Director's blog

A few words by David Gill, Managing Director of St John's Innovation Centre Ltd:

• 

  June 26, 2010 Policy Issues for Business Finance

  Some Policy Conclusions

  Previous entries on this blog have reviewed the current funding landscape for growth firms, especially in the Cambridge area. Today, we look at some policy considerations arising out the 'new normal' in which we've been working since 2008. 

  Issues for All Firms

  After the last major recession (1991-2), the relationship between banks and SMEs reached breaking point. Part of its road to recovery was orchestrated by the then Governor of the Bank of England, who mobilised the Bank to produce a quarterly review of small fund funding and an annual overview, together with a January meeting of small firm bodies and the main banks, chaired by the Governor. This activity ceased in 2004, since when an informed dialogue – based on reliable, longitudinal data – has not been possible. No single source of information on SME activity, especially finance, has taken its place.

  In view of the step changes in the SME funding landscape since the credit crunch, recreating the Bank of England’s work would be a distinct advantage to lenders, firms and policy makers alike. GCP may wish to consider how such a proposal could be implemented and best recommended to central government. As the well-worn adage has it, if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it – and Britain has not been managing its SME funding as creatively as it could.

   Issues for Growth Firms

   The Cambridge area is unusual in the number of high-potential businesses it has generated per head of population. Hitherto it has been fortunate in having a range of angel networks to provide risk capital to support growth firms. Evidence from Scotland suggests that government co-investment funds and a realistic differentiation of capital gains tax levels to favour genuine entrepreneurs have been two of the most effective means of making angel investment go further.

   Those of us concerned with the health of the Cambridge technopole should consider carefully the deployment of the recently-launched EEDA co-investment fund and seek ways of maximising its impact. We also need to find ways of enabling angel investors to cooperate more effectively with each other. The angel world is notoriously fractious and individualistic, with the cats to be herded sometimes not just big but feral beasts.

  Again, if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Especially where the Cambridge high-tech industry is concerned, much of the ‘data’ concerning both the historic provision of risk capital and the continuing fire-power of venture firms in the region has been confusing if not actually misleading. As a region, we did ourselves few favours in suggesting that venture funds were more plentiful than they were – and may even have done ourselves a disservice if we have dissuaded government from looking favourably on establishing new funds around Cambridge – because it was assumed that provision of equity was satisfactory.

  Macro Regulatory Issues

  Of course, in the current climate of ‘new realism’, every firm has a strong incentive to maximise its chances of obtaining funding by making itself as investment ready as possible.

  At various times over the past dozen years – in 1999 during the dot.com boom or in 2007 during the collapse of banking credit standards – the most marginal of proposals could, with a good Powerpoint presentation and a fair following wind, extract large sums from gullible and overpaid finance managers. But it is not just these micro considerations that have changed. Policy makers are beginning to realise that major systemic reform of the financial sector is necessary.

  While lobbyists for the banks and private equity funds may argue about which reforms should be implemented – for instance, should commercial and investment banking be separated as they were in the 1930s with the Glass-Steagall Act[1], or should higher capital adequacy rules alone be enough? – it would be foolhardy to contend that no structural reforms at all are necessary.

  Consider the following.

  First, as Smithers & Co have argued, in recent years bank profitability has grown out of all proportion to the economy as a whole:

  “The profitability of banks has changed dramatically in recent years. In the UK the return on bank equity averaged around 7% from 1921 to 1971 and 20.4% since. In the US finance contributed 4% of corporate profits after tax in 1982, but the most recent data available (Q3 2009) show that this has risen to 36%. The real return on equity for companies in general has been remarkably stable at around 6% over the long-term. So the profitability of UK banks from 1921 to 1971 was in line with the general average for companies.”[2]

  And since then the profitability of banks has emphatically not grown in line with the general average for companies. As Smithers & Co go on to argue, “[t]here are two likely explanations for the recent abnormally high returns. One is the uncompetitive nature of modern banking, and the other is its high profit volatility. It would be heavily against the public interest to allow either to continue.” That volatility has been underwritten for a generation by taxpayers and in September 2008 the banking sector made heavy claims on this insurance policy.

