Global Innovation Magazine

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BOYAN SLAT ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT INNOVATORS OF OUR TIME? -

THE POWER OF STORYTELLING PRESIDENT OBAMAS ADVISOR SHARES THE KNOWLEDGE -

BRIDGING THE GAP WOMEN MAKING THEIR WAY WITH CODE -

MONEYBALL FOR BUSINESS THE FUTURE OF HR -

DESIGN THINKING WATERLESS TOILETS, SMOKELESS OVENS -

THE OCEAN CLEAN UP GLOBAL INNOVATION -

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ISSUE 3 OCT 2014

CONTENTS FOUNDER’S VOICE THE INSPIRATIONAL ISSUE

RENEWABLE POWER TO THE PEOPLE

GLOBAL INNOVATION -

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INTERVIEW WITH DR SAM DUBY FROM ACCESS ENERGY, THE KENYAN BASED COMPANY WHO ARE BRINGING RENEWABLE ENERGY TO REMOTE AREAS OF AFRICA.

INSPIRATIONAL INNOVATION BOLD BEANIES WAS LAUNCHED AS A DIRECT RESULT OF ITS FOUNDER’S EXPERIENCE OF CANCER. EMILIENNE REBEL TELLS ABOUT THE JOURNEY SO FAR.

BRIDGING THE GAP WOMEN WHO CODE ARE IN THE MINORITY. WE TALK TO 2 WOMEN TRYING TO REDRESS THE BALANCE.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ALTY THE CEO OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE.

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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THE OCEAN CLEAN UP BOYAN SLAT TELLS US OF HIS BOLD AMBITION TO CLEAN THE OCEANS FREE OF PLASTIC.

MONEYBALL FOR BUSINESS INTERVIEW WITH ALISTAIR SHEPHERD CO-FOUNDER OF SABERR, THE HR ANALYTICS PEOPLE.

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DESIGN THINKING

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THE POWER OF STORYTELLING

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ROSS TIERNEY TELLS US WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A PRODUCT DESIGNER.

INTERVIEW WITH DR. MICHAEL SCHOLL MD AT HOMBURG & PARTNER, AND JULIUS VAN DE LAAR, POLITICAL STRATEGIST AND CAMPAIGN CONSULTANT.

NEWS A FEW THINGS THAT CAUGHT OUR GAZE

FOUNDER’S VOICE THE INSPIRATIONAL ISSUE

This month sees the interview with Boyan Slat, one that we have been after for some time. It’s not often that someone creates a buzz like Boyan. I found out about him via a friends feed on Facebook a few years back. Next thing you know he’s gone viral! That’s the power of social media, and a brilliant idea of course. Boyan is not without his critics however and his idea has encountered much debate as to whether or not it’s really feasible. This remains to be seen, but if he’s right, he will have earned a place alongside some greatest innovators of the last 20 years.

We also talked to an award winning female innovator this issue whose story is an

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inspiration to us all. Emilienne Rebel founded her business after experiencing cancer herself, she was great fun to interview and we wish her every continued success with her business.

As always get in touch with stories and comments.

Enjoy and spread the word...

JAMES@GLOBALINNOVATION MAGAZINE.COM

RENEWABLE POWER TO THE PEOPLE ***

Access Energy are a Kenyan based company developing remote, villagescale, renewable energy micro-grids. They have designed technology that allows remote control, cashless, pay-as-you-go payment services using the mobile phone networks.

The pricing mechanism means that those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ can finally benefit from the advantages of clean, reliable renewable energy. In subSaharan Africa, 70% of the population do not have access to electricity, and in rural areas this number rises to 98%. Pay-as-yougo micro-payments have revolutionized access to mobile telephones in Africa and Access Energy intend to do the same with energy.

Global Innovation Magazine spoke to their Technical Director Dr Sam Duby.

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The renewable industry is obviously science and engineering focused, has this been a lifelong interest of yours?

There’s a family line up photograph, from when I was about six years old, and my mum always says “isn’t it funny what routes we have all taken?” when she sees it. She says that mine has been the most predictable in that I always wanted to be an inventor, I always built stuff and was curious etc. My brain works that way so it was pretty inevitable.

I studied industrial product design. I have always had a pull in two directions; one from an engineering perspective building machines - but I have also always had a strong desire to build beautiful things. There has always been a link between art and engineering so design for me had to have the conceptual as well as the hard science, hard engineering element.

Were there people around you who designed things, built things and took them apart?

Absolutely. My father’s an architect, his father was an artist and illustrator, his sister was an illustrator, so definitely lots from my father’s side. My great grandfather on my mother’s side was a ship builder from Scotland so I think there was some genetic influence somewhere from her side!

Where did you study?

I grew up all over the world, but most of my later education was in England. I went to Brunel University and continued to do my PhD there later. I was born in Swaziland (South Africa) and spent my first seven years there. My father was building

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schools for the local government, and my mother started a health project concerned with reproductive health and family planning, so I grew up very much in a development context.

Then I lived in Bangladesh for several years, then Nigeria and in between we would come back to England.

What was your working route after University?

First of all I took a year out between undergraduate and postgraduate studies, travelling, getting education out of my system. Then I did a PhD and afterwards I got further funding to see if I could commercialise the technology I had been working on. I then went to Brazil doing some raw jungle engineering, came back to the UK and started working for a group that gathered investment, for innovative, renewable energy, green technology ideas. My job was to liaise with scientists and to translate the ideas between the investors and all the parties concerned.

A bridge between the idea and investment I guess.

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After this my wife and I wanted to get back to Africa, to perhaps try something a little more wholesome, and then an opportunity came up with Harrison Leaf (now Managing Director of Access Energy) who I had met very briefly in London previously. He called me out of the blue and said “I have this crazy idea to build wind turbines in Kenya, what do you think?”. I took a punt and went out to Kenya.

So this is the story of Access Energy starting to develop...

Yes. The original motivation, and what we were doing when we first went out there are now completely different. It was a very necessary path to follow, though very different to where we are now.

The original concept was to teach people how to build wind turbines, using locally available scrap materials. This, as far as I know, hadn’t really been done before, it was super interesting.

Learning the language, trawling over scrap yards, meeting the people. We realised very quickly

however, that a big impact would not happen this way. Only so many people have those skills or the desire to do that.

It was much better for us to build high quality wind turbines, and sell them but people didn’t have the capital up front to buy the equipment.

We needed to find some way of bridging the gap, of financing things for them. So we went down the route of leasing the wind turbines out. However these are quite valuable assets often just sitting out in the middle of nowhere - someone could walk off with them very easily.

So we started to develop little boxes that sat on the turbines, which you could plug into the mobile phone network telling us how much energy was made, that everything was ok, that the turbines weren’t being stolen, that sort of thing.

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Then we heard about M-Pesa, which would just change everything for our business.

So what is M-Pesa?

It’s absolutely amazing and has revolutionised the way money works in Kenya. Basically, if I sell bananas for a living, and sell all my bananas during the day and have a wedge of cash, I don’t take it home. I go to a little green shack, give it to the guy there, and he sends me a text message letting me know about the credit.

