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DADS THE APP THAT KEEPS YOU SAFE WHILST DRIVING -
NHS MANCHESTER INNOVATING THE NHS -
INAMO
A NEW FOOD EXPERIENCE -
YAMBLA THE INNOVATION APP WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! -
NEWS A FEW THINGS THAT CAUGHT OUR GAZE -
KOTTER INTERNATIONAL HOW TO CHANGE YOUR ORGANISATIONS CULTURE
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M A G A Z I N E
ISSUE 4 FEB 2015
CONTENTS FOUNDER’S VOICE HAPPY NEW YEAR!
GLOBAL INNOVATION -
M A G A Z I N E
DADS DON’T WORRY DADS BEHIND THE WHEEL
KOTTER INTERNATIONAL INTERVIEW WITH GREGG LESTAGE TECHNO FEAST INNOVATIVE FOOD FOR THOUGHT
YAMBLA THE INNOVATION PLATFORM FOR YOUR WORKFORCE FOUNDER James O’Flynn CREATIVE DIRECTOR Aidan Creed SALES Hannah McKinney Published by SoMoGo Publishing/ admin@somogopublishing.co.uk/ www.somogopublishing.co.uk Global Innovation Magazine is published every quarter /Copyright SoMoGo Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be stored or transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying, scanning, or otherwise without the written permission of SoMoGo Publishing Ltd. Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the publishers. Acceptance of advertisements does not imply official endorsement of the products or services described. While care has been taken to ensure accuracy of content no responsibility can be taken for errors and/or emissions. Readers should take advice and caution before acting upon any issue raised in the magazine. The publisher reserves the right to accept or to reject advertising and editorial material supplied. The publisher assumes no responsibility for the safe return of unsolicited photography, art or writing.
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NHS MANCHESTER GLOBAL HEALTHCARE INNOVATION
NEWS A FEW THINGS THAT CAUGHT OUR GAZE
FOUNDER’S VOICE HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This issue marks a year since the magazine went from idea to reality, which is quite a landmark for us. Starting up in any industry is tricky, as our interview with Noel Hunwick from the Inamo group of restaurants highlights. Sustainability and change is another matter, which again is brought to the forefront with our interview with Greg LeStage from Kotter International. It’s another year full of challenges and learning and we hope to be at the forefront of bringing you all news ‘innovative’ during 2015. As always get in touch with ideas for interviews and features. Happy new year! James O’Flynn Founder JAMES@GLOBALINNOVATION MAGAZINE.COM
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DADS DON’T WORRY DADS BEHIND THE WHEEL
DADS is a revolutionary new system to help prevent car and lorry accidents caused by drowsy driving. This new mobile application is a real-time cloud based monitoring and warning system that can assist in preventing accidents caused by driver drowsiness, lack of alertness or distraction. 12 years in the making, we spoke to Cameron Mackey Product Manager at SRG International, a subsidiary company of InterCore, about the product.
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Tell us a bit about yourself Cameron. I come from an engineering background. I have done some consulting work in the past - automotive and aerospace including some work on the Boeing Dreamliner project. SRG were looking to commercialise the product; one thing led to another and I took on the project management role for DADS. How old are you? I’m actually 28 years old, which is relatively young. I have had some of my own products in the past, launched different apps fairly successfully. However this opportunity really stood out, leveraging all my experience together. Was software development a big part of your life growing up?
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Absolutely. Some friends in high school and I started building computers at school, we had lots of fun, but never made any money! All the guys went into software... This interest took you into further studies? I went to study mechanical engineering and management, that was my degree, but I was taught lots of hardware and software development, robotics etc. I ended up in transition becoming the liaison between functional requirements and the software development methodologies. Where did the idea come from? Our CEO, James F.Groelinger, President of Intercore had the idea along with several other colleagues originally. We have taken this idea and packaged it to meet consumer expectations. When I heard about the app initially, I thought it must have some kind of wearable connection, is this right?
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No actually, that’s incorrect. It’s non-invasive, we are not in physical contact with the driver. We have accomplished this by developing a camera that includes infrared technology as well as certain biometric capabilities that study the face of the driver. Tell me about the product. Ultimately the components that the consumer interacts with are a camera, which is mounted on the windshield and connected via Bluetooth. Then we use a smartphone (iOS or Android) to capture the data from the camera, process it, and send it to the DADS cloud and this is where it is monitored. Live session data is accessible for customers who could be commercial logistics companies etc. They can then see where the trucks are and the alert state of their drivers in real time. It gives great insight to the dispatchers. This is the first product offering, but this will expand.