  Secondly, as for monopolies, in a recent speech to the Institute of Regulation & Risk in Hong Kong, Andre Haldane, executive director at the Bank of England for financial stability, argued that:

  “economies of scale in banking are exhausted at relatively modest levels of assets, perhaps between $5-10 billion. A more recent 2004 survey of studies in both the US and Europe finds evidence of a similar asset threshold. Even once allowance is made for subsequent balance sheet inflation, this evidence implies that economies of scale in banking may cease at double-digit dollar billions of assets.”[3]

  In other words, most ‘money centre’ banks have grown larger than is useful for the economy as a whole and begun to assume monopolistic characteristics.

  All small firms must “cultivate their own garden”, to borrow Voltaire’s famous phrase, especially those with growth ambitions. But cultivating the garden alone is no longer enough. To change the metaphor slightly, we must all look beyond our walls to cooperate to ensure that the risks of financial phylloxera do not endanger our vineyards, and for this systemic reform of the banking sector is as important for SMEs today as root grafting of vines was in 1850s. Individual endeavour at the firm level alone (eradicating the beetle stem by stem, so to speak) is no longer enough.

  While there is room to argue over the details of reform of the banking sector, that it needs reform to enable it once again to be the servant of commerce in general and growth firms in particular is now close to being a truth universally acknowledged – except perhaps by the banks themselves.

  Karl Marx famously wrote of the internal contradictions of capitalism leading to periodic crises and ultimately its own demise through overproduction and overcapacity. In response to these threats, a century ago the US introduced tough anti-trust regulations. It would be ironic if – a mere 21 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - Marx were to be proved right after all through our collective failure to act with similar boldness again.

   

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  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act

  [2] www.smithers.co.uk/news_article.php?id=91 8^th March 2010, citing Banking on the State by Piergiorgio Allesandri and Andrew G. Haldane, Bank of England November 2009.

  [3] The $100 Billion Question 30^th March 2010 www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2010/speech433.pdf

• June 25, 2010 More on Finance for Business

  My previous entry covered the Understanding Finance for Business programme and the grants available to firms in the East of England. Today we look at equity finance, changes in bank funding and some government schemes.

  1. Equity Funding

   In the past two years, growth businesses looking to raise equity have had to rely increasingly on business angels rather than on institutional venture funds. The Cambridge region may have exaggerated its strengths in venture funding during the boom years (1998-2007) and as funds set up at the beginning of that period are wound down (most have a 10-year life) they are generally not being replaced.

  According to recent research conducted on behalf of the British Business Angels Association (BBAA), angels are estimated to invest £750m a year[1], more than twice the £359m invested in start-up and early-stage by venture funds in 2008 – a figure that fell to £296m in 2009.

  Greater Cambridge is relatively well-placed for angel funding, with 3 groups located here: Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Capital Group and Great Eastern Investment Forum (GEIF). GEIF is now part of the Eastern Capital Alliance (ECA); a formal launch event for ECA is expected in June 2010. However, local angels are beginning to feel the strain of having to undertake 3-4 funding rounds themselves, without being able to hand on the baton to venture funds, especially as liquidity events such as trade sales and IPOs have been rare. Several angel groups now oppose later venture fund investment as a matter of policy.

  EEDA and the BBAA recently jointly sponsored 4 angel-awareness events across the Eastern region, coordinated by St John’s. In addition to seeking to stimulate novice angels, the objectives included spreading more widely the lessons on best practice to have come out of the 2009 research, including the importance of due diligence, sector knowledge and taking an active role in the business.

  Given the consistently poor track record of venture funds in the UK (especially in technology sectors), with at best breakeven returns compared with long-run returns of 15%-20% for later stage deals, it is difficult to envisage a resurgence of early-stage funds in the UK without further government intervention – which will be difficult to afford for the foreseeable future[2].

  Central government has learned the lessons of previous attempts to pump-prime the venture market[3], notably the risks of being over-prescriptive by region, sector or stage. Implementing these lessons, especially with a continued investment strike on the part of the private sector, will be hard.