This ‘cloud’ account is then accessed via my phone. Your telephone becomes your ATM. To this end our boxes could be used to sell power, so we do all the maintenance of the grids, and this way no capital needs to be put down. People could pay for power as they used it in a very culturally appropriate way using the same mechanism everyone already uses to buy airtime for their phones. We were able to sell people power, at a much cheaper price than kerosene (fuel). That opened up the market, because anyone who used kerosene previously could now be a customer.

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How are things going?

It’s going really, really well. The demand and market are there, and the desire to invest is there.

Our role is bridging the gap between these two worlds. We have five of our own grids up and running.

We will build a small power station, largely solar powered but if the conditions allow we will have a couple of wind turbines also and we run power lines from the hub out to a hundred businesses and homes.

they seem happy, it’s clearly a big advantage to what they had before, replacing kerosene in the house.

It sounds like there are endless possibilities...

There are defined criteria before considering installing a microgrid, but yeah the market is worldwide. We have the data and the experience and we feel it’s not a crazy idea anymore.

How many customers do you have?

If you take into account grids built by others that we’re running with our technology, we deliver clean energy to 10,000 people in 23 villages in Kenya.

Our technology controls USD 0.7M worth of solar power equipment. This is a private sector investment.

What’s customer feedback been like?

The proof is I’m the pudding, people buy our product, and

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INSPIRATIONAL INNOVATION ***

Aged 31, Emilienne Rebel, was diagnosed with Grade 3 advanced breast cancer. No one expects to get cancer, but with no family history of the disease it was a complete bolt from the blue.

The following year was a roller coaster of hospital visits, chemotherapy and operations, not withstanding the fact that she had 2 children, the youngest being only 7 months old.

Hair loss, for women particularly, is a difficult thing to face during treatment. The change in appearance, coupled with the physicality of having a cold head is challenging.

Wearing a wig can be uncomfortable and the simple wish to be stylish and warm at the same time often is impossible. It was from this realisation that a business was born.

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Emilienne founded the company www.boldbeanies. co.uk to try to offer options to fellow sufferers, to make a bad situation just a little more bearable. The product range includes beanie hats for women, men and children as well as a range of textile floral arrangements (the bouquets are 3 or more of the beanies, rolled to look like flowers). The innovation here is that flowers are often not permitted on cancer wards, but textiles are.

Emilienne won a special recognition award at the British Female Inventors and Innovators International Awards in 2009. She spoke to Global Innovation Magazine about her journey.

Have you always wanted to run your own business? Are you that kind of person?

I always wanted to have my own business, but I always assumed it would be with a partner, but that never quite panned out.

Obviously I got ill, and then it was a case of what do I want to do with my life? I needed something flexible because of the children, so having your own business gives you that.

Running a business with young children is tough.

Yes it’s difficult. My youngest was 7 months when I was diagnosed, and I had my second round of chemotherapy starting on her first birthday, so having coped with that... They are older now, and starting to get interested in what I’m doing.

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So the business was a direct result of your illness.

Yes. You read about people who write books, and they say: “always write from personal experience”, so it was a question of why even consider anything else? This is what I need to do.

So yes it was a very direct result of having cancer, being a young person with cancer, and an active person who had to keep the household running.

When you lose your hair, you lose your eyebrows, your whole face changes; then if you can’t get comfortable, you can’t wear a wig in bed, so I started wearing woollen beanies in bed. I got too hot, took them off. I just wanted something lightweight and then something nice to look at as well. The evolution is I now work with Liberty fabrics (a London department store known for its importance in the development of the Art and Crafts movement) which was a major thing and I now make a charity hat in conjunction with them.

Tell me about how the product differs from the beanie hat, which has been around forever.

You will struggle to find a natural fibre beanie hat, or a

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thin breathable cotton beanie hat. Those we make with Liberty are a natural yarn viscose, super thin, so you hardly know you’re wearing it. That’s basically how they differ. They are made so the hem is quite high, and the labels on the outside. It’s all manufactured in the UK and the quality is outstanding.

So how did the business start to take shape?

I found a fabric I wanted to use and a local seamstress and we worked together to devise the pattern. She made up about 100 beanies for me. I then listed them on eBay and they sold.

This proved to me that even without marketing people were searching for them. That was the start. It became evident that the seamstress couldn’t keep up with demand so I needed a new manufacturer. I was lucky to find a sportswear manufacturer locally. They were amazing.

some in America, Canada and in the UK. We’re a fairly unique product in terms of material, and because of how nice the products looks.

So you got an award for innovation?

Yes I won the ‘British Female Inventors and Innovation Award’ for creativity, really proud of that actually, it’s opened my eyes to the world of innovation. It’s an amazing world out there!

How are things business-wise?

I ship all over the world. The perfect product is here; perfect size, perfect material and you don’t start with that at the beginning of a business. It’s an evolution. I’m gearing now towards distributors. I have

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BRIDGING THE GAP WOMEN AND CODE

In the UK, women hold just 15% of the IT positions in the country, and this statistic has remained largely unchanged for the last 10 years, and is mirrored worldwide.

In June 2014, Google announced – with a mediasavvy, girl-power campaign - its “Made with Code” program: an investment of US$50 million into initiatives that encourage girls to learn to code, by making bracelets and accessorising selfies. Is this the answer or is it something simpler and let’s face it, less “girly”? I spoke to two female coders and asked them what they think can be done.

“Don’t be put off by being different” Sheree Atcheson is the founder of “Women Who Code” UK (Belfast, London and Bristol).

A software engineer for Kainos Software, she aims to eradicate the gender bias in the IT industry by creating “tech havens” for women.

Why Computer Science Sheree?

Since an early age, I was bashing together HTML and making websites (about my dogs).

I’ve always had an interest in “making things”, so making things about my dogs, which was my other love, was a win-win situation. From there, I chose GCSE ICT where I realised I wasn’t happy just using software.

I wanted to make.

I founded WWC UK in September 2013. I founded it for a number of reasons: I am a software engineer (with a computer science degree), so the gender divide is something that has always obvious to me. But more recently, when working at Kainos CodeCamp; which is an amazing free 2 week long course that aims to teach teens about Android App development and what it’s really like to work in IT, I noticed there was a substantial lack of girls.

It was only then I realised how many generations of young girls we have missed out on.

The young girls who have never considered a career in IT because they thought there was no place for them there and that it was a “man’s game”. Because of this, I wanted to do something about it.

In your opinion, how can the gender gap be bridged in your industry?

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You obviously care deeply about equal representations of the genders in the industry. What’s your ideal solution?

logically and that means that when you tackle bigger coding problems at GCSE, A-Levels, and University, the hurdle is substantially minimised.

There is no set answer for this.

We need to target young girls and educate them from a young age on the possibility of working in IT. Yes, not all of them will choose the career, but shouldn’t they have a choice?

Check if there is a local CoderDojo or YoungRewiredState centre. If there isn’t ask a parent to help.

Look up online tutorials. There are lots of great resources out there for all levels of expertise.

Check out Scratch, Codemonkey, Codeacademy and Pluralsight.

In 2014, 245 girls took Computing for A-Level versus 3515 boys. Just think how many young girls who we’ve missed out on, who could have been very talented in this industry.

Thanks Sheree and finally, what is it about coding that excites you?

The ability to create anything.

What advice do you have for any young people considering a career in technology?