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So I get into the vehicle, how does the phone connect? The camera is powered all the time. You then start the app up and the connection is made between the camera and phone. The consumer will be subject to quite a seamless process. You log in and it starts to process your actions. What kind of things is the app looking at? It captures the biometrics of your face and processes them up to 10 times a second. We are looking at your eyes, the exposure of your iris. It detects drowsiness, micro sleep. We have built into the app lots of alerts, and it communicates the signs of microsleep to the driver and people monitoring when the threshold is met. What’s your marketplace? Logistics companies, commercial truck companies anywhere when there are concerns over drivers perhaps falling asleep. At the same time personal packages are available.
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We have launched already, so you can go to the website and register now. Have you had much interest? Yes particularly from people who may have some personal connection, those who could have lost a loved one perhaps. Obviously commercial customers have been very interested also. Going forward what are your plans? We have the basis for the product but going forward we will develop the system, possibly looking for signs of drug and alcohol abuse which is certainly possible and a really useful adaptation. We’re always looking at improving the product: it’s ultimately one that can save lives.
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KOTTER INTERNATIONAL INTERVIEW WITH GREGG LESTAGE
Kotter International is a world leading change company that helps leaders build the capacity to drive large-scale transformation in their organizations. The firm has worked with some of the world’s biggest and brightest companies including Microsoft and the NHS to implement change. Gregg LeStage, Executive Vice President for Kotter International, spoke to Global Innovation Magazine from America about organisational and cultural change.
Tell me a bit about your background? I have been in the broadly speaking performance improvement, organisational change field for about 15 years now, from behavioural research, in regards to leadership, and sales force effectiveness. They are the main two areas. I have led teams, delivered solutions, and been on the business development side and served as a consultant to organisations so I have 360 degrees perspective on these critical issues. The thread for me as a former academic is learning. Learning is a critical element in change; it can help individuals and organisations do what they need to do.
I received my MA and PhD in English literature from Oxford; I also taught there. The similarities between that and what I do now aren’t immediately apparent (laughs) but I think a real driver is storytelling. When you’re trying to motivate others it’s about creating a narrative about what the future could look like. The better at the narrative you are, the more effective you are as a leader. My work in literature is something I draw upon often because it’s all about narrative. Research is also something that has helped. Taking in a lot of data and making sense of it, you’re swimming in it all the time, so that’s how I make the connections.
Reading a bit about you, you studied and taught at Oxford University?
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Storytelling seems to be incredibly important in business these days Storytelling as a leadership skill is certainly trending; in the leadership development realm, it’s been on the rise for the last 5 years or so. How can you gauge what kind of culture you have within your organisation currently? It’s the great starting point for anyone dealing in large-scale transformation. Engagement surveys are really useful indicators. I’m not massively into assessments. It’s a billion dollar business backed by research and solid science, but the large majority of businesses that invest in them don’t follow through on their findings in any tangible, impactful way. However, engagement surveys are interesting ways of figuring out if people are feeling happy and empowered – or not. Those are indicators of culture. That’s one. Two, at the other end of the spectrum is anecdotal evidence. If you’re a top leader who is connected with your leadership
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team, communicating broadly, and “seen” by others to be walking the walk, then people will have evidence of what’s positively influencing your culture. They gather evidence simply through observation and stories. That’s valuable, too. It’s not hard data; it’s texture. This can be more representative of culture than charts and graphs. What is a culture meant to do in an organisation? Culture is meant to drive you forward in accomplishing your mission. So culture must always be about how the organisation handles change. That’s all. When you are analysing an organisation’s change readiness, you’re examining an important aspect of its culture. What happens if change is thrust upon you? I’m thinking of the public sector in the UK, the NHS etc. This is slightly different to being able to plan, there is no choice in this change. Is it important to look at culture change alongside these financial changes perhaps?
that the gap between change and our ability to keep up with it is widening. While the question remains the same - “What is your ability to handle the change that will come towards you day after day?” - the answer is getting harder. It’s as much a question of “Are you ready to handle the ‘X’ (cuts in funding) that you can see?” as it is “Do you have the skills and mindset to handle the future ‘Y’ - that you cannot see?” Those organisations that are ready for ‘X’ today and ‘Y’ tomorrow are the ones that succeed. Change readiness is broadly about the constant capacity for flexibility and agility in the moment, whatever that moment may be, rather than about having the specific technical expertise at the right time. For instance, organisations that rely on the latter for, say, a massive IT conversion, tend to miss their goals. Often by a wide margin. How do you define which culture I would like at my organisation, how do you define what we should be?