  2. Changes to Bank Finance

  Separating data from anecdote has proved particularly tough in analysing the overall position of banks in relation to SMEs since 2008 and the following remarks should be read with that caveat in mind.

  Overall bank lending to small firms appears to be static at best, with new lending often being matched or exceeded by repayment of existing borrowing. Self-censorship may also operate: firms assume that credit will not be made available and therefore do not apply in the first place. Margins over base rate to SMEs have increased significantly, from perhaps 2-3% to 5-6%. Renewal and commitment fees are actively collected by banks, another departure from the near-decade of expansion.

  In retrospect, the years before September 2008 are likely to be an historic aberration. Credit criteria had become unduly slack as most banks sought growth at the expense of quality. With the impending implementation of new prudential rules – national or international - on capital adequacy, the current difficulties experienced by many SMEs looking for bank funding are likely to be exacerbated. Most amendments to the current Basel regulations under review will likely privilege still further borrowers with tangible security as the cost of capital to banks lending unsecured will increase.

  The ‘new normal’ probably will not resemble the growth years and SMEs will need to be better educated in how to approach banks, not just in how to present their case but in understanding a wider range of products, such as leasing, factoring and invoice discounting.

  3. Government Schemes

  To help fill the gap left by banks and private funds, a number of schemes have been developed by national or regional government in recent years. Among the most popular, as evidenced by participants on UFfB workshops, are:

  Enterprise Finance Guarantee - This is a central government-backed loan scheme supplied through third-party institutions, mainly banks. Loans of up to £1million are available for up to 10 years and banks receive a guarantee of 75% of any losses. It is an attractive product for many small firms but banks will seek personal guarantees (a major difference compared with the predecessor Small Firms Loan Guarantee scheme). A viable business proposal will be needed.

  Foundation East - A regional loan facility which is only available to businesses which have been turned down by a bank. £50,000 available for up to 10 years. No track record required but there is a robust assessment process so a good plan is needed.

  Finance East Loan Management – Loans of £50,000 to £200,000 for businesses with a minimum turnover of £500,000 per annum.

  EEDA Co-investment Loan – recently launched by EEDA to support business angel investment by setting aside a total of £1.25 million from their Regional Loan scheme. Funding is available as a co-investment loan for high growth SME companies in the East of England, in the range of £50,000 to £125,000 over 2 to 7 years and at an interest rate 8-12% above base rate[4].

  For Regional Schemes see www.eeda.org.uk/finance.  The business map gives much helpful information about various areas of public sector support for businesses.

  Next time, I'll be looking at some policy considerations arising out of the major recent changes in financial markets. 

  
  
  

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  [1] www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Report%2021%20-%20Business%20Angel%20Inv%20v11.pdf

  [2] http://admin.bvca.co.uk/library/documents/RIA_May_2010.pdf

  [3] www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Thin-Markets-v9.pdf and www.nao.org.uk/publications/0910/venture_capital_support_to_sme.aspx

   

  [4] www.bizmapeast.co.uk/finance/loans/co-investment_loan.aspx

• June 23, 2010 Finance for Business - What Next?

  Most tenants in the Innovation Centre learn the key entrepreneurial skill of making slim resources go a long way. This is particularly true of funding.

   We are now 18 months on from the acute phase of the credit crunch and a month on from the general election. How has the funding landscape changed, what can we as growing businesses do to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and what policy responses do we need to improve the chances of innovative firms as engines of economic recovery?

  This series of three blogs tries to answer these vital questions and to get the debate rolling.

  1. Introduction

   With some inevitability, after an increasingly lenient approach to credit during the noughties and the turbulence in financial markets in September-October 2008, smaller firms in particular are still finding 18 months on that the pendulum has not yet swung back towards a position of equilibrium. Obtaining both mainstream debt and early-stage investment remain much more difficult for many firms, especially SMEs. As the Bank of England Agents’ Summary of Business Conditions for April 2010 put it:

  “But conditions remained both tight and polarised, with large and less risky businesses finding it easier to obtain credit than their smaller or riskier counterparts. Spreads and fees also appear to have stabilised (albeit at high levels) […] Demand for bank debt remained weak, with many companies continuing to repay debt, and large businesses resorting to the capital markets for their financing needs.”[1]

  In its May update, the Bank noted that “smaller businesses and those perceived to be more risky had benefited much less from the gradual increase in credit availability than their larger or less risky counterparts.”[2]

  In the Cambridge area and for technology-based firms in particular, the position may have been exacerbated by the dearth of risk capital (particularly venture funding) required by the innovative, growth potential firms on which the cluster has relied for 30-40 years. To a limited extent, demand has been met by imaginative new schemes provided by the public sector, at both a national and a regional level.