Don’t be put off by being different. Yes, all of your friends might not be interested and yes, they might think it’s stupid. But, you know what’s not stupid? Having a lucrative career that gives you the possibility of earning a lot of money. Starting coding early on means you gain the basic understanding of thinking

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“ Rather than going the extra mile to find a gender gap and complain about it, we should focus on inspiring young kids, both

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girls and boys and seeing what comes of it” Paula Clerkin is a 3rd year Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence student at the University of Nottingham.

Paula, why computer science?

I’ve had my heart set on doing Comp Sci ever since I can remember. When I was young, I played SIMS a lot. I got really, really into it and I would change variables in the code and import edited Paint files so that I had crazy things like bright pink people and men having alien babies. I never really understood what Comp Sci was but I knew that it was to do with the code that I was messing around with.

Given that you’re currently in the UK Education system, is enough being done to support girls and encourage girls into Computer Science?

I know that the curriculum is changing and computing is being taught earlier, which is definitely a step in the right

direction. I think that there should be more after school programming clubs like Code Club. I’m a Code Club volunteer and one thing I noticed when talking to the kids is that they didn’t know how to do this at home. If kids are familiar and competent with school computers, why limit their exposure to them only during lesson time. Kids should be able to use the school computers as not all of them are fortunate enough to have access to those resources at home.

many more girls in attendance and these are girls that know their stuff.

And Paula, what is it about coding that excites you?

How the possibilities are endless.

Find out more about Women Who Code UK at www.womenwhocode.co.uk.

Find out more about Code Club at www.codeclub.org.uk

So, in your opinion, how can the gender gap be bridged?

I’ve read a few blogs of women in tech and it’s always made me feel uncomfortable. I feel like if you seek to make a big deal out of it, the more noticeable it will be. This to me is the wrong approach. Rather than going the extra mile to find a gender gap and complain about it, we should focus on inspiring young kids, both girls and boys and seeing what comes of it.

The gender gap is being bridged slowly and naturally, there’s no need to go about it heavyhandedly. I see on University open days that there are so

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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ALTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER WITH THE UK’S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE The Intellectual Property Office is the official Government body responsible for intellectual property (IP) rights, which include patents, designs, trademarks and copyright. It promotes innovation by providing a clear, accessible and widely understood IP system, which enables the economy and society to benefit from knowledge and ideas.

Global Innovation Magazine spoke to its CEO John Alty to discuss some of his work.

What’s the remit of the office?

It’s a one-stop shop for everything to do with policy and delivery related to patents, trademarks, copyright and designs. We also try to help businesses with advice and information so that they can decide how they best protect their IP. We are not an enforcement agency, but we do work closely with the police, customs and trading standards to ensure that IP infringement is dealt with.

If I invented something and I felt that it was being infringed could you help?

You have several options.

Ultimately if it’s a patent that you feel is being infringed, you may need to go to court, but we do offer a mediation service and a service whereby we can give an opinion on the validity of your patent. We’re conscious that for small businesses and for inventors, hiring lawyers can

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cost money, so we work hard to offer solutions outside of court, and offer cheaper court options.

How do you see your role?

It’s all about innovation. We’re trying to operate a system that makes innovation easier, that both rewards creators and inventors, but also makes sure that other people that use those inventions are able to do that, because often creativity and innovation come from sharing knowledge as well as protecting it. We are trying to strike a balance, with policy, so recently we changed copyright law to modernise it for the digital age.

We also encourage innovation and grant rights to ensure rights holders get what they need - but not more than they need. This way we don’t hold innovation back.

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How do you promote innovation?

Working with small businesses is key. IP is quite complicated, it can be a bit of a barrier or something that people are concerned about, so we see ourselves as having an important role both in terms of information and advice, but also helping small businesses.

We work with lots of partners who deal with small business; for example, we’re working with the accountancy profession so they can answer questions that businesses have, and help with signposting. Also for high growth businesses on Government support programmes, we fund audits of IP which can help them when they are looking for finance.

The remit of the office seems much more varied than I originally thought...

We published a report last year about IP and finance. More and more companies have their assets as intangible assets, not bricks and mortar. We work with financial institutions to help them assess the value of IP, to take some of the uncertainty out of it. I’m not saying there is a

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magic solution but we have had plenty of support from banks and business bodies, as they see that it’s important for growth.

so we have a wealth of information to share with other departments to help with policy and innovation.

Did you always want to work in IP?

You must have to employ experts right across the board as any type of product can come through the door?

I’ve worked in the Business Department for most of my career, I used to be responsible for our interest in manufacturing and also the way markets are regulated. A lot of the businesses that I now deal with, our customers, such as Jaguar Land Rover, or British Aerospace are businesses that I have dealt with earlier in my career. IP is a more recent enthusiasm. I joined the office in 2010 so that was a steep learning curve.

One of the fascinating things must surely by looking at the products coming through the door, do you get much opportunity to do so?

We have people who are qualified to look at the inventions and the products, but I talk a lot to our staff. They tell me what’s coming in, giving me a feel for the technology. We have an analytics department,

That’s one of the unique points of the office. We have to cover all the technology areas. This year we will have 300 graduate level or beyond, technologists. They have to cover the whole range of technology areas. They have to keep up to date with what’s going on.

What’s the best part of your job? What do you really enjoy?

I think it’s a mix. There’s a wide range of things that we are doing.

I come from a policy background so I enjoy setting the framework, keeping it up to date and trying to understand the way technology markets are going.

I like to get out and about so I can talk to businesses directly and hear their thoughts about IP and how they use it. We also do some fun things. We’ve been working with the music industry and have brought out an app: a game called Music Inc. This allows gamers to guide aspiring musicians through the highs and lows of a music career in the 21st century. It’s about managing a band and the challenges they face in piracy. The point is, in a fairly fun way, to encourage understanding as to why copyright is important. So far it has about 100,000 users and it has sparked lots of discussion.

world. We also employ people abroad, so we have people in China, India, Brazil and South East Asia that support UK businesses with IP issues. The international aspect is really important. We employ about 1000 people in total.

I’m really proud of the fact that last year the UK was rated one of the top places to obtain IP rights, and protect and exploit those rights, globally. We’re trying to maintain that position.

It gives us a real buzz to know that the UK is a great place for businesses to innovate and for IP businesses to grow.

What’s currently going on in regards to innovation?

A big piece of work coming on stream this year is looking at the copyright system, making it fit for the digital era. There’s a huge amount of change due to the ease of copying - much of this is illegal - so we are trying to make it easier for people to legitimately use stuff, which we hope will reduce illegal copying.

Also our international work where the growth is: Asia and the US. We work with other offices internationally making it easier to get rights across the

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THE OCEAN CLEAN UP ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT INNOVATORS OF OUR TIME?

Boyan Slat came to the world’s attention in a whirl of publicity, largely overnight, when his TED talk went viral. He was 18 years old at the time, and claimed to have developed a solution to collecting, and harvesting the millions of pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans.

The problem is this: Millions of tons of plastic have entered the oceans, and the plastic concentrates itself in five rotating currents, called ‘gyres’ in the oceans across the globe. The plastic is harmful to several species of marine life, and causes damage to both sea vessels and humans.

