All posts by Althea Taylor-Salmon

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Leading in a Crisis Part 2: Taking Action – David Falzani, SMF President

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If a crisis hits your company, clear thinking and decisive leadership is essential take your team through the ensuing storm.

As you’ll have read in our previous blog post on this topic, preparation is vital to ensuring that your organisation can deal with a crisis effectively. With a thorough risk assessment and management strategy in place, you’ll already have a good idea of how a crisis would impact your operations, and a plan deal with the issues. So, when that crisis hits, what’s next?

Face the music
When crisis hits, your first instinct might be to cover your own back. Self-preservation is a natural reaction in circumstances like these, but unfortunately, that’s not going to get you nor your organisation out of the woods. Before anything else, you may need to swallow some hard truths.

These might include your own role in the crisis – if you’re leading your company, then you no doubt exert a large influence on how the crisis affects your organisation and any solutions to it. You should consider yourself as one of the first figures who needs to make sacrifices if any tough choices need to be made.

After that, it’s important to develop a consensus on the causes of the crisis. This is vital, as no long-term solutions can really be implemented unless you know what the underlying problems really are.

Transparency is vital here. Quick fixes and concealment are not a way out, and will only exacerbate the crisis and make things worse.

All hands on deck
As we previously discussed, any risk management strategies should be communicated transparently and openly with your organisation’s stakeholders; and ultimately to the public as the media will inevitably report on the crisis.

Crisis can create a lot of uncertainty and fear among stakeholders, but particularly employees who will be worrying about their job security. If you didn’t involve them in risk management before the crisis hit, as is the ideal, now is the time to do exactly that.

First of all, your employees need certain reassurances. If redundancies have been deemed necessary because of the situation (for example, if an economic crisis requires cost-saving measures to be made), then this needs to be a part of your crisis consultations with the
other members of your organisation. The potential impacts of any planned changes must be outlined in full – in particular, if redundancies will be necessary or if there is any possibilities for employee redeployment.

As a crisis will affect your whole organisation, it is vital that you involve the whole organisation in the dialogue aimed at resolving it. Consultations should take place with employees and, if present, unions. Giving employees clarity and reassurances about the
situation will make your organisation more likely to weather the storm. There’s been more than one company that’s hit a survivable crisis but found it lost a key portion of its top talent, perhaps those who find it easiest to get a new job, through a lack of clear consultation.

Furthermore, as crises often call for new, creative ways of thinking and problem-solving, a
company-wide dialogue could potentially produce new solutions and answers at an uncertain time. These cannot be implemented without the help of staff.

Fight your way out
Think of a crisis not just as a disaster, but an opportunity for change. A crisis might actually empower you to make important changes to the company – changes that may have stalled in the past, but can now be implemented in the name of crisis management.

Indeed, many companies saw the 2008 financial crash as a business opportunity. Take Dan Simon’s piece in Forbes, How to turn a financial crisis into a business opportunity: “During this turbulent period we managed to grow the company into a major player in financial PR and open successful offices in New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Sydney.”

Calmer Waters
Keeping a level head and turning the tables to your advantage can help the organisation emerge from the crisis not only intact, but more successful and efficient than before.

Click to read part 1 of Leading in a Crisis.

 

Blog

Cathy Breeze – Steering SMF Communications for 20 Years

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Cathy Breeze took up the role of Director of Communications at Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF) around the time that email started to take off in business! 20 years on Cathy is managing a wide ranging campaign that embraces everything from the Annual Dinner and the Annual Report through to social media communications; running an active LinkedIn Group, Engineers in Business; an e-newsletter for Fellows, publications, research projects and a university business competition.

The communications channels may have changed, but the mission of Sainsbury Management Fellows remains the same – to help ambitious young engineers gain the skills and experience that enables them to become business leaders, either in their own start-ups or in blue-chip companies.

Cathy has spearheaded the external communications campaign to raise awareness of the scholarship scheme and attract high calibre candidates to apply for an award, as well as working with SMFs’ Trustees to build relationships with leading institutions such as the Royal Academy of Engineering and EngineeringUK. Cathy has helped to foster many mentoring relationships between Fellows and young engineers and helped the Trustees in the organisation’s transition to a registered charity.