We’ve known for thousands of years that change is a constant. What’s different now, though, is
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I think that the answer is more straightforward than we’d expect. You have to define what your organisational values are in terms of your employees, customers, society, environment, etc. From that stems your leadership values. These are the foundation stones for building a culture. What about organisations where some workers don’t even know the organisational values. They may be written down and quite complex, but have no connection to people, they are meaningless… So that’s the real challenge. You can put those values on posters in elevators, read them in town hall meetings, embed them in employee contracts. That’s one thing. But unless and until they manifest themselves in leadership behaviours that are named, celebrated and repeated, then no one can connect with them. Words are abstract; actions are concrete. Short of direct observations - of “catching people doing something right” storytelling is the most effective means of connecting people to the values.
Give me an example of how you demonstrate your values to your workforce; say for example ‘innovation’… I think we would position it as: “We value being a sustainably innovative organisation” rather than “Be innovative” which is a nuance, I know. When innovation happens, name it. Shout about the little wins, call them out and celebrate them. They mount up and create results that are publicly attached to the people who contributed. This means much more than the lagging indicator that is the year-end “Awards Dinner.” Such events are both too late and in recognition of single accomplishments, not of the real-time wins that occur all year. Leadership behaviour has to embody the values, even if people don’t know you or have never met you. Public honesty is a good one, although too rarely practiced. Apologies, too. The “I’m sorry, I made a mistake” statement is very powerful. It sounds like we are oversimplifying it, but we’re not. In fact, we tend to over-
complicate the definition and execution of a valuesbased culture. If you’re a large organisation perhaps you have several cultures and several sets of values within so if you define your values and they don’t resonate what can you do about this? There is never one culture, even in small companies. But if they are set upon the same values, then they can resonate across the “inter-cultures” and connect the organisation. Companies need to hold onto their core set of values and localise them. So if companies have 20 values… This is a common mistake companies make. Committee think: everything is important, therefore everything goes in. Therefore, nothing is important. It’s a stew with barely distinguishable ingredients and no particular taste. (Companies
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make a similar mistake with leadership competencies when they prescribe far too many.) More is less. Companies can make it work with three or four stated values. What key things should I consider before embarking upon a journey of culture change? We believe that culture change is the by-product of something else. Companies that set out to change their culture as the end conclusion very often are unsuccessful because their workforces cannot get and remain excited about it. Not least when an initiative is more closely connected with HR than it is with real business issues. Going after a particular culture as the object of the effort, even with a defined set of values, is extremely difficult to do because there is nothing for employees to grab on to. That happens all the time. Organisational Development or HR professionals are too often expected to provide the roadmap, supply the fuel, and drive the car; it doesn’t work. There has to have an organisational link or business
link that you go after, and culture change then happens.
chain, or rapidly increased product development.
We stand tall on this view and have lots of evidence, whereby the wholesale pursuit of tangible, attainable business goals or missions - specific ones - bring about cultural change.
So how do you frame a negative situation? Something like a lack of finance, a restructure?
What we find and insist upon is that the leader or business unit head must absolutely be signed up and committed, visibly and vocally, to leading the change. They need to have a team around them that will be equally supportive, not just at the beginning - handing it on to HR is the death knell for change. They must involve others, like HR, but must not be seen to step away from it, to blink. This is the key thing. The secret source of successful change is urgency. When a large number of workers - 50% of the organisation, division, or unit – come together around a common excitement and eagerness to pursue a big opportunity, the power is tremendous. The definition of a big opportunity is unique to every company.. For one it could be expansion into China, for another an accelerated merger, a more efficient supply
It’s imperative to frame it positively, as an opportunity. Basing a rationale for change in a problem or crisis will not motivate a workforce – and keep them motivated. The notion of “the burning platform” is the wrong one because it is associated with fear, flight and intense activity that is unsustainable. You may say that “out of this bad situation we will be better as an organisation.” Concerning healthcare for instance, you position the positive: “How do we harness our passion and expertise to provide world class care?” Positioning the need as: “We’re in crisis, so please help” can be paralyzing with its message of impending doom. An ‘opportunity statement’ is the opposite of a problem
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statement, and it’s incumbent upon the leadership to craft it. Such a statement illustrates a kind of window through which an organisation can pass to take advantage of a timely business or market condition. That window may close in, say, two years, so peoples’ heads and hearts get fired up to act now.