Environmentally it’s a huge problem that going forward is solved by prevention, but currently leaves us with millions of tons worth of plastics flowing around the world.

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Boyan heads an organisation called The Ocean Clean Up who are working towards a solution for collecting the plastic in the oceans. They aim to harness the power of the oceans to collect and harvest the debris. An array of floating barriers will first catch, and then concentrate the debris, enabling a platform to efficiently extract the plastic afterwards. The Ocean Clean Up is now crowd-sourcing towards what they feel will be a large-scale and operational pilot in 3-4 years’ time.

Global Innovation Magazine spoke to Boyan Slat in the Netherlands.

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What struck me when I watched your TED talk is that you have quite a lot of self-belief, and certainly a lot of positivity. Growing up, how did this instil itself in you?

Not sure on that one. My parents don’t do anything that’s relevant to the project, they are not engineers or anything, it’s not their fault I’m this way! (Laughs). I have always been interested in engineering and technology, I have always entertained myself thinking about solving problems. I was 16 years old and it struck me that I was coming across more plastic in the ocean than fish. These types of problems are the major challenges of our generation.

Did you have any particular hobbies or academic interests growing up?

Tree houses...when I was five years old I was obsessed with Lego, yeah, mostly stuff like that.

A lot of science experiments, I was a geek growing up, I still am. I have always thought about things a little differently.

Teachers would always complain, saying I would never stick to an assignment.

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You’re quite young...

Listen I’m quite old, I just turned 20. (Laughs) But I think to have such an ambition and such a big task to focus your time on, to me, I would have thought that this didn’t come out of the blue, but that it developed itself when you were growing up?

A lot of people ask about the role of teachers or parents in this, but they didn’t have a key role in this development.

So your parents were always happy for you to find your own way?

Sure. They are supportive, but it’s not like the inspiration came from them though.

associated cost and by-catch meant it wasn’t feasible. I was doing a high school science project and I decided to use this time to study the problem.

How old were you then?

16. I took a year to work on it. I had an idea to passively collect plastic by attaching (a platform) to the seabed, but then the idea developed into using the power of the ocean itself. I was in the Azores, in a restaurant on the terrace and came up with the idea of harnessing the ocean’s power to collect the plastic. Hey presto.

It’s an organisation now, so it’s grown enormously from the original idea, how did that happen?

So where did it come from then, diving?

Diving at least in terms of becoming aware of the problem.

Like everyone else I originally was thinking about nets (to clean up the ocean) but I quickly realised this wouldn’t be a feasible method. The violence and size of the ocean, and the

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That was the most difficult part of getting things done. I couldn’t stop thinking of the project and by this time I was at Delft University of Technology. I started talking to professors and industry experts, and I came up with 50 questions that I needed to answer in order for this to become a feasible solution.

The process was ridiculously slow, after a couple of months no answers were done. I then decided to put my studies on hold, as well as socialising. I put everything into it, gave myself half a year and put all my 300 euros pocket money into it. Originally only two people offered help, but after the TED talk went viral I was getting about 1500 emails a day with people offering their help. This enabled the crowd-funding and a team to be assembled which grew to 100 people. We then proved our feasibility.

terms is tough. Lots of people were also abroad. Canada, Australia etc.

Did you get financial support from Governments or foundations?

Plenty offered their support.

However right now our funding is via individuals, companies, institutes and crowd-funding.

Tell me about the pilot stage?

Right now, we are working towards a large scale and operational pilot due to start in 3 to 4 years time. The largest test we have performed is 40 metres in length; eventually we will go to 100 km in the implementation phase. We eventually want to be even bigger: 200 to 500 kms.

Location-wise we have lots of options; we are waiting for the outcomes of discussions.

was an experiment, thus some measurements weren’t taken.

We are looking to repeat this experiment most likely, hoping that we validate simulations.

You won’t be near shipping lanes then?

We can’t deploy in shipping lanes. As long as we comply with the rules of the ocean, this shouldn’t be a problem. However if a ship crossed it, we don’t think there would be any damage.

So there are several points globally at sea where plastics end up, gyres as they are known, have you been to any of them?

It sounds simple Boyan...

It was complicated. It’s a large number of people, but most people were volunteers and part time. Pushing people on these

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How did the largest boom test go?

40 metres was in the Azores, the test went fine. However it

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In the past half year we have done three expeditions. I participated in the first one, at the North Atlantic gyre. Yes it was very interesting.

Tell me about it...

The first three days, I try not to think about. Turns out I get seasick. There’s no way back once out there, so that was intense. Being sick for three days.

The weather cleared though, so we trawled and did experiments.

Four days away from the Internet was a good experience.

Yes. The spectrum is from about 20mm up to 3 metres.

Everything larger can be collected but that will be a manual collection process.

We have incorporated a maintenance and inspection vessel as part of the project.

So this is done automatically?

Everything is automatically captured. The booms move the plastic to the centre, to a platform where processing occurs. We can adjust the processing equipment.

Was it shocking to see?

There are no islands of plastic as some people think. It’s very dispersed the plastic. The scale is huge though. 95 per cent of the plastic is quite large.

What’s the definition of large?

All the way up to parts of boats, Gerry cans, nets, that size of object.

Is your system going to be able to collect plastic, both large and small pieces?

GI | MAR 2014

How does the ocean power contribute then?

The small plastics utilise a pump and centrifuge method to get the plastics onto the collection platform. The buffer where the plastic ends up is emptied periodically. The larger pieces have a mesh conveyor, which scoop out to a shredder, which reduces volume as well.

I wasn’t surprised at the criticism. Many people have been working on this topic for years. Suddenly an 18 year old says “I can clean the ocean”. I understand. How do I deal with it? I decided to not respond at first. It was just an idea a year ago, so the only appropriate response would be a 530 page feasibility report that shows it is actually feasible. We have now published the report. I have now published a brief response, but it’s not much different to what’s in the feasibility report.

Originally you said the collected plastic could have some worth financially, is that still the case?

It definitely has some value.

We have proven that the plastic can be turned into oil; three independent companies have

It’s a really bold idea. It’s not surprising some people are saying it can’t be done!

Does that affect you?

OCEAN CLEAN UP |031

confirmed this. Another option is mechanical recycling, we have also shown it’s suitable for injection moulding so that means we can make anything out of it. The quality is much better than expected. There are still possibilities. Fortunately there have been quite a few companies that have shown an interest in doing something with the plastic once we have it out of the ocean. We are focusing on the pilot stage though, and the opinion exists but it’s not necessary for this project to succeed.

When are you aiming to be up and running?

3.5 years will take us to the end of the pilot stage, but still things need to happen. Fund raising, manufacturing, commissioning so I think we could be operational by 2020.

Did you have any scientists or engineers that particularly inspire you?

I do get inspired by our 70 or so engineers and scientists of

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course, who it’s a pleasure to work with every day.

Are you the boss? How do you find running an organisation?

Yes. Well I’m very thankful for all the support, but looking back it I do remember it being quite a challenge. All entrepreneurs want to be in a position of going from controlling it all, to where it controls itself somewhat.

Yes sometimes it’s difficult, but you learn. Personally I really like being involved in the engineering process, so I put a lot of my time aside to work on the research and development side of things.

down in history as one of the most important innovators of our time. I’m hoping he has got it right.