At a dinner to celebrate her 20th anniversary as SMFs’ Director of Communications, Cathy said: “This has been the most rewarding job of my career, and I’ve had some interesting posts. I am fortunate to work with Trustees who have a strong vision for the charity and a commitment to deliver great results. They have inspired my work on the communications front. I very much look forward to our next challenge – raising £10 million to continue the charity’s work. We have already raised over £1.7million, which is a great start.”

Blog

Leading in a Crisis Part 1: Preparation – David Falzani, SMF President

Kayak
When crisis strikes your organisation, who are you going to call? A consultant? The bank? Your legal team?

Unfortunately, there are few easy fixes to a business crisis. Crisis can strike at any time and in any form, and some can end up being so severe that your company may have to cease operations entirely. There is no magic wand to wave, and while crack teams of experts who will solve all of your problems are the stuff of dreams, it is ultimately you who must lead the company’s ship through the storm. So what is a crisis? And how do we best prepare an organisation for such an emergency?

The problem of risk
Risk management seems to dominate the day-to-day operations of our institutions and workplaces more than ever before. The very phrase can send even the most hardened manager into cold sweats, conjuring up memories of hours of paperwork to protect the company or premises against anything from fire to burglary.

However, this simplistic understanding of risk can obscure some of the most important lessons of security culture and the problem of risk. Successfully preparing for a crisis and managing its subsequent fallout ultimately requires a shift in organisational culture – one which seeks to manage and limit insecurity. This further requires a parallel shift in how we conceptualise risk.

Risk does not just refer to specific areas of potential crisis, such as property damage. It refers to a whole range of potentialities that could negatively – and significantly – impact your operations. Cisco offer a useful definition of risk as “Risk = Value x Threat x Vulnerability”.

Preparing for disaster
Of course, we can never be fully prepared for risk – its very nature implies it is always a possibility. Whether a crisis is caused by external factors, such as a major environmental disaster, arson or an information breach, or something internal, such as rogue bookkeeping or sabotage, it can be so unpredictable that preparation and security thinking should be of the utmost priority. While risk or insecurity can never be eradicated, they can certainly be managed.

Start by developing a clear process and strategy for gathering information about every one of the business’ operations. There are innumerable sources of risk within any company, and unfortunately, board members are often blind to these until it is too late. Line managers will be aware of many of the potential risks associated with their department, but they might also not have the same perspective as the employees they’re managing. The same goes for external experts who are able to assess your risk planning objectively and bring a fresh perspective to your situation.

It’s therefore worth entering into a dialogue with all stakeholders and at every level of the organisation. This can be achieved through stakeholder mapping, which involves:

  • Identifying and categorising your different stakeholder groups, from your employees to your customers
  • Research, identifying and defining the specific issues each group may face, and how much influence your company has over them
  • Defining an ideal outcome of a crisis, how to manage its fallout, and how to mobilise each stakeholder toward solving the problem

This will not only give you diverse information about potential areas of insecurity (allowing you to plan for crisis scenarios), but it is also the first step in establishing a permanent culture of security throughout the company hierarchy. Any so-called ‘security team’ should ideally be drawn from this diverse knowledge base.

Keeping this flow of information regular and comprehensive is vital in keeping your executives and managers informed and involved. In other words, every member of your company should be constantly aware of the risks around them. With the right protocol and procedure in place, developed according to rigorous risk assessments, you are already well on your way to being prepared for a crisis.

Simply put, open and transparent communication with stakeholders is a must. It is vital to remember that any crisis you have is going to affect not just your internal operations, but everyone around you as well. Therefore any considerations of risk should not just extend to your internal organisational culture – how it will impact you – but also the impact it is going to have on your company’s image and, most importantly, your consumer base.

Click to read part 2 of Leading in a Crisis.

Blog

Integrating Teams Post Acquisition for Perfect Harmony – David Falzani

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Managing your people and making sure it works
You’ve been through a successful acquisition or merger. All the legal proceedings and necessary preparation that needed to take place have been done successfully. But this is only the beginning of a long and important process of integration. A lot of post-M&As are mismanaged  and result in poor outcomes.

Too much can often take place too quickly, leading to an erosion of previous internal cultures, a loss of staff, and a dangerous loss of profitability. After the acquisition, it is the task of management to ensure that the new, combined teams are able to build a shared vision of where the firm is going. It’s time to build a new internal culture forged through cooperation and consensus.