roles. This ensures you get those who are closest to the products, services, customers on a day-today basis. It ensures diversity of relevant thought. The leadership must believe in the potential value of the innovations that will come from populations in the business that they’re not accustomed to tapping.
That’s correct. The volunteer army or innovation network will be key because it can blast the opportunities out - bottom up - and be tested for relevance. This isn’t altruism for employees. It’s a genuine drive for hidden innovations that can change the business. Give me an example?
Also, a large change effort must involve volumes of people. A common mistake is to appoint change specialists, high potentials, and project managers to “go change the organisation”. They cannot do it on a large scale or in a way that makes it sustainable. There are not enough of them, and people don’t like being told what to do. Many employees want to be involved and own the change. Leaders have to give them permission to do so. Don’t expect just a few people to pull it off. You need many to raise their hands - to volunteer - dive in, and work together and with leadership in a highlycoordinated fashion. The volumes of volunteers must be a diagonal slice of the organisation – a broad representation of ranks and
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How do you ensure that the people on the coalface connect? When building your ‘volunteer army’, your team must intentionally and systematically reach out across the organisation, including to the coalface where “real work” is done and present the opportunity. The only criterion is that an individual wants to help pursue the opportunity. A volunteer is not judged on seniority, title or role. I can guarantee that the desire to take part will be strong and immediate. Involvement is infectious and connections form naturally. So these people have the ideas to improve the business, but don’t always have the conduit to get their ideas through?
The US Army was a client of ours. A large base was required by the Pentagon to produce helicopter pilots at a greatly increased rate. Bureaucracy, siloes, and hierarchy were major obstacles. The goal had nothing to do with culture. Failure to produce the asked for number of new pilots would impact national security and take a terrible toll on the existing pilots being asked to do more deployments with less and less time between those deployments. A ”bubble” in one level of trainees was creating a backlog for the next level of training facilities and resources. Additionally, a pervasive culture
of blame-shifting among various military, civilian, and contractors groups stood in the way. The commanding officers decided to take a completely different approach - almost contrary to the “army way.” Working with us, they empowered individuals across and down the ranks to generate thousands of ideas to address the challenge. They openly fostered collaboration. As a result, they completely changed ineffective processes and exceeded their goals of training large number of pilots in a short time frame. Here’s the interesting thing: they instilled these new behaviours in the culture, and they took over as “the way work gets done” at the base regardless of the initiative. It’s critical to mention, though, that the army hierarchy remained. They just have two systems operating in tandem with each other: one is the traditional leadership and organizational structure, the other is the system of volunteers working together to innovate. One supports the other in what we call a “dual operating system.” The US Army is such a good example because everyone
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knows how rigid it is, how change resistant. This base proved it could change quickly and repeatedly.
organisations fail to see the small wins, let alone celebrate them. That’s the food for the volunteer army.
Timescales of change - two months or two years?
Something real happens, so simple steps like an email, newsletters, the communications are important?
It is not set but there is a floor. A common mistake is having a big goal but defining change in a small way – giving it limited time and money. The small, short-lived efforts run by the “appointed few” are simply “change management” projects. And you get what you pay for. Leaders must unstick their people from the notion that change – or transformation - will be quick. Typically, we say 18 and 24 months to learn how to lead change yourselves as an organisation. You need to complete one full transformation cycle to build the knowledge and skills necessary to repeat it. So, it’s longer than most people are prepared for. Our research shows this to be true. The essential factor is the identification and celebration of wins. So if change is a molecule of transformation, wins are the molecules of results. Common mistakes are when
Absolutely. You need urgency and the identification of small wins and the celebration of them through many channels. This keeps the volunteer army feeling engaged and validated. You deal with many clients across the world, lots of success, what are the chances? The chances are high if you don’t give up. Corporate stamina is essential. Early success shoots itself in the foot when leaders declare victory too soon. It causes leadership and, therefore, everyone else, too back off, decelerate, and the organisation undershoots the goal. Persistence and consistency are crucial. What investment is needed? What about cash poor organisations?