At the time of writing The Ocean Clean Up had exceeded its 2 million dollar crowdfunding target. For more information go to www.theoceancleanup.com

Once in a while a project and person come along that make us stop in our tracks. The work they are doing and striving for long term is so important and wide reaching, that it can’t be ignored.

Perhaps it was Boyan’s age that got him noticed originally; social media certainly helped.

However, one thing is for sure: if he has got this right, and if it can be done, Boyan will go

OCEAN CLEAN UP |033

MONEYBALL FOR BUSINESS

Today it’s possible for an algorithm to predict if you’re going to ‘fit’ into a business. Answer a series of questions on your tablet and that could be how you’re hired (or told ‘no thanks’) by the employers of the future. We talked to Alistair Shepherd, one of the founders of Saberr, who describe themselves as ‘Moneyball for Business’. They provide tools that allow employers to optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of their workforce through the ‘intelligent’ design of teams and the recruitment of candidates who are statistically more likely to be high performing.

This is based on two main beliefs. One that a spread and diversity of personal characteristics is good for teams, and two, that a team that has a good alignment of ‘values’ has a good chance of succeeding.

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Tell us about yourself, what was it like growing up?

I’m 25, from Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland - my parents moved there when I was six. I spent all of my youth just mucking around outside - it’s very rural - had a brilliant childhood, with sports, the rest of it. I did terribly at high school; the drop-out rate was really quite high. That was the done thing: quit school as soon as you can, get a job, or learn a trade. I was really into sailing though, and I sailed for Scotland for a while. I just wasn’t engaged at school; very distracted and interested in everything else apart from what I should be focused on. My mum always said my concentration was terrible.

So you weren’t academic then?

Not really, but I wanted to go to university. It wasn’t a common thing from my high school, which almost made it worth wanting to achieve. My parents had been to university, and

It was really interesting and I became fascinated by the business side of things, the economics of it all. People were looking to buy and use the product straight the way, I found that really compelling.

I guess I thought it was a reasonable thing to do. I went to Southampton University (UK) and did aerospace engineering there, I didn’t study particularly hard but I did the four years.

More interested in other things... again. I graduated though!

After University did you work for other people?

With the lack of interest in school it sounds like you were either destined to dropout or be an entrepreneur.

I’m accidently entrepreneurial.

I never intended the plan to be the starting of a company. In my final year at university we did a project, there were four of us. We came up with a novel wave energy device, it sort of got a lot of attention both in and out of university. It was the first time that for anything I had done, anyone outside of my immediate environment had paid attention to. It was definitely the first thing I had done that perhaps had a commercial value.

This led to me being interested in business, and I got offered a scholarship on the Kauffman Global Scholars Programme in America. All of a sudden I’m being sent to Harvard, MIT and Stanford. A long way from home, an unbelievable course, with 20 passionate, driven and motivated people around me.

That was it. It kick-started me into wanting to do something commercial.

Did you come across something whilst in America that sparked the idea for Saberr?

There was series of moments.

The first at Harvard. Noam Wasserman who was a professor there who had written a book called ‘The Founders Dilemma’ and in class once he said that 83 per cent of start ups fail, and I had heard this number before.

I found that quite alarming.

However the interesting thing was that 65 per cent of these failures were because of team dynamics, issues between the founders or early employees.

One of the only things you have control of when you start a business is who you work with, and for that to be the dominant cause of failure just didn’t make sense from an engineering perspective. Why aren’t we paying attention to this?

Mathematically the problem is hugely complex, but I’m obsessed with simplicity and how things can be modelled. That’s the beauty of mathematics.

I was familiar with team dynamic theory from my engineering studies. They covered models like Myers Biggs, the Big Five, personality profiling tools. They are all fascinating, but none are predictive. They all tell you stuff about yourself, but there’s lots of debate about which one stands up to academic rigour, and lots of disagreement.

So how do we simplify the situation? Can we predict a good relationship? The answer is yes, we do it all the time in daily life, in can happen in 3 seconds, bang. We don’t have a checklist, we just do it, and we’re pretty good at it.

essentially a digital record of two people’s search to find a good relationship. We looked at patterns in successful matches, when people close their account after finding someone online.

I found consistent patterns in the way that they answered particular questions. I took these insights from online dating and combined them with the consistencies from academic behaviour modelling.

An example being: diversity of personality, regardless of how you measure it, is beneficial – so the more you have in terms of diversity, the better it is for team dynamics.

The next thing was to test out the predictive model, to see if we could predict what would make up a good team. The first test was at the University of Bristol, a business plan competition with eight teams, and roughly eight people in each team. I wanted to see if I could predict which team would win without any knowledge of their skills, their experience, their demographic, and crucially, no knowledge of

So can we find data to model this? To me, online dating was a hugely rich dataset, which is

MONEYBALL |037

the idea they were working on.

In fact, I never met the people, I just wanted to measure them with my questions.

We were correct in predicting who would win, but what was more interesting was that we got the ranking of all eight teams correct. That was the point at which I thought we had something that hadn’t been done before.

Was this just you?

No, it was me and my friend Sam. The model was mine, but we worked on the business together. There’s no way I could have done it without Sam. The classical career path just didn’t appeal - you’re working to make someone else’s dream come true. Somebody in a successful company, once upon a time, had that idea, and you’re just fulfilling their ambition. I’m not saying that’s a bad choice, but it just didn’t appeal to me.

What steps did you take to make the idea a reality?

Lots of steps, sometimes backwards (laughs). The first thing was to test the ideas, to see

GI | MAR 2014

if they stood up. We did the test 20 or so times, and got in front of as many people as possible we did the Microsoft cup and some other events. I was fairly cavalier with my statements.

So the idea is that you use questions to try and find the best team dynamic?

It’s based upon two things. We measure behavioural preference, and value alignment. It’s always contextual. Classic personality tests always say that you are ‘X’, but that’s not true, we change, and my behaviour in different situations changes. It’s all relative. Two extroverts together will mean that one of them is more extrovert than the other. We measure my preference to exhibit certain behavioural traits in the context of the people I’m with.

The other thing is value alignment. We look to not explicitly ask people what their values are, because it’s very difficult. When you meet other people you don’t ask what their values are, you’re just interested in knowing that you share them.

We look for value alignment without explicitly stating what those values are.

What kind of things do companies wanting your services need to tell you then?

If you were recruiting, we would measure your existing team - all of you individually - so this would give you insight into your existing team; whether you’re a high functioning team or where the tensions lie. We then measure the candidate, and then we get an idea of how they will match with you.

Does ‘fit’ necessarily equal performance?

Well, we wanted to see if individual ‘fit’ made a difference to individual performance. We found a company that had 20 or so people in one of their development teams, and one employee they were having doubts about. They challenged us to find that person using our algorithm. They asked us to rank the people from best ‘fit’ to worst ‘fit’.

Well, we did the test and we found that person. However, what was more interesting was that our ranking of fit almost precisely matched their internal ranking of key performance

indicators. This obviously becomes a more compelling business case and model.

What’s the response been like? Are people interested in your product?

The interest level has been enormous. We are making a process which is typically very difficult to quantify into something which is efficient, and effective. We are starting to deploy data into human resources or any scenario where people are together: sports teams, military, government and commercial situations. It’s fascinating.