Start while you’re ahead
The most important foundations of post-M&A integration are established during pre-deal negotiations. Setting targets for integration should be considered as much of a priority as the process of establishing key benefits and risks from the deal itself and, indeed, should be based on this evidence and analysis. That’s why it’s vital to assess the internal structure, values and culture of the other party before the deal is done, and vice versa; due diligence is key.

One way this can be achieved is through the use of a clean team. This is an independent group of individuals bound by strict confidentiality agreements who gather the necessary data for integration, which usually lies out of the reach of an acquirer’s employees pre-deal.

To enable comprehensive integration planning, many organisations have begun using clean teams to gather information, analyse scenarios, and make preliminary integration decisions prior to deal consummation.

These clean teams operate under strict protocols that enable competitive or confidential information to be aggregated and summarised in a form that helps leadership review the analysis about the future combined organisation without violating competition laws – Aon Hewitt.

Have meetings with the other party involved in the merger or acquisition and work together to collate your findings and establish the sources of risk and possible friction. Establish an integration plan together, structured around core values, will save your company a lot of pain in the long run.

Making the hard decisions manageable
A merger or acquisition can be a stressful time for everyone, but especially employees. A particular source of employees’ anxiety stems from concerns about job security. Employees and line managers alike are unsure if there is going to be a place for them after the deal. Everyone knows there could be difficult decisions ahead, and that some staff may become surplus to requirement as the new business is forged.

If not well managed, the post-acquisition/merger stage can be messy and cause grief for those taking redundancy (voluntary or compulsory) and the managers who have to implement the programme. Losing a job can trigger a lot of personal issues that can damage employees’ well-being, resulting in loss of self-worth, feelings of betrayal, and a loss of identity. It’s important to handle these situations properly – negative effects and perceptions don’t impact on outgoing staff and those staying with the company. Creating negative perceptions of management ethos will make it hard to win ‘hearts and minds’ and to take the business forward.

Managing properly not only means treating people with dignity, but providing concrete support, for example, offering outgoing employees resources and support to help them transition to another job or career. There are many outplacement and career transition services available. It’s good practice to organise such services as part of a redundancy package, or to allocate individuals funds to enable them to choose an outplacement agency themselves.

Building a new shared culture
Having identified and planned your post-acquisition or merger integration, it’s time to implement it. The problem with many integration plans is that management can fall into the trap of coming in and saying to the new team, “this is how things are going to work.” Communicating a vision is important, but workplace cultures tend to develop organically; they can’t be manufactured.

If you’ve already established what sort of culture will benefit the integrated company, it’s time to start incentivising the sort of behaviours you want to emerge, particularly for line managers. This can be achieved by getting the staff engaged in the vision for the company, involving them in decisions, listening to ideas as well as providing attractive reward and recognition schemes. As well as this, you’ll hopefully have identified key time frames for achieving your integration plan fully – 100 days is a popular and effective starting time scale. A cohesive strategy covering planning, communication, action and co-operation is the name of the game.

case studies

From MBA to DNA

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Chris Martin is Chief Executive of Sciona, a company at the cutting edge of business innovation and the revolution in genetics.

Chris Martin is a highly qualified chemical engineer. His MBA demystified the workings of corporate finance and enabled him to pursue his ambitions for commercialising technology. Chris, who started his career as a chemical engineer, has harnessed the knowledge he gained from an MBA at leading Swiss business school IMD (formerly IMI) to combine his natural commercial flair with his scientific know-how.

His sector is one of the freshest business areas to have opened up in the last decade – taking technology developed in academic institutions to mainstream markets.

Sciona, the latest in a string of spin-out ventures Chris has presided over, is leading the push to bring the benefits of major breakthroughs in mapping the human genome, to consumers.

His company offers a service to customers that reveals if they are genetically predisposed to illnesses affected by lifestyle factors like stress, diet and exercise. It offers consumers the opportunity to tailor their lifestyles to ensure prolonged health and well-being. Customers simply take a swab from inside their mouth that is then analysed by the company’s expert team of leading scientists to produce each individual’s unique genetic make-up. Combined with a brief lifestyle questionnaire, Sciona can advise its customers how best to make lifestyle changes to enhance their well-being.