Our approach to get people to sign up because they want to do it, want to raise their hands. They are often the busiest people in the organisation, but they find the energy. Here’s the counterintuitive part. The fact of “working with what you already have” – people – is what we call an “insourced” solution that seldom requires additional investments. With access to so much information about the how, what, where, when there tends to be a greatly reduced need for outsourced, or costly, solutions. You need to pay for people to brainstorm, plan and go act, that’s where the investment is. Grass roots is the best way forward. It’s low cost upfront, stays low-cost. Relative to the return on investment, the cost seems cheap.
wins, the small ones; the tactics of gathering the wins is the important aspects here. Careful correlation reveals what wins lead to results, what actions to continue, what to stop. The little things that you could do to have a big impact? Perhaps a leader doesn’t buy in, what could you do? At a middle level people are either the obstacle or the answer for large scale transformation. Engage these staff within the volunteer army, name them as critical; they are the liaison between the top and the bottom, they have to enable both sets of people above and below. Invite them, don’t tell them what to do.
If leaders don’t buy in then will it work? No. How do you measure the success? This goes back to the small wins. At the beginning, you set up the metrics – the needles that you want to see move. Track the
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TECHNO FEAST INNOVATIVE FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
Noel Hunwick is the cofounder of the Inamo group of restaurants, which offer a new way to both order and enjoy your food. His vision, which is at the core of the Inamo experience, was the interactive ordering system. Diners select their dishes and place orders directly from an illustrated food and drinks menu projected onto their table surface. Diners can also set the mood, discover the local neighbourhood, and even order a taxi home, all from their table. We spoke to Noel in London to discover more about his ground breaking system, and what inspired him to start up.
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Was the business idea yours? I cofounded the business with Danny Potter who I knew each other from university. I did a couple of amusing jobs before I set up the business, so I was ready to move on! Such as? I worked for one of the magazines that have featured on ‘Have I Got News For You’ (an English satirical panel show that features obscure magazines, like “Biscuit World”), so yes, I was ready for a new challenge. Tell me about yourself
work out the key benefits that tech could introduce. There were several. It was obvious that you may want to order a drink, and getting a waiter’s attention can be difficult - often to the point that the impulse goes. The other key point is that often, at the end of the meal, you are forgotten about - you may wish to leave quickly to visit the theatre (or wherever you need to be), and this holds you up. Technology could help here, we thought, so the ideas came from very practical considerations. We thought that you could introduce charm, theatre and the wow factor on top of this basic idea: viewing the chefs at
I’m 32. After university, by chance I ran into Danny over a meal; and he was talking about getting technology into restaurants. Over the course of the meal, we started brainstorming and trying to
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work with a ‘Chef Cam’ (a live feed into the kitchen), being able to change the lighting on the table - which you could theme for parties or branding etc. The customer has control, but at the same time can have fun with it. There’s a big difference between the idea and starting up the business? It was a long process. We started the company in August 2005 and we opened three years later. Quite a few wrong turns. A lot of places now have tablets as part of the experience, McDonalds and the like. We thought of this some time ago, but it was all a bit clunky, so we didn’t take it up. We started to work with a design company looking at overhead projection, and there were lots of complications; we needed interactivity and ruggedness to combine to withstand a restaurant environment. We began with a wooden test rig in a bedroom for a year and a half - you can imagine that our partners were less than delighted by this! (Laughs) Gradually we got friends round at different stages to test the rig. It took a long time. We had two or three venues that fell through. We needed
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somewhere with profile, good exposure, so Soho fitted the brief quite well. However, one table in a bedroom is quite different to Soho in London! Until a few months before launch it was just a small group of us, very compact. We’re now up to 110 staff. So I’m walking into the restaurant for the first time, talk me through what happens... Basically, you come in and that probably functions like a normal restaurant - you would be greeted and your booking confirmed. When you get to the table, that’s when things change. The tables don’t start up automatically, they need to be primed to do so by staff. As you sit down the projector starts and the table is illuminated. This comes from above the table. The table looks very normal, but there is a touchpad inserted and this is how you interact. It’s intuitive and robust.