You’re based in Google campus, what’s the reality of working here, in Shoreditch and Tech city?

It’s less glamorous than it may seem from the outside. It’s really hard work, long hours, with no reward at the start. The hipster thing is not true either (laughs).

None of us fit that stereotype.

Fundamentally if you have a great idea, it could be crazy, but you may just make it.

We’re also tapping into latent human curiosity, the “tell me about me” that interests us all.

That’s surely why horoscopes are so popular?

I’m not so sure if I would want to do one personally.

That comes down to the method, the communication of the system. It’s about trust, but we do have that curiosity to know about ourselves. We have a relentless urge to know, to learn.

Commercially it’s working, so we are very hopeful.

MONEYBALL |039

DESIGN THINKING ON A GLOBAL SCALE ***

Ross Tierney is a product designer, currently working as part of a team at Cranfield University in the UK. The team’s current focus is on a waterless toilet system for developing countries, as part of a challenge set by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ross spoke to Global Innovation Magazine about his previous projects, his desire to make a difference to people’s lives, and outlined the skills needed to make a good product designer.

How old are you?

26 Where did you grow up?

I grew up in west London. I liked sports growing up; I also liked science - I found it fascinating, but I wasn’t top hitting A’s. It was always art for me, and that came from when I was really young, my dad would bring home reels and reels of paper and I would just draw continuously every night. Art was something I really enjoyed and something I became quite good at.

That’s interesting that art took you into a ‘more hands’ on technical arena, didn’t you have an interest in architecture or engineering?

the time, so I did a foundation course whereby I tried graphic design, but it just bored the hell out of me. I tried 3D design, which I loved, and from there I went into product design.

There’s a big leap from studying product design, having an interest in it, to getting a job in it.

Yes. The type of product design stuff around me was furniture and iPod docks, quite boring. I figured there were enough chairs in the world!

Design for developing countries seemed challenging and it really grabbed me. Stricter requirements like low budgets, ease of transport and the need for local knowledge. I found it so much more interesting.

My dad was a builder so I always understood architecture, but he steered me away from that.

However graphic design was becoming quite the thing at

GI | MAR 2014

DESIGN THINKING |041

I did my final major project on a stove - designing a stove that is.

Cooking in developing countries is a major cause of death in children under the age of five, the smoke from indoor cooking is deadly. After starting this, I really wanted to take the product further, so I emailed a company in Kenya who made similar products and told them I would work for free. I ended up working for them for eight months.

From here I was recommended to a UK charity called www. childreach.org.uk who needed a stove designing, so I ended up working for them in London and Tanzania.

So was there something in you that steered you towards, what you perhaps could call ‘good’ work, rather than designing MP3 docking stations for a corporate organisation?

I think it was down to my university tutor really; he told me about his experience of living in Kenya and how he designed a refrigerator out of two oil drums and some coal. I just thought that was amazing. I didn’t know such things were possible, so talking it through with him was

GI | MAR 2014

the inspiration. Also living in Kenya sounded so exciting!

Tell us the story of the stove.

Childreach International had bought a lot of solar stoves, which work well if you want to slow cook. However in Tanzania one of the main food products is called ugali; it looks a bit like mashed potato, a mushed maize dish. It needs stirring continually, so when using a solar stove (essentially a cardboard box lined with tin foil with a plastic cover) people were removing the cover to stir it, which meant it wasn’t cooking properly. This was somewhat of an issue with the local people in one village.

What they perhaps needed was something that didn’t produce smoke, was quite efficient, but would still comply with the local ways of cooking. I was sent over to Tanzania to look at what could be done.

I imagine it was a bit different to your life in London?

rooms really, pne room was full of goats, much like a living room as we would know it in the UK. The actual bedroom was about 9’ x 9’, with two beds – and in this house lived 6 people. The mother was there cooking ugali and the smoke just hit my eyes.

At that stage the reality of what I was trying to do hit me. This is real and actual people we are trying to help. It was an amazing experience.

Tell me about how your product developed from here.

There are a few existing types of stove that are pretty good. One is called the Rocket Stove and it’s basically a vertical cylinder with an opening at the front for fire wood. The issue for me was that the outside got very hot it’s very efficient but perhaps it could be more efficient.

We designed an external extra wall - a cavity that helps with efficiency. You end up causing a chimney effect outside the combustion area, forcing more

My first morning, I was taken to three local villages. I walked into a tiny house… well two

DESIGN THINKING |043

air in - almost like a turbo effect - so combustion occurs at a higher temperature, with little smoke. The other great thing about the barrier is that the outer wall is still touchable after half an hour, which eliminates skin burns to a large degree. We saw some horrendous burns over there, particularly on young children’s hands.

It’s also wider and sturdy for large pots. We ended up reducing the need for firewood by up to 60 per cent.

There’s a big leap to getting the product developed I imagine.

The charity put me in contact with two locals who were amazing. We started designing the product and then sourced local materials and a workshop.

Without Joshua and George (the locals) I would have been completely lost.

You manufactured it locally?

Yes, we trained a local person from each of the five surrounding villages to make the product, which helped with take up of the product. It eliminated

GI | MAR 2014

scepticism to some degree. In week one we found materials, a workshop, trained local people and had a stove manufactured.

it will look like. In the next phase we will need a rig fully assembled and working for testing in Ghana.

What’s the legacy?

Tell me about the end product.

Well that’s the real shame about the project. It was difficult to get the resources behind it for one reason or another. The pilot project for me worked, but taking it on to the next level was not successful.

So tell me about your current work with the team at Cranfield University, what was the problem that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation set?

The problem is to invent a new toilet system, that doesn’t use water, plumbing or mains electricity and it has to cost less than 5 US cents per user per day.

Around 22 teams answered the call originally and we presented in March 2014 and showed where we were up to. My role is to make the technology work with the end user.

Our system uses hollow tubes, membranes that extract pure water from the waste. The end user actually has water as a result which you could drink, but it’s a hard sell for drinking.

The membranes extract pure water as a vapour, so all your left with is condensed waste. The solid waste can also be burned for energy.

Integrating the burner into the unit is our next step; so you have a self-contained unit that produces energy. The energy could potentially power the toilet itself.

We have a scientific test rig and an aesthetic rig to show what

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Ammonia can also be extracted periodically, and can be used as fertiliser.

It’s certainly multi-faceted!

Smell isn’t an issue?

Yes, it’s a major problem, as most of the people we encountered on our research trips don’t have separate bathrooms. The solution, we hope, is designing a flush with a smell barrier. I worked with a mathematician-turned-designer who had a very analytical approach to problem solving, and was a huge part of the design of the flush. The toilet seat shutting will be the start of the mechanics for the smell barrier coming alive. This way there is no modification required of a person’s behaviour, which was another prerequisite of the project, that people shouldn’t have to change their behaviour.

Getting rid of smell, but without lots of energy use or water being introduced is a tough ask. That’s one of the challenges for the foreseeable future.

Just be curious about everything but be realistic. No problem will be solved easily. If you commit yourself you will have to work night and day, weekend after weekend. If you’re trying to solve a problem, try to look in as many bizarre locations as possible for answers; inspiration will come.

