John Whatmore
John Whatmore will be blogging on the innovation ecosystem: what he calls the "powerful undertow of invention and cross-fertilisation among products, services, processes, IT and business models".
Follow John's blog as he explores the latest thinking in how creativity can be harnessed and used to secure a golden future for the UK.
The innovation ecosystem has opened up. Once confined to research institutions, university research and corporate R&D, it now includes customers and suppliers, science parks and venture capital, incubators and accelerators, and myriad intermediaries. It extends to public services, social enterprise and local innovations. It is now a much wider world in which finding and developing collaborations and partnerships is itself a big opportunity for creativity.
A bit about John
John has worked in industry all of his life, most recently as chairman of a group of venture capital companies. He has also had a parallel career in local politics and local institutions, especially housing associations in London. Belbin recognises him as a co-ordinator and a creater.
The new European Space Agency Incubator at Harwell has yet to establish itself as a new-business community. It has available outstanding technical support in the shape of a number of world-class scientific organisations on the site; and it provides generous funding for technical support. But its business support is limiting: it provides no business mentoring; it provides little business advice - there is little call for it and channels to access for venture funding are at present small in scale.
15.08.2012With the intensive and sophisticated learning regime that it has developed, the RCA feels that it has a lot to give other incubators. But will it deliver on this? Nesta who is a major supporter of the initiative has high hopes that it can.
02.08.2012The annual National Investment Summit run by the UK Business Angels Association, which I attended recently, illustrated the growth of angel investing in the UK and its increasing sophistication.
23.07.2012Weekly confidential discussions about recent happenings; and questions, allusions and comments from personal experience - the essence of good mentoring - might just be what the Queen provides for her Prime Ministers in their weekly audience. Does she have some lessons for current mentoring projects?
02.07.2012Each of the many short start-up boot camps for entrepreneurs looking to create new businesses has a slightly different emphasis, so where might you begin? It depends on how solid is your experience, your idea or your work on it so far (for more see Nesta's The Startup Factories report).
29.06.2012
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