and this gives you a flavour of what’s to come. You then gradually build up your order. It isn’t difficult! You don’t need to be computer literate; we get up to three thousand guests across the restaurants each week, and we have never had any issues. What do people think of the experience? Our feedback is good. We give out cards after each meal and it’s great to hear such positive reviews. Our weaknesses have come historically from the fact that we are running both a food and technology business, neither of which we had done before! Our experience is very personal, there is lots of contact with the guests which perhaps you wouldn’t expect.
If you touch the panel the magic starts. Menu options start to appear: this includes food, drink as well as service options. All you do then is use the cursor to navigate the menu. In front of you is a virtual dish so you can see images of the food, which people like – they love to take photos of the food,
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How many people do you employ? 95 over two sites in London. What advice would you give to people wanting to follow in your footsteps? Definitely don’t do too much. A compact and well executed menu works well, keep your business offer simple in communication and in delivery. Don’t be everything to all men. Grasp the bigger picture. You will always have complaints, but step back and remember all the good times people have had, focus on the positive if possible. What did you study? Classics and English. When I was a kid I worked in restaurants to make a buck. I was OK actually – if you omit me spilling a pavlova against a wall on one occasion.
teachers, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’m not sure I do still! (laughs) However I’m good at bonding with the team, I’m quite well organised and I enjoy the creative side of things. It’s long hours, though less so now, in terms of direct operations; we used to do everything and that was a great way to learn.
Plans going forward? We’re looking at different approaches: licensing is an area of interest. We’re quite early adopters of technology so expanding the ideas to others with franchising is an option. Packaging it up for others. We may look at more restaurants ourselves, but there’s nothing definite yet.
Did you always want to work for yourself? No. I think Danny my partner did. My parents are both
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YAMBLA THE INNOVATION PLATFORM FOR YOUR WORKFORCE.
Yoeri Roels is the cofounder of Yambla, a fun, simple and social way for companies to collect ideas from employees and customers, and to make them happen. Yambla allows you to collect ideas when they strike, get notified about the most promising ones and use the social momentum to make them happen. We spoke to Yoeri about how he came upon the idea for the platform, and how he made it a reality.
Tell us about yourself Yoeri. I grew up in Belgium; a small town 20 minutes outside Brussels. I studied computer science, and then went to work for a big corporation in the IT industry. This is where the idea came from. Basically we observed that it was hard for employees and management to find common ground in fostering innovation. It was hard to get engagement. That’s how Yambla was born. There are two founders, and we have worked together on other projects. He’s a similar age to me, 28. Did you always have a desire to be the boss? I don’t know. It came naturally when I saw the opportunity, and I thought: why don’t we just try this? It felt right. We gave it a go and when things started to take off, that felt really good. I would never go back now. You wouldn’t consider working for others now?
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Perhaps a really sexy company, one I adore. Who do you adore? Coca Cola, Disney: companies that carry out a dream. They have such strong vision – I really admire them. Tell us about the journey to fruition. An idea is just a small part of the execution. It’s something I thought about long and hard. Am I really going to quit my safe job to do this? It felt natural though. Everyone has ideas, but you need passion and I had this regarding the problem, it kept me going. The first months were really hard; you have nothing but a dream, not to mention the financial risk. Passion keeps you going. If you don’t love it, forget it.
How did you get the infrastructure together? It’s never a one-man job. I found a co-founder then the second step was to find some income. I started selling the idea very early, then built the product. This way we knew we had something to aim towards, a marketplace. This income kept us going. I was on the road for one month just selling, then we got on with building it bootstrapping with the income. You’re based between Belgium and America. I was always looking at America. Everything is possible there and they have the marketplace. We stared to grow in Belgium, so we had to take the next step and dream big. I started by targeting the dream company, Coca Cola and we started conversations with them. I just loved everything about dealing with them, so we moved to America to target that marketplace. Tell me about the app, how does it work? Basically we provide value to employees who have ideas, and then managers who are looking for the ideas. Employees have the app, about 70 per cent of our work is this way, and they can pitch ideas. You have a limited amount of characters
like twitter, and they send the ideas to their peers. We then measure the interest from your peers who start support it by taking it viral. We measure how it’s growing across networks. We measure the ‘social heat’. Popularity isn’t the only measure. Innovation needs excitement though - people need to be interested! We measure passion. You need to then gauge what the company wants to do with the idea. Ideas have to go through certain gates. So if you have an idea for HR we send the idea to the person responsible for HR, this way we accelerate ideas through the company. If I wanted to implement Yambla within my company, how would I go about it? You need to discover with us the process, we have some best practice examples. We analyse the best way to do it. We then help you launch to create value for everyone. It becomes a living thing. It matures with the company.