Having people around to advise, learn from, and challenge you is essential, and we certainly have that on this project with our very diverse team. I’m also lucky enough to also have it in our studio, the Centre for Competitive Design (C4D) at Cranfield that has a lot of smart/ creative people - especially the main lecturers, Dr. Leon Williams and Dr. Fiona Charnley. Finding people interesting helps, oh and always have a pen on you!

What’s advice would you give to aspiring product designers generally?

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DESIGN THINKING |047

THE POWER OF STORYTELLING ***

“

STORYTELLING IS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING THE WAY BUSINESS COMMUNICATES: NOTHING MOTIVATES AND MOBILIZES LIKE EMOTION

” Interview with Dr. Michael Scholl, Managing Director at Homburg & Partner, and Julius van de Laar, Political Strategist and Campaign Consultant.

Storytelling is something of an innovative business phenomenon. Having become an increasingly prolific method of persuasion in both the corporate and political spheres, Global Innovation Magazine spoke to two of the highest-qualified patrons of the art, Dr.

GI | MAR 2014

Michael Scholl and Julius van de Laar, to find out what it’s all about.

Both men have undeniably impressive business records and have their names to some of the most highprofile global marketing campaigns in the digital age.

A brief introduction of the two is appropriate, I feel, to set the scene.

Dr. Michael Scholl has been at Homburg & Partner - a monolith of a management consultancy having evolved into a leading consultancy in market strategy, sales and pricing that boasts service to fourteen of the fifteen largest pharmaceutical companies in the world since 2000, and has been central to the growth of the company. His education is equally remarkable, having obtained an

interdisciplinary degree in Business Administration and Economics, Sociology, and Psychology with a special focus on marketing at the University of Trier, during which he spent a year at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He then went on to earn his doctorate at the University of Mannheim with a dissertation on multichannel management.

Further to this, Dr. Scholl regularly publishes in national and international magazines and books on market strategy.

POWER OF STORYTELLING |049

Julius van de Laar is a digital media strategist and communications expert.

He worked on President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 Presidential campaigns, serving as Missouri Youth Vote director and regional GOTV director in the battleground state of Ohio.

Aside from the President (if there is such a thing on the career scale), he has consulted for major NGO’s including Amnesty International, Change. org, Greenpeace, WWF and Avaaz.org, providing strategic communications advice. His work has been much appraised, with Capital Magazine having recently selected him as one of the ‘Top 40 up-and-coming talents’ in German politics, and he is a frequent TV and radio pundit, providing analysis on current political events, campaigning and digital communications.

Just recently, Julius van de Laar founded the Campaigning Academy Berlin, offering leadership training and seminars on

GI | MAR 2014

campaign strategy, digital communications and media relations.

with the client’s product or service in some way, then the most difficult work is done.

A formidable list of achievements on the part of both men, undoubtedly. Yet, on speaking to them over a slightly fuzzy conference call, they were enthusiastic, warm, funny even. And, of course, they had plenty to say on the subject of their trademark, Storytelling.

Julius: Storytelling and marketing have always gone hand in hand. Crafting an emotional narrative that an audience can identify with on a individual level is one of the most effective ways to communicate information that is easily remembered. However, with the rise of social media, Storytelling has experienced a dramatic renaissance since digital tools can be used to drive direct interaction and engagement both on and offline.

First and foremost, what exactly is ‘Storytelling’ in the business context, and why is it innovative?

Dr. Scholl: At its most basic level, it is pretty much what it says on the tin. If you are delivering a presentation to a room of corporate-orientated men and women, they have already heard enough figures and statistics to last a lifetime. Storytelling is creating a scenario with a protagonist and plot devices - a beginning, a problem and a solution - and, if done well, it draws in the audience. If you can stir and inspire that audience, get them to become emotionally involved

POWER OF STORYTELLING |051

From your track record, both of you successfully use storytelling. What makes it so effective, and how do you know when it’s done well?

Julius: Storytelling is in our DNA. From an early age on, children listen to their parents telling stories. It’s one of the first imaginative uses of language we’re exposed to.

The tales, fables and anecdotes follow a pattern and always transport a clear message and meaning - think Aesop’s fables.

For the rest of their lives, people associate stories both with a deep joy and a moral experience.

Storytelling in business taps into these narratives by triggering the associated emotions to get a specific point across.

Dr. Scholl: To add on to what Julius has already said, you know when it’s done well for that exact reason. You can tell if the audience aren’t invested in the protagonist.

The best way to make sure they are is to avoid completely fabricating the story. Draw on actual personal experiences, make sure the developments in the plot and the characters involved in it are believable,

GI | MAR 2014

but most importantly, if the storyteller genuinely feels for the protagonist, that will be conveyed to the audience more effectively than any language device.

Julius, how much influence did Storytelling have over the Obama elections? Are there any examples you can give of the stories you used, or is that classified?

Julius: There were a number of strategies, tools and tactics that made the campaigns historic: The way all channels - both digitally and offline - were seamlessly integrated, tracked, analyzed and optimized was revolutionary. However, at the end of the day it was the President who was able to harness the power of storytelling to connect with voters and volunteers and explain to them what was at stake in this election and why they needed to vote for him.

Dr. Scholl: Many of the ways Storytelling is used in the company is similar to what Julius previously outlined.

Rather than to promote a single person like in campaigning, its being favoured rather more now because it breaks up the procession of statistics that can so often swamp our work. It is more subtle in the management consultancy and marketing business though, and much less in the public eye, so we have a little more room for fabrication. A presentation that sticks with me from a few years ago, delivered by a company

Now one for Dr. Scholl: how do you find yourself using Storytelling increasingly in management consultancies?

Likewise, any examples you can give?

POWER OF STORYTELLING |053

promoting the idea of ‘thinking outside of the box’ in employees, was about the speaker’s travels in Japan. He said that for an hour, between twelve and one, every day, all of the lights would be turned off in the building in which he was working, forcing the employees to leave for lunch. Their working day was so rigid and forced that no one dared to put forward ideas, yet when interviewed, several had brilliant ideas that could have saved the management huge amounts of money. That was a brilliant story, to still remember it to this day.

Lastly, for the both of you, are there any stumbling blocks that Storytelling has in your experience?

Any particularly shambolic presentations you can think of?

Dr. Scholl: It can easily be unsuccessful when the story is told badly. You have to research your audience so thoroughly, and the slightest slip up can break the captivity of your listeners. You cannot be unsure of what you are saying; if you are not fully invested in yourself, then you can’t expect anyone else to consider investing in you.

GI | MAR 2014

Julius: There are three elements I try to remember when crafting a narrative: 1. Does the language create a mental image and emotional reaction? 2. Did I use language of living room, not scientific language? 3. Will people retain the message and want to repeat it to others?

Finally, remember to leverage existing narratives because the story that always plays biggest is the one that plays into preconceived story lines.

Interview by Hannah Robinson To get in touch with Dr Scholl or Julius contact Eduard Mesares @ Homburg & Partners eduard.mesares@homburgpartner.com

NEWS A FEW THINGS THAT CAUGHT OUR GAZE

MINECRAFT BOUGHT

BY MICROSOFT Minecraft, the massively popular game (over 54 million copies sold across multiple platforms), has been acquired by Microsoft in a deal reportedly worth $2.5 billion (circa 1.5 billion pounds).