  However, it is unrealistic to expect the public sector alone to meet the gap. The ‘funding escalator’ is a continuum – from family investors and grants at the outset right through to trade sales and IPOs – and prolonged congestion or gaps at any stage will ultimately affect the health of the entire system. Particularly given the fragile state of public finances, for the foreseeable future businesses need to access and use funds with enhanced professionalism rather than expect the supply of finance to revert to pre-2008 conditions

  2. Understanding Finance for Business

  To help SMEs in the East of England prepare themselves better for raising finance, EEDA has funded a three-year access to finance programme under the banner of Understanding Finance for Business (UFfB)[3].

  UFfB is project-managed and part-delivered by St John’s Innovation Centre through a series of workshops across the region. The only selection criteria are that to attend a business must be based in the East of England and looking to raise a minimum of £10,000 of external funding.

  Over the course of the first year of operation (from June 2009), some 400 companies will have attended the introductory workshop (WS1), a quick overview of the main features of debt, equity and grants. Those seeking further, detailed information can attend a full-day workshop (WS2) entirely given up to one of the three main sources of funds; around 175 companies will have attended a WS2 in the first year, and companies are also self-selecting at this stage.

  To move on to the third stage – mentoring – companies must normally have attended a WS2, completed a self-assessment form and satisfied the trainers that 1.5-2 days of EEDA-funded mentoring will make a significant difference to their chances of raising a material amount of external funding. ‘Material’ is context-dependent and will likely be larger for debt than equity.[4] About 50 companies will have been mentored in year 1[5].

  3. Grants Applicable in the East of England

  With a slow-down in (net) bank lending and the near demise of formal venture funding, a key source of finance for innovative firms at early stages over the past two years has been grants. In addition to being covered as part of the introductory half-day workshop on UFfB, full-day workshops on grant funding are also run according to demand. A handful of cases has also been mentored through the grant application stage.

  While the availability of grant funding is generally seen positively by SMEs, the complexity of the process is such that some basic ‘hand-holding’ is often an advantage. Most grants provide +/- 50% funding and the balance must be found from other sources; feedback on the UFfB courses suggests this is increasingly challenging.

  The St John’s Innovation and its partner organisation delivering UFfB, Oxford Innovation, maintains summaries of grants currently available in the region and relevant national schemes. These are updated regularly. At the time of writing (early June 2010), doubt remains over which grants are likely still to be made available after the Budget scheduled for 22^nd June. An update will follow as soon as possible.

  Especially for European grants available under Framework 7 (FP7), a tenant in the Innovation Centre – TUV NEL – has recently been tasked by EEDA promote the scheme[6].

   

   

   

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  [1] www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/agentssummary/agsum10apr.pdf

  [2] www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/agentssummary/agsum10may.pdf

  [3] To sign-up, go to https://www.rbsiseast.org.uk/RBSISRegistration/Register.aspx?RegKey=UFfB

  [4] For further general guidance on accessing finance, see www.businesslink.gov.uk/Finance_files/HGIB2009.pdf

  [5] For dates and further information see www.stjohns.co.uk/finance

  [6] www.tuvnel.com/tuvnel/

• Dec. 6, 2009 Lessons from Belfast

  At the risk of coming across as someone who spends too much time out of the office, let me summarise some issues arising out of the 11^th annual UK Business Incubation conference held in Belfast last week.

  First, I was impressed by the knowledge and enthusiasm of the Members of the Legislative Assembly and their officials about the importance of start-ups and the role incubators can play in fostering their growth. Northern Ireland may be a small economy taken on its own, and faced with any number of challenges, but a ‘can-do’ spirit emanated from policy makers and professional advisers alike.