Chris’ career started with a degree in Chemical Engineering at Aston University. He followed it with a DPhil in Engineering Science at Oxford University. It was during 18 months of post-doctoral work at the University and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment that he first started to develop his commercial instincts, starting a computer software company with his flatmates. Chris recalls, “I got a real taste for the commercial world and realised I enjoyed that side of the industry as much as the technical elements.”

He joined a small consultancy working in the offshore oil industry that then diversified into the pharmaceutical sector and other process engineering industries. “I took a diploma in management studies to try to understand more about business. From my work I thought I could see situations where large companies were making poor technology investment decisions.”

His interest in this subject grew and in 1988 he applied to Sainsbury Management Fellows for a place on the International MBA programme, opting for a one-year course at the leading Swiss business school IMI, now IMD.

Chris says, “Mine was a classic MBA, very strong on international finance and organisational development. The key thing was that the course demystified a lot of aspects of business. One of the biggest advantages my MBA gave me was a thorough understanding of corporate finance.”

After completing the course Chris used his new skills to tackle the trend of poor technology decision-making he had spotted over the previous years. He and a partner set up the consultancy as part of Marex in late 1989.

Early success, including a series of contracts from Courtaulds, was followed by Chris leading a management buy-out of the consultancy to form Paras Ltd. Growth over the ensuing years created a team of 40 professionals at offices in the UK, Holland and South Africa.

In the early 1990s Chris’ attention turned to the growing trend of companies formed around technologies from leading universities and industrial research. He joined a fellow engineer to set up an early stage feed capital company after recognising that embryonic companies founded on campus research required expert outside help.

Chris and a growing number of expert colleagues created a string of successful technology companies including Solcom, which develops web-enabled systems monitoring and management systems, Despatch Box, a data encryption and security company, and SpiroGen, a biotech spin-out developing the technology to stop cancer cells replicating by binding specific DNA strands.

But it was Sciona and its potential for putting a truly groundbreaking health product in the hands of ordinary people that really fired Chris’ imagination. “It’s a really fascinating area to be working in, with some tremendously talented people.

“I’ve never been a traditional chemical engineer but the scientific foundation combined with the skills and knowledge I gained through my MBA have enabled me to take my career forward in challenging and, I hope, innovative ways.”

He concludes, “Every day I see that there is a significant change in the UK climate for entrepreneurial innovation. There are now a lot of well-educated, ambitious young people using their technical education to launch themselves into business. When the SMF scheme started, this was almost unheard of.”

Case studies correct at the time of publication.  SMFs may have moved to new posts since publication.  For the latest career information on our Fellows visit our SMF Profile Page.

Press Releases

Hard Hats Give Engineers a Bad Image

Following-like-sheep counting hard hats May 2013
Sainsbury Management Fellows has launched its 2015 Hard Hat Index which shows that the engineering sector is still firmly wedded to using hard hat images to promote engineers and engineering jobs. SMF believes that the association with hard hats conjures up the wrong image and this misleading image is one of the key factors preventing young people from choosing engineering careers and parents discouraging engineering as a career choice. This contributes to the huge shortfall of engineers in the UK.

The 2015 SMF Hard Hat Index recorded a total of 257 hard hat images depicting engineering in advertising and editorials in selected engineering publications. Compared to 2013, this is a 39% increase in the total number of hard hat images used to promote engineering.

Sainsbury Management Fellows 2015 Hard Hat Index Trade Media Monitoring ChartsHowever, there are tentative signs of a breakthrough on the advertising front. There were 107 such images in adverts compared to 150 in articles. But things are not looking promising on the editorial front. Comparing the 2013 report to the latest Index, there has been a staggering 123% increase in the use of hard hats in editorial, compared with a 9.32% decrease in adverts. The latter may be an indication that companies are starting to use more inspiring and thought-provoking images in their advertising campaigns.

A YouGov survey conducted for SMF when it launched the Hard Hat Service back in 2012 revealed that just 19% of people polled think of engineers having exciting careers and only 36% see them as people who change our lives, even though they are the heart of innovation across all industries.

Although the SMF Hard Hat Index is a whimsical study akin to the Economist’s Big Max Index, it allows SMF to raise awareness of the problem of the visual representation of engineers is the media.