The Swedish firm Mojang that produces the game, was bought by the computer giant in a deal announced by the XBox boss Phil Spencer.

Minecraft is a game that allows you to use blocks to build various structures, and is often used in primary schools as an introduction to engineering and computer science.

GI | MAR 2014

SHARING IS CARING Ever fancied sharing your umbrella with a complete stranger? No, neither have I, but for the social, talkative types out there, UmbrellaHere is an opportunity to welcome an unknown person into your personal space and help them shelter from the storm.

Available now on KickStarter (www.kickstarter.com), this interesting device takes the idea of hailing a taxi in another direction. The device fits on an umbrella, and lets others know shelter is available when the light is on, thus just like a taxi, when the lights on, come on in. It also turns your umbrella into a smart device allowing you to connect with other users, and ensuring that you never lose your rain botherer again.

Singing in the rain indeed.

HERE’S ONE FOR ALL THE MIDDLE AGED MEN IN LYCRA IN THE HOUSE I’m quite literally, fed up of flat tyres and punctures. I currently have one on my wheelbarrow and one on my unicycle. Here’s something I’m glad I came across. It’s called Patchnride and is a repair kit with a difference. Locate the puncture using the locator wipe, insert the Patchnride tool and then pump with air. Job done, in under 60 seconds. It’s available on IndieGoGo (ww.indiegoggo.com).

Meet the Deputy CIO of Barcelona City Council - an urban metropolis creating a smart city model for the planet

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. What will this really look like? How will our urban landscapes change? What impact will this have on infrastructure, communities and citizens?

Discover emerging trends in technology, architecture and planning including: the interent of things, advanced robotics, synthetic biology and smart materials

At the RE.WORK Cities Summit we’ll explore how emerging technologies such as advancing robot-human interaction, digital installations, ‘living, responsive cities’, sensors and environmental monitoring, mobile robots, pocket drones, urban data collection and 3D printed materials will change our cities to ensure they are sustainable and efficient in the future.

Speakers include: lSAndrew Hudson-Smith, Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, a leader in contribution of knowledge in the Internet of Things, smart cities, big data, digital geography, urban planning and the built environment; lSDaniel Becerra, Managing Director at Buffalo Grird - bringing power as a service to off grid communities; lSAlberto T. Estevez, Director of the Genetic Barcelona Project, the creator of new technologies in science, biology and genetics that can give us the possibility to re-think and re-work our cities create ‘living cities’; lSAnna Mavrogianni, Lecturer in Sustainable Building & Urban Design at The Bartlett, UCL, researching energy efficient retrofitting technologies and the adaptation of the built environment to a warming climate; lSJonathan Steel, CEO of Change London, an organisation helping to improve health, liveability, and economic outcomes for urban centres primarily in London but increasingly in other cities.

RE.WORK CITIES SUMMIT 4-5 December, 2014 London 1 Amazing Venue! The Crystal - a sustainable cities initiative - one of the world’s greenest buildings.

7 THINGS NOT TO MISS!!

A Meeting of Minds: 50 speakers & 200+ attendees

Meet Usman Haque the Founder of Umbrellium and creator of responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and dozens of mass-participation initiatives throughout the world.

Hear the latest trends in data science and smart cities from Andrew Hudson-Smith , Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London

Ask Dan Hill, Executve Director of Future Cities Catapult your questions regarding future cities in a fireside chat session.

“

Oluwaseyi Sosanya, Founder, Sosafresh, who will be presenting the 3D Weaver at the Summit, said: “I am most looking forward to sharing my work with an audience from diverse backgrounds and the opportunity for true cross pollution of ideas.”

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PERA TECHNOLOGY ACCESSING THE WORLD’S LARGEST SME NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FUND

Paul Tranter chief executive of new product development contractor, Pera Technology, discusses how businesses looking to grow through the development of new products can secure funding from one of the most commercially aware public funding mechanisms ever developed.

A lack of finance and in-house expertise are often cited by SMEs as the main barriers to developing new products and innovations. While it is true that bank lending has long been extremely difficult to come by, where traditional funding has failed both the market and public sector have stepped in.

Whether through new financing innovations like crowdfunding and peer to peer lending, or what is being hailed as the largest and most commercially

aware public financing initiative for SME new product development, there is a solution.

Horizon 2020 is one of the latest developments in the field of new product development finance options. €3.3 billion has been set aside for SME new product development, as part of the European Commission’s €80 billion research and innovation programme. The new fund allows businesses to secure up to €50,000 to quickly prove the viability of their concept within three to six months with an additional five days or €5,000 of free coaching available to help drive the project forward.

An additional €3 million is then available for research and development purposes, following which the European Commission will provide access to potential private investors from across the EU and further afield to help businesses take

their new product or innovation to market.

Although the amount of money available has more than doubled it is expected that this increase, along with the more commercially focused aspects of the fund - which puts the money directly in the hands of the SME rather than a larger consortium - will make the application process much more competitive.

Fortunately, the UK has been inordinately successful at securing funds, outperforming Europe’s two largest economies and coming second only to Spain in bid success. For Pera’s part we secured in excess of €87 million for SME businesses as

part of the previous research and innovation fund, and have identified some top considerations for potential applicants: 1. Demonstrate market demand Before considering funding, ensure that you have a product idea with true market potential.

Be honest when assessing your idea and get it validated by others in the market place.

2. Identify technical requirements Demonstrate that you have identified the relevant technical personnel or companies that can help take your idea forward. This is where access to organisation like Pera that can source the relevant scientists, analysts and engineers is essential.

3. The proposal is key A proposal, written by an experienced author is crucial.

Plenty of fantastic ideas and strong consortiums fail because the proposal hasn’t been pulled together correctly.

4. Don’t underestimate the administration There has been a real drive to simplify the administration associated with Horizon 2020, however, it still remains public money and therefore there is a need to demonstrate due diligence.

Understanding this and managing the relationship with the EC is essential.

5. Prepare for reaching the finish line It’s important to remember that funding through Horizon 2020 won’t take you to the finish line; a clear commercialisation strategy is essential from the start.

Paul Tranter is chief executive of Pera Technology; a leading new product contractor which helps companies to conceive, create, and commercialise.

To coincide with Horizon 2020, Pera Technology has launched its leap® package of business support services.

It covers all aspects of new product development from idea conception, feasibility evaluation and securing funding, right through to

an in-depth research and development programme and commercialisation.

and valuable products and processes to create sustainable, valuable businesses.

To find out more about accessing Horizon 2020 funding visit www.peratechnology.com/ leap or call 01664 501201.

Paul Tranter can be found at www.twitter. com/PaulatPera or www.linkedin.com/in/ paultranter

Pera Technology has extensive in-house capabilities and a large network of virtuosos, with over 300 analysts, scientists and engineers providing idea and concept generation, business intelligence, IP research and management, technology and project risk minimisation.

For more information go to http://www. peratechnology.com/

For more information please contact: Rose Kilby or Stuart Haynes, WPR Agency, +44 121 456 3004 or Rose@wpragency. co.uk/ Stuart@wpragency.co.uk Note to editors Pera Technology Every year, Pera Technology helps hundreds of companies across Europe and beyond to harness the potential of science and technology to create new

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