturing were crammed to the rafters and beyond with eager children and their parents. That had a knock-on effect on having to wait to do activities (and the laser bunny hop had broken, boo), leading to grumpy kids and increasingly stressed parents.

Amongst the bodies it was great to see a Raspberry Pi in the flesh, but for me the standout activities were all organised by the Cambridge Science Centre. Set up to establish a public interactive centre for science aimed at locals, tourists and schools it is currently raising funds to eventually create a permanent base in the city. It’s a great initiative and from the range of activities they put on and their sheer enthusiasm they demonstrated that they really understand their target market and know how to connect with them. My kids (aged from 3 to 8) had to be dragged away from the air cannon that showed how seeds are carried by the wind (parents, think of it as a supercharged Elefun game), while inside the Institute for Manufacturing they had a whole range of gripping hands on activities. Take a look at http://www.cambridgesciencecentre.org/ to find out more – this is exactly the type of innovation that the government is talking about and a project that really deserves to succeed.