SMF President David Falzani said, “Engineers change every aspect of our lives, from medicine to social media. Yet, the hard hat has become synonymous with engineering jobs, limiting the perception of our diverse profession. This has a real impact on young people choosing not to go into engineering and employers’ ability to recruit engineering graduates who don’t relate to hard hat jobs.

The Hard Hat Index helps to stimulate discussion and we have seen a higher profile debate on the engineering brand in the media. Recently Professor Dame Ann Dowling,  President, Royal Academy of Engineering, stated in a BBC Radio 4 interview that when you Google the word engineer, many hard hat images appear and we need a change.”

We will continue to highlight the unhelpfulness of using hard hats to brand engineers to continue to raise awareness of the problem and hopefully change. The fall in the use of hard hats in adverts is a start but we have a long way to go.”

Blog

Embracing, not Evading, Innovation in Clean Technology

sam-cockerillOver-used, over-hyped, misunderstood, and much maligned – the word ‘innovation’ often gets a bit of a rough ride in the media. Part of the problem is that the word’s literal meaning ‘to bring in a new idea’ is very broad, and depends very much on the context into which a new idea is brought. The conceptual novelty of innovation differentiates it from the mere renewal of old stuff or ‘renovation’. And as I am often reminded by my patent attorney, innovation or novelty alone is not the same as invention which requires a non-obvious connection, an inventive step. If I repaint my front room, I am renovating. If I use a robot to repaint my front room I am innovating. If I design the first robot that can paint rooms, I am inventing.

Of course, technology innovation is only one type of innovation. Innovation in the arts, in fashion, in media, in politics, and even in religion is possible – any field of human activity or thought in which an old idea can be displaced by, or incorporated into, a new one has the capacity for innovation (Whether there is an appetite for such innovation is another story).

But technology innovation is different, because both supply and demand for this type of innovation are accelerating. Population and economic growth, demographic change, resource scarcity and climate change each present major challenges, and create the demand for new approaches and ideas that technology innovators are racing to come up with. On the supply side, rapid progress across many disparate fields of science and engineering in the past few decades has created and proven a vast array of new materials, equipment, information and method/process technologies. Technology innovators can pick and chose from this body of ideas to create valuable new products and services, and as the library of proven technology inventions generated by research and development expands, the potential for technology innovation grows exponentially. For the technology innovator, this poses a number of key questions, for example:

  • Is there a way to combine a selection of these technologies to meet an unmet market need?
  • How do I discover and select the best of each of the technology elements I need?
  • Are the technology elements all proven, are some still in their infancy?
  • Are there any gaps where I need to invent something myself?
  • Will anything unexpectedly bad (or good) happen when I combine these?
  • Do the benefits outweigh the costs and risks, i.e. does this solution create value?

The connectivity and reach provided by the internet has slashed the information costs of answering these questions. It has helped researchers disseminate information about their technology’s progress and performance in current applications, and has helped innovators reach out beyond their own industries for the technology elements they need to create the products and services of the future.

For clean technology entrepreneurs, there has never been a better time to innovate.

Sam Cockerill is CEO of Libertine FPE Limited, developing “Linear Power System” technologies that will make decentralised power generation the norm – bringing clean, reliable and affordable power to wherever it is needed.  Sam is currently in San Francisco along with fourteen other UK cleantech start-ups as part of the Clean and Cool Mission 2015. This week-long trip is an opportunity for the entrepreneurs to hone their business pitches, learn from leaders in the field, and talk about their amazing products to potential investors and partners. Clean and Cool 2015 is organised by Innovate UK, together with The Long Run Venture, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and CoSpA (the Co-Sponsorship Agency).  You can follow the progress of the Mission on Twitter@innovateukmedia,@CleanandCool and #cleansf.

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Clean and Cool Mission at the Long Now Foundation

sam-cockerillBehind a smallish shop front on Marina Boulevard, the Long Now Foundation resembles something between a trendy coffee shop, second hand bookstore, art gallery and museum of mechanical computers.  This was to be the culmination of a morning’s tour of downtown San Francisco for the Clean and Cool Mission, providing the group with a cultural, geographic and historical orientation to help frame the coming week.

Long Now Foundation Shop Front
I had previously come across The Long Now Foundation in articles written about its most famous project, a mountain-scale clock designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years.