  Secondly, the session at which I spoke was on funding for the incubator and its clients, and as at the Technopolicy conference in Stockholm it was reassuring to find that the other speakers and the interventions from the floor seemed to share the concerns we find here at St John’s Innovation Centre. Looking at funding for start-up and growth firms, no-one I spoke to believed that the UK/European venture capital model is anything other than broken – with the honourable exception of a few specialist firms such as MTI Ventures in Watford, who’ve stuck with the classic venture model and worked closely with academic institutions.

  So most incubatee firms have to rely on a combination of boot-strapping their own resources, grants and funds earned from consulting before persuading angels they have sufficient market traction. This might ensure the survival of the fittest in theory, but in practice I think it means that even really sound proposals with a good deal of promise take a lot longer to gain momentum than would be the case in North America.

  A long-standing controversy around Cambridge suggests that relatively few companies started here make it through to the stage where they are ‘built to last’ rather than ‘built to sell’, though there are one or two that break the mould in each generation, such as ARM and Autonomy. An absence of institutional funding must be an important part of the explanation.

  Thirdly, I wrote last week about the limited extent to which Britain supports incubation through government intervention compared with Sweden or Germany, and as expected this subject came up again. But I shan’t revisit that issue this time except to report that one speaker put a brace face on the ever-dwindling public resources in the UK by suggesting that the more incubators are forced to look to the private sector, the more they will be responsive to the current needs of their market – and they will suffer less from the tyranny of targets imposed by local councils when the incubator was built, often in very different economic circumstances. Start-up targets might have been OK in 2004 (say) but today we should be measuring survival rates instead.

  However, a fourth and final area of debate during the session was whether incubators should - as a matter of policy - seek to take equity stakes in companies they nurture. The argument runs broadly as follows: if an incubator had taken a token amount of equity in all its tenants (say in the form of options, to keep ownership issues simple) then after a dozen years it might well have built up a portfolio of 50 or 100 such options. If only one company goes on to a stock market listing, that sliver of equity might be worth a substantial six-figure sum, enough to keep the incubator funded to carry on providing services for the next generation of start-ups for several years.

  My own view, for what worth, is that such a model would only really work where the incubator and its tenants are part of a close-knit community, such as where the incubator is run by a university specifically for university start-ups. The equity options would feed into an evergreen fund and the wider public benefit would be relatively easy to see. Similar arguments apply with intensive ‘boot camp’ style incubators, such as Y-Combinator.

  But where a more ‘generalist’ incubator is concerned, taking an option is more problematic. For one thing, valuation will always be an issue where the company in question is already up and running and has had external funding from angels, say. The investors will generally prefer to inject more cash themselves to pay for services – from rent to advice – that might otherwise dilute ownership.

  The other issue is perceived independence. One definition of an entrepreneur is someone who commandeers the use of resources he does not own or control. An incubator manager does the same thing but one behalf of tenant companies, and on the whole people of whom favours are asked – investors, professional advisers, industry experts – are sympathetic to requests by incubator managers because they know the request is made in good faith and at arm’s length on behalf of early-stage firms who lack the incubator’s networks.

  If the incubator has an ownership interest in the firms on behalf of which it acts, how long will it take for such third party goodwill to evaporate?

  Furthermore, one of the skills that incubator directors have to exercise in the privacy of one-to-one interviews with clients is when to say ‘no’. Sometimes ‘no’ even extends to suggesting that the business will never fly and that the tenant should – for the sake of the founders, the employees and the investors – wind the firm down. It might be more difficult to do that if the incubator has a vested interest in the firm’s survival.

   So my thinking on incubators taking client equity is, for the moment, that it is not a good idea. But I’m biddable. As Groucho Marx said in a different context: ‘these are my principles; if you don’t like them…well, I have others.’

   

   

• Nov. 30, 2009 Incubation as a Public Good - the Swedish Model

  Last week, I was in Stockholm for two days speaking at a conference called Best Practices in Science-based Incubation, organised by the Technopolicy Network. My session was on “Public/Private Finance for Sustainable Incubation” and the debate was lively. Incubators around Europe and beyond are frequently set up with the benefit of public funding but are expected in a few years to become self-financing.