sharing our way is about creating movements, people get excited and it’s accelerated. It introduces a startup culture in large organisations. What’s the next year looking like? We have big plans. We want to be the market leaders and we want to be a disruption machine via engagement and ideas! Any advice for people wanting to start up? Drop the fear. All the stands between you and your dream is leaving that comfort zone. You can fail at your corporate job or fail at your dream. There are so many people who hate their job - just follow your heart, it’s not that hard. If it’s about passion you’ll get there; if it’s about making money you’ll probably fail. Money is just part of the picture.
What’s the feedback? People love it. However there needs to be a financial return; once fully adopted we are seeing this though. Idea
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NHS MANCHESTER GLOBAL HEALTHCARE INNOVATION
How the NHS Has Made Manchester a Leader in Global Healthcare Innovation. When you think of Manchester, what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s music or football. Maybe it’s the industrial revolution, or even a certain soap opera. As an honorary Mancunian, I can tell you that innovation is thriving in this diverse Northern city. From the BBC’s MediaCity to numerous successful tech startups, Manchester is booming. If you’re searching for healthcare innovation, look at Corridor Manchester: a 243 hectare area containing universities, hospitals, cultural venues, a science park and a workforce of around 55,000. It’s the home of a hotbed of healthcare innovation. This combination of research, knowledge, facilities and investment has elevated
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Manchester into the enviable position of global hotspot for innovation in healthcare. At the heart of this thriving health industry lies Trustech: an NHS innovation service. Trustech aims to improve healthcare both in the UK and globally through the development of innovative products and services. Interestingly, the ideas come from NHS staff and also private companies. Trustech incubates and nurtures these ideas in its Manchester hub at Citylabs; offering services including help with intellectual property, developing products, running trials and focus groups, and helping commercialise innovations by NHS staff.
the innovation message from the top.” Keith Chantler is founder and Executive Director of Trustech. The term “commercial” seems to be a dirty word within the NHS, doesn’t it? How do you convince the NHS that there is a need for it to evolve? One of the challenges that the NHS faces is the view that all of the solutions lie within our own hands, when they’re clearly not. We need to collaborate with other businesses.
“It’s not a hospital’s job to take commercialisation all of the way, but it’s their responsibility to send out
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We ran a program, Smart Solutions and put out a call for products and services that were being used in other industries that might have some benefits if transferred laterally into healthcare. We got nine brandnew products that weren’t being used in the NHS, brought them in, gave them rigorous trials and of them, a number of ideas came forward. One of them was an anti-microbial paint that was being used in fish processing plants, to keep them clean and infection-free. That was transferable. The NHS didn’t pay for the development costs. There are solutions out there that aren’t of our evolution. When it comes to the success of the Trustech model, is location the key? There’s a lot of evidence that clusters of things within sectors work well. There is recognition that a cluster of like-minded businesses; in our case health sector businesses, academe, supply-chain businesses, all work best in our type of set-up. Clusters were being pushed out of cities, to greenfield sites. They were trying to create business parks, science parks,
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out of the city on cheaper land. They’re coming back into the cities like Manchester. There’s a recognition that it’s where people want to live and socialise, they don’t want to be out in a backwater. You come into the city, you live in the city, Cities have really moved back into the realm of best-performing clusters. We’ve got that here. Trustech has benefited from being part of the Manchester cluster, the Manchester Corridor. Is there a plan for Trustech to go global, putting Manchester healthcare innovation on the map? Yes, we’re already there. We have a 10-year contact with a Chinese company, an eldercare company being developed by a Chinese entrepreneur. He spotted the new market emerging in China, where there’s an elderly, affluent population able to afford healthcare for the first time. There is no history, no culture of care homes in China. They’ve come over to the UK for guidance and that’s where Trustech has stepped-in. They’re using Trustech’s expertise and taking it back to China. “This organisation is about growth. Growth