Planet earth on the inner solar system position indicator mechanism of the 10,000 year clock

Planet earth on the inner solar system position indicator mechanism of the 10,000 year clock whole indicator mechanism

This design brief is both breathtakingly audacious and utterly perplexing.  And for good reason, because the questions posed by this project run to the heart of what the Long Now Foundation is about.  How do you design a clock that must outlast not only its designer but perhaps even its designer’s language and civilisation? What will power it? What events could occur in the next ten thousand years that might stop the clock or break it?  How will the next five hundred generations maintain and repair it?  And then there’s the small matter of ten millennia of weathering and climate change to deal with.

These questions and many more have been addressed in a beautifully conceived mechanical design which is now being installed in a man-made cavern in Texas, and a scale model of part of the mechanism stands in the Foundation’s entrance.

The Long Now Foundation is the brainchild of Danny Hills, Stewart Brand and Brian Eno ‘to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years’. It provides thought leadership and inspiration through a wide range of activities that span cultural, linguistic and genomic archives as well as digital information, software and computing projects. The Foundation also provides a forum for debate and idea sharing both through an active online community and a series of seminars hosted by co-founder Stewart Brand at the Foundation’s headquarters.

Originally a museum for the Foundation’s work, the building has recently been developed to include ‘The Interval’ –  a meeting place and café – and hosts a crowd-curated ‘Manual for Civilization’, a collection of around 3,500 books considered most essential to sustain or rebuild civilization. One striking feature of this library is the prominence of science fiction which sits side-by-side alongside more practical manuals on how to build and understand things. One of the four basic categories which the library is composed of is “Long-term Thinking, Futurism, and relevant history”. In this category, well known history, anthropology and socio-political titles jostle for position with futurology and science fiction works. What many of these have in common is the contemplation of real or imagined changes in human society across millennial spans of time. This vision stands in stark contrast to the ‘short now’ of daily life, with an urgency driven by the exponential pace of change in technology, information, resource consumption and economics.

As the morning’s fog lifted, the relevance to our Clean and Cool Mission became clear. Every one of the cleantech businesses here understands the role that new technology can play to help address global sustainability challenges in the coming decades. The Long Now Foundation has taken this idea and, by looking out across millennia rather than decades, has made it much, much bigger.

Sam Cockerill is CEO of Libertine FPE Limited, developing “Linear Power System” technologies that will make decentralised power generation the norm – bringing clean, reliable and affordable power to wherever it is needed.  Sam is currently in San Francisco along with fourteen other UK cleantech start-ups as part of the Clean and Cool Mission 2015. This week-long trip is an opportunity for the entrepreneurs to hone their business pitches, learn from leaders in the field, and talk about their amazing products to potential investors and partners. Clean and Cool 2015 is organised by Innovate UK, together with The Long Run Venture, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and CoSpA (the Co-Sponsorship Agency).  You can follow the progress of the Mission on Twitter@innovateukmedia,@CleanandCool and #cleansf. Follow the author @LibertineFPE.

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An Entrepreneurial Christmas List

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Most of us are reaching the end of our working year in the run-up to Christmas. With the economy finally on the rise, 2014 has been an exciting and productive year for entrepreneurs and start-ups.  As we’re looking forward to an even brighter 2015, we asked four of our entrepreneurial SMFs what’s on their Christmas business wish list.  Here they share their Christmas wishes, which range from financial investment for faster growth to a 3D chocolate printer!

James Harding, Co-Founder of Natural Juice Company

Gemma Harding launches Natural Juicing Company photo
Delicious range of natural juices

Specialising in dairy and gluten-free juices the Natural Juicing Company was recently launched by James Harding and his wife Gemma, and they are looking for venture capital financing, and marketing and communications experts to help them speed up growth and development in their new business. The company launched in November this year and is already causing a stir, having been invited to supply the juices for a leading UK premiere in 2015.

James said, “Like any start-up, we need help, particularly in the areas of marketing and business development. We have two Christmas wishes – the first is to find a communications expert who believes in our vision and is able to provide some advice pro bono to help us build brand awareness, secure trials and endorsements from health professionals and celebrities, and give us tips on getting into the media.