  Long story short, all of us on the panel were trying to conform to the orthodoxy that one way or another all incubators should find methods of weaning themselves off reliance on public subvention. Suggestions from the US included proposals to gain corporate sponsorship for academic incubators; the presentation from New Zealand demonstrated the extent to which sponsorship is already provided there, in the short term at least. But I was not alone in feeling that the orthodoxy of self-sustaining incubation is a chimera.

  The ice was broken by interventions from Sweden and Germany, both pointing out how naked the emperor of self-funding incubation really is.

  The Swedish representative told us that in his country the view has been taken that business incubation is in effect a public good, like education or research or defence. So the state recognises that an element of public funding is a long-term necessity providing benefits for society at large, not a cost of which to be embarrassed.

  The chairman of my panel, Heinz Fiedler, president of Science Park & Innovation Centres Expert Group (SPICE), was the founder of the first European incubator, in Berlin in 1983 – predating even St John’s Innovation Centre by about 4 years. He summed up the discussion by supporting the Swedish Model. We should stop talking about public funding for incubation services as a cost – it is a fee for a service from which the whole economy will benefit. This reminded me of angel investors who bridle when entrepreneurs talk of giving equity away: “You’re not giving it – you’re selling it!”

  Not for the first time in recent months I was struck by the extent to which mainland Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world seem like oil and water. Perhaps because in the 1970s we had both dire public services (remember the trains?) and high taxation, Britain in particular started an experiment in the 1980s of championing the private sector and living by market rules. Denis Healey famously referred to “sado-monetarism” as the hallmark of British economic policy then, but “sado-markets” might have been closer to the truth.

  As a diligent reader of the Economist magazine since I was in the 5^th form at school, I think I can recite the theoretical virtues of the market in my sleep. But when I experience the virtues of public transport in France or Germany - or Sweden- or listen to the unhinged objections to universal healthcare underwritten by government emanating from the loopy Right in the US (‘death panels’ will decide who should live, according to the ineffable Sarah Palin), my faith in government intervention to meet market weaknesses revives. Not all markets are self-correcting.

  Here at the St John’s Innovation Centre, we should acknowledge the contribution of government agencies such as EEDA and the Greater Cambridge Partnership over the years in paying for services that pull the Centre away from being simply managed workspace with a few additional services, and instead enable us to provide the advice, guidance, introductions and support that make for successful incubation.

  At the moment, thanks to funding from GCP we can advise 175 companies a year under the High-growth Starts programme. And through EEDA’s Understanding Finance for Business series of training workshops we are providing introductory sessions to around 500 companies a year. I doubt either scheme would exist if left entirely to the market. If only 10% of those companies we advise go on to improved performance, the impact on the regional economy will be significant.

  So much as I understand the theoretical case for market-based solutions as the earth around which we must all revolve, seeing the interventionist Swedish model in action reminded me of Galileo’s (alleged) famous phrase when he was forced to recant his belief that in fact the earth moves round the sun: “E pur si muove” – “And yet it moves”. External support is still necessary to make incubation work, and it is not a cost but an investment.

   

• Aug. 6, 2009 Cambridge Enterprise Conference

  23rd September 2009
  
  It’s only a month until the 10th Cambridge Enterprise Conference (CEC10) takes place at Churchill College. The theme this year is ‘navigating international waters’ and if you are an innovative SME with growth aspirations, I urge you to attend as building in an international dimension from the outset is one of the surest means of growing over the longer term.
  
  The CEC started as just an idea for airing issues about entrepreneurship, devised by Christopher Saunders (Choir of Angels) and Walter Herriot (St John’s Innovation Centre) in 1997. I became involved by serendipity as at the time I was working in the Marketing Department of HSBC and was in HSBC’s Cambridge office when Chris and Walter came in to pitch the idea.
  
  HSBC became a founder-sponsor and I gave a short talk at CEC 1 on the different ways that German and British banks deal with SMEs. The venue was the Fisher Room at St John’s College, which these days would be far too small for the number of attendees expected, though at the time the organisers were concerned that no-one would turn up.
  
