The launch was opened by Marcus Stuttard, it was great to chat with him, AIM is a really relevant organization to many of these companies’ futures. We also had Richard Youngman from the Cleantech Group, we’re aligning with the Cleantech Forum in SF in Feb. We also had some cracking companies at the launch: RiverSimple Who have developed the lowest well-to-wheel carbon footprint car in the world, Alertme Who have developed an energy home management system, Oxis Energy who have developed a low-weight rechargeable battery, Proven Energy and Quiet Revolution Small wind turbines and Aquamarine Power Wave power to name a few.
Polecat are involved in this because we’re developing and will shortly launch a MeaningMine green product and we’re using this to map the activity in the Cleantech sector during the course of the Clean & Cool Mission. The MeaningMine green product and services will answer a real shortage of timely, reliable and affordable market intelligence in this sector. The combined global challenges of climate change and urbanization could represent the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century. Through MeaningMine, we harnesses the power of the internet to deliver the market intelligence strategic decision makers need in the environment sector. MeaningMine enables policy makers, businesses and investors to judge the impact of their decisions and track the growth in innovation to solve some of the planet’s greatest challenges.
We’re looking forward to the discussions that will arise around the Mission and to finding out who the 20 companies will be!
]]>I guess this is kind of true. There is certain amount of enigma and hype surrounding start-ups. Why start-ups succeed is often a matter of faith and luck, I’ve found. There are of course “priests” who guard the Vestal temple and ensure prompt payment of dues. Like VCs who will confidently explain the mix behind the mystery. In the end though, I think we’re all really attracted by the fabled stories of cataclysmic disaster or blazing success. De Botton talks about the “heroic beauty” that start-ups personify for today’s capitalist world. Indeed, it’s hard to connect purely fact-based cause and effect with start-ups, except in hindsight, which is not dissimilar to the worship of Vestal Virgins who are, in their capricious nature kind of sexy and in their unattainable status desirable to have around. But how they work is a mystery, you’re just pleased when they do, how dull things might otherwise be if they didn’t.
]]>Thinking about the fact that innovation is about building on existing networks, on existing breakthroughs, I was put in mind of another horticultural analogy altogether. The rhizome (or weed). A rhizome is characterised by being able to grow above ground and below ground, it is characterised by having nodes which connect the plant together and which mean that if you put a spade through one node, the other nodes will regrow. They are so strong they can grow through pavements and are really hard to kill, and I quote from a gardening blog “eradicating this weed is not easy and will take much persistence, isolation, poison, continual removal and cooperation from the neighbours.”
I don’t think that we are seeing a concerted effort to eradicate innovators and innovation. I think the terrain is tougher, but the basic principles of innovation can continue even in harsh environments. Therefore I think that they will find ways to survive. Perhaps not by doing what they thought they would originally started out to do, but by being adaptable and flexible
]]>I was particularly inspired by Hugo Spowers of Riversimple with their Morgan LIFECar and the Riversimple Urban which I believe has the lowest well to wheel footprint in the world with a hydrogen cell costing 300 times less than anything else on the market. Very impressive.
As for my part, well in The Phoenix Economy report, Volans highlighted some key trends of how experts and entrepreneurs are dealing with the economic crisis and this sparked some real discussion at Polecat.
Whilst the crisis may have helped create a growing public and political appetite for an alternative paradigm, based on sustainable values, many initiatives have been driven by short-term panic rather than by any clear-sighted, long-term vision of how our economic priorities needs to evolve. However, our experience is that one organisation that generally does manage to keep a long-term vision when everyone else is panicking around them is UK Government – the largest of all social enterprises in the UK. As a business, this is where we initially focussed, and I think two prime examples of where we have been able to partner successfully with the UK Government are the Technology Strategy Board and the Clean & Cool Trade Mission
MeaningMine is being used to identify the Clean & Cool information landscape and, within that, the top 20 fast-growing UK Clean & Cool companies. Polecat, together with Technology Strategy Board, Volans and Enterprise UK, is working with a number of Government departments to deliver the UK Clean & Cool Mission to San Francisco next February, to meet new potential investors and partners, mingle with the media and share experiences with peers from around the world.
Some other trends that struck me were as follows.
Supertankers and sixpence. Big institutions can’t turn on a sixpence and can’t make elephants dance – unless they are IBM. In the tech industry, Microsoft is the new IBM and Google is the new Microsoft – in many ways, their future is already mapped for them – once these supertankers have momentum, it’s hard for them to change direction quickly however much they need to and however much they care. This is a big challenge in an economic crisis. Conversely, small companies are more agile, we are built for adaptation. When GM started to haemorrhage cash, they knew they had months if not years of financial pain ahead of them – so far it’s cost the US Government $2.5bn and they are nowhere near breakeven yet. When Polecat realised we were starting to haemorrhage cash in early 2008, we helped employees find new jobs, rebuilt our business plan and a month later all was resolved.
The Surf vs The Surfer. When I was in Microsoft, my main sales concern was market size – “was the UK market growing or declining”. In a large organisation, though there are plenty of things you can do to mitigate the situation, you are very much at the mercy of market conditions – or to use a surfing analogy, you are very much at the mercy of the surf. For Polecat as a smaller company, for at least another 18 months, we’re not so worried whether our UK market opportunity has declined by 10% from 50,000 customers to 45,000 customers. Right now, we just want 100 customers. It’s far more about how we perform surfing the surf than it is the surf itself.
New Voice vs More Voice. As identified in Volan’s Phoenix Economy report, small companies need to bridge the micromacro divide and develop the political ‘voice’ and presence to ensure their views and proposed solutions carry weight and build the necessary momentum to achieve scale and impact – needless to say, most big organisations don’t struggle with this problem. What big organisations do need though, is to work with smaller companies to drive new innovation and success. Certainly in the tech world, most large companies recognise the importance of Open Innovation – though some execute better on it than others. To achieve mass market scale, impact and voice, you either need to become a super tanker or, more likely, you need to partner with one or more super tankers – it’s about blended value.
]]>