Tough nut to crack
While funds for UK innovation are always welcome (£1bn for UK innovation needs to be doubled), I think your article and Lord Sainsbury's report miss a very important aspect of the problem - successful exploitation of our innovation.
In some respects this has been recognised by the setting up of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), which seems to be using the right words. Whether actions will match and produce results remains to be seen.
Ask any innovator what he or she really wants and it is access to a market to get sales. This is where our US friends really understand how to create economic wealth. This is where the CBI should be thinking what it can do to help itself and achieve the goal of seeing successful technologies grow into successful companies.
The ones that do make it to commercial production very often sell out too early - usually from exhaustion and frustration at UK government and companies' failure to listen to, never mind buy into, something new.
True venture capital in this country still lies with the business angels, but even they have limits. Creating an environment that gives a better chance of commercial exploitation is a winner for all yet we are just so bad at this vital aspect.
The easy reply is that we are not good at selling, but is it that? I think it is that we are not good at buying - there are too many barriers to encourage adoption of the new - unless of course it comes from IBM, Microsoft and so on.
It's time for some really radical thinking. The government may be on track with the TSB but what is the CBI doing other than complaining that £1bn is not enough?
David Chassels
I support David Chassels comments. As an observer of the market for innovation in the UK who regularly engages with high growth SMEs, the most common complaints I hear are the difficulties in raising finance to support these companies as they move to market, and also the problems with establishing stable revenues. The typical story is "we cannot raise finance without sight of sales, but the sales cannot come until the finance is in place to create and market the product".
It is almost inevitable that companies fall short on their sales projections, even once they have raised funding, leading to disappointment felt by and therefore stress on the entrepreneurs and their investors.
In the UK we tend to be weaker in our sales focus than our cousins in the US. This is particularly because we do not focus hard enough on quarterly sales targets. However, we also suffer from very long buying cycles by potential customers and long decision chains. We would like every larger corporate to appoint a principal (or a team) who could front their effort to engage and "do business" with innovative businesses. One corporate who has done is is Oracle http://www.oracle.com/global/uk/emergingbusiness/index.html - it is a highly effective approach and one that creates a win win for both sides. If there are any other corporates looking to promote an open and win win relationship with innovative companies, they should let us know. I think they will find that the results will be surprisingly effective.
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