  For the next three or four years, the date and the format varied somewhat. Sometimes the conference took place in April and sometimes in September (hence 10 conferences over 12 years). It ranged from one day to two and a half, with different ‘tracks’ in different lecture theatres, before settling down to its current format about four years ago. A number of names to conjure with in the innovation space have been speakers, from Amar Bhide of McKinsey and Columbia University to Mike Lynch of Autonomy and Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures.
  
  This year the line-up is equally impressive. It would be invidious of me to single out any speaker in particular, so check out http://www.cambridgeenterpriseconference.co.uk/
  
  After an opening session on ‘the export imperative’, tracks will cover doing business in North America, in Europe and in Asia. The conference will conclude with a session on open innovation, and as is now customary, at lunch-time there will be elevator pitches from half-a-dozen promising young tech firms.
  
  The Cambridge Enterprise Conference is sponsored by Peters Elworthy & Moore as well as by the St John’s Innovation Centre. It is supported by Business Link, the Greater Cambridge Partnership and N W Brown Group Limited.
  
  Thanks to this support, we can allow entrepreneurs running early-stage, innovative firms access to the Conference on preferential rates.
  
  If you’re interested in attending, come and have a word with Peter Hornby or me in the office.
  
  Until next week
  
  David
  

• Aug. 3, 2009 Welcome to the new website

  Welcome to the newly-revamped website of the St John’s Innovation Centre! We hope you find it useful and informative.

  In addition to enhanced background information on the Centre itself, the Cambridge cluster and some recent or current tenants, over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out services such as the ability to book rooms online, a calendar of events, a discussion section for live topics and other features to supplement the sense of onsite community with virtual tools to make communication easier.
  
  The SJIC community is fairly extensive, and as a result I suspect that most of us don’t talk to our neighbours (in the broad sense) as much as we’d like. Some 60 companies actually on site and 300 people working in the building are supplemented by 270 Star Tenants – companies who use SJIC as their address but don’t (yet) have a physical office here. With a wide range of organisations – from technology breakfast clubs to faith groups – using our conference rooms for regular events, the traffic through the building in any given month is quite extensive.
  
  I’m acutely aware that the recession has made most of us in the building keep our heads down this year, which is understandable. But many of the benefits of being in an incubator like SJIC come from discussions – formal and informal – with fellow tenants, and it’s those conversations we’re looking to facilitate during the autumn and beyond.
  
  In addition to new discussions facilities on the website, we’re re-launching the regular Friday events that many of you will remember from Enterprise Link days. Starting in mid-September, every other Friday the Innovation Centre will provide a sandwich lunch and an (usually) external speaker to talk for 20 minutes on a current, relevant topic of particular interest to innovative firms. Proposals being considered include legal issues in raising funds, recent changes in the grants regime, team building, open venturing and strategic marketing.
  
  We’re also looking to encourage tenants who’ve recently been successful in raising finance or undertaking a major corporate transaction to share their experience. If you have stories to volunteer, do let me know. The Friday lunchtime format is likely to evolve according to demand, and we welcome your feedback. If it proves popular, we’d look to have more frequent events.
  
  Now a short word about this blog. Having spent 2004-05 in California, just as social networking and personal blogs were taking off in a big way, I used to be a strong supporter of new media. But such has been the explosion of material in the past two or three years that it’s difficult not to feel that ‘less is more’. Personally I don’t even find time to listen to the weekly podcasts on entrepreneurship and finance I download from the BBC or the Cambridge or Stanford websites. And I’m a little suspicious of people who do: when are they actually getting work done?
  
  So this blog is likely to appear weekly, but if we on the SJIC home team don’t have anything to say, we won’t issue a blog just for the sake of it. Subject matter will be very similar to the proposed Friday midday events: current developments in areas of interest to innovation SMEs, from access to funding to changes in patent regulation or industry trends. In addition, developments at SJIC itself will also be covered.
  
  And as Polonius put it, brevity is the soul of wit, even though I still doubt that anything meaningful can be said in 140 characters or fewer, unless author and audience already share a dense common background. But I’m even prepared to give that a go.
  
  Until next time
  
  David