of individuals, growth of intellectual property and ultimately the growth of businesses.” John Leach is a non-executive director of Trustech and is a well-known speaker on business and innovation as well as being a lecturer of entrepreneurship. Do you think that the NHS on the whole ignores the revenue it could bring in through innovation? Yes. There’s more that we could extract from the NHS in terms of expertise, knowledge and Intellectual Property and I think that’s also the case with surrounding universities. There could be and should be a better way for value extraction without taking away the quality of care that the individual receives. More could be done. The real challenge is cultures colliding. Is part of the issue that NHS staff are measured on performance and not on innovation? That’s the point. There are a couple of Trustech innovations that have come from clinicians, consultants. That takes a very enlightened person. People join
the medical professions with the aim to make sure that their patients leave the hospital fully intact. They’re not looking at value creation. If we can find those role models and we can find those individuals that have done it, then we can expose those heroes that have been able to balance commercial with science, with healthcare. It then makes it real to others. You can do both. It’s not wrong to do both. We don’t celebrate the successes enough. What’s the solution? One way you address this is to create communities of people that have done it. That have been successful in the innovation process. Create a community of people that have come-up with an idea and got it to market. A community that is willing to share experiences and talk to others. That for me is where the gap is. Trustech started in 2001, where is healthcare innovation in the UK heading now?
and hopefully a move into other parts of the UK, we can start to bring it together by creating conversations with those that have already capitalised on their innovations. Growth essentially. You get entrepreneurial growth by pulling people together. A fast-track learning environment, a safe environment to share experiences and ideas. That’s where it’s at. That’s what Trustech offers. How has Manchester become a global hotspot for healthcare innovation? It’s a combination of academia, access to Europe’s biggest hospital site, research, a readily-available skilled workforce and determination, all being pulled together by the innovative approach of Trustech; an NHS organisation. Find Trustech at http://www. trustech.org.uk. Find Corridor Manchester at www.corridormanchester. com Sarah Bennett
We shouldn’t underestimate what has already been achieved. With initiatives like Citylabs
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NEWS A FEW THINGS THAT CAUGHT OUR GAZE
ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL
BIKE THEFT? NOT A PROBLEM
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Takura Yoshida and his Logbar team’s wearable, ‘Ring’, is finally on the market; on sale at $269. Available after a year of manufacturing adjustments, this marriage of design and functionality allows you to use wand-like gestures to control gadgets around the home, send texts, and even pay your bills. Also unveiled, and available in March, is the ‘Ring Hub’ accessory, which adds the ability to control home appliances (like your lights or TV).
French company Connected Cycle have created a smart bike pedal that will alert bike owners when their bike has been moved, using their smartphone app. With its GPS tracker and cloud platform connection, the smart pedal will let you know where your bike is at all times; helping to combat theft, but also helping you find where you parked your bike. Living up to its title, the smart pedal also tracks activity: speed, route, incline and calories burned for each trip you make on your bike. http://connectedcycle.com/
More info at http://logbar.jp/
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PUTTING ALAN TITCHMARSH OUT OF BUSINESS
THE PAPER SCARF
Drone makers Parrot are Versatile wearable tech just branching out into the luxury got an exciting new addition: life of plants, with their new the scarf that you can write devices: the Parrot Pot and H2O. on. Made by Little Factory, the Holding 2 litres of soil and water, paper scarf is made of Tyvek the Parrot Pot measures soil – a synthetic material usually moisture, fertilizer, temperature used in insulation and medical and light every 15 minutes, and packaging – which provides allows you to water your plant both the warmth of a scarf and with a tap on your smartphone. the ability to write on it at a H2O is a simpler device that moment’s notice. This accessory offers similar functionality; a is every wistful writer’s dream. sensor that you stick in the soil and connect to a water bottle. http://littlefactory.com/ Designed to water a plant for collections/paper-scarf up to 3 weeks at a time, you can sleep easy knowing the Parrot Pot can connect to your smartphone to allow you to monitor your plant’s progress. http://www.parrot.com/uk/ products/flower-power/
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