“Our second Christmas wish is to find a mentor/non-executive director who can provide ongoing marketing advice and introduce us to people who can help grow the business. We’re feeling optimistic as we set out on a round of meetings with venture capitalists over the next couple of weeks with a view to raising funds in early 2015.”

As we’ve discussed in the blog Raising money for your business venture, venture capital is often hard to acquire as you must demonstrate a high potential for growth. However, once secured, it is perhaps one of the best forms of start-up funding. Recruiting the sort of marketing and communications expertise Natural Juicing Company is looking for is equally challenging, but we are confident that we can connect them with Fellows within the SMF network who can give them advice and support.

Likewise, there are many non-executive directors who mentor new enterprises and by researching the processes NEDs go through as portfolio entrepreneurs, James and Gemma can gain the knowledge to find the right mentor.  Either way, they have made an important first step in identifying what they need to do to make their wishes come true. Do get in touch with us if you think you can help James and Gemma.

Mark Spence, CEO of Rheolab

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Rheolab has a long tradition of hiring and training ambitious young people

Entrepreneur Mark Spence is the CEO of Rheolab, a world class business that sells polymers as cosmetic ingredients. Mark’s business is a great model of a dynamic, transnational company, and his wish highlights the challenge of finding the right people to expand the business across different national markets.

Mark explained, “We have 13 employees split between Chicago and Leeds. The US is the largest market and within the US the North East is the largest region. We have tried for several years to get penetration in this market using distributors, but our results have been mixed. English people go down well in sales roles when visiting large US cosmetic companies. As a Christmas present for Rheolab, I would like to recruit a smart outgoing UK chemistry or chemical engineering graduate who has the confidence and resilience to succeed for us in the North Eastern US market.”

If you’re a talented engineer with the skills Mark is seeking, don’t hesitate to contact us – you could be that illusive person who can help Rheolab penetrate the highly competitive US market by bringing uniquely British business and sales sensibilities to the table.

Serge Taborin, CEO at Q App

 Serge Taborin at Q App voted Best Mobile Payment Service

Serge Taborin awarded Best Mobile Payment Service trophy by Mobile Entertainment Magazine

Q App is a leading mobile ordering platform that enables users to browse the menu and select and pay for their order at participating venues – all from their smartphone.  It also allows users to specify their collection time-slot, making it ideal for takeaway outlets, coffee shops, and theatre intervals. It is therefore revolutionising the hospitality sector by removing one of the biggest end-user pain points in the industry; queuing.

The company is now entering its next stage of development, which involves expanding the number of high quality venues using the app whilst simultaneously driving up the number of end-users. Serge Taborin’s wish is to secure the necessary venture capital funding to take the business to the next level.

Serge said, “It’s been a very exciting year, winning new contracts with big brands including the Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre and Premier League grounds, as well as theatres, bars, pubs, coffee shops and fast food outlets.  Now we need to raise our next wave of funding which will allow us to make a step change in the number of venues using Q App, taking it into the high hundreds over the next 18 months. We will be able to expand our team to support the increasing number of venues coming on board, boost marketing to ensure more people are aware of the service and invest in development so that the product continues to evolve.”

Nimesh Thakrar, Founder of Banneya.com

personalised rose gold ring
Beautiful jewellery created with a 3D printer

Banneya.com offers CAD-proficient jewellery designers access to the latest additive manufacture technology to create their designs in precious metals. This is in line with brand new technological developments in 3D printed metal. Each piece of precious jewellery is hand-finished to the highest standard, and Banneya offers a curated marketplace on which to trade. Banneya also offers a forum for building mutually beneficial business partnerships with all parties benefiting from the income collectively generated by the platform. Nimesh Thakrar, hopes to see new developments in 3D printing technology to bring new and exciting products to this blossoming market.

Asked for his Christmas wish he jokingly said, “We’re creating some stunning 3d printed gold jewellery – that doesn’t exactly help with treats in the office, so how fitting would it be to be gifted a chocolate 3D printer this Christmas? Yes, they do exist now!”

The business ‘birth rate’ has reached a 10-year high, with the number of new firms up by 28.5% last year.  More than ever, new businesses are looking for ways to get a foothold in their respective markets. By setting your wishes (aka goals) and timeframes, entrepreneurs, like our SMFs are well on their way to success. We hope all their wishes come true and that they have some real down time at Christmas in readiness for a sparkling start to the New Year.