CITYJET JOURNAL

36

SEPTEMBER 2012

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business.
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with heaVy.~qu..ipm,ent, fire it4f,ind
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changing woi'Jd; it is:t~~.hpdtisei
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J J d~in'a~d, along with an,a~ility-to
envisage ~hat may bep~eld in
the future,
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It's exciting stuff. It can also seem
.daunting to a business used to doing
things the,?ld way. Is it really
necessary tobe intelligent in the
,
modern marketplace? How can a
firm learn the new tricks to stay
ahead of the game?',

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iil~elligent technologies to
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is a nation ofbrainy
people. We are innovators
who come up with great ideas
and are ready to take them
,forward. These days we

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There are sorne basics that any

business would be -&ise not to ignore:
. " Technology is updating
time. Stay intrested,

ll the

Innovation irnproves efficiency and

thar means greater profits.
Not clued up? Talk to someone
who is: there is help out there.
Forget the fear, new technology is
there for everyone: move rorward
with it.

Ideas are huge sellers

Who wants to come up with the big

plan that will make a fortune
overnight? Everyone looks at
Facebook and wishes they had
thought of it first. Or Coogle. The
world had not imagined either 10
years ago. Now both are part of
everyday life.
Yet the smaller stuff can really
make a difference too. Julian White

is MD of Cambridge company
Skalene. One of their current
projects involves working with gene
sequencing, expected to have
enormous implications for us all in
the future. Cambridge physics
graduate Julian and his co-founder
Martin Horrod are liaising with
Liverpool University, with
sponsorship from Unilever.
He said: "This is huge new
technology. We have come up with
an intelligent way to process raw
materiaL It cornes down to the fact
that companies can have a half-amillion dollar machine standing
useless because the samples they
need can't be prepared fast enough.
"Using microfluidics, our
researchers have found that they can
slash the time it takes to purify and
prepare host DNA. At the moment
it can take up to a week to extract
DNA from an organism such as a
bacterium and prepare it for
sequencing. Skalene's new techniques
can reduce this to a few hours. Put
simply, we take DNA from an
animal and then quickly get it to the
point where it is ready to be put into
the machine.
"We find solutions for the end user
because we are in the business of
finding fast-moving, hightechnology answers to problems so
that companies can move forward."
Julian started Skalene four years
ago after selling his start-up
company, Cenapta, to Canadian
investors. The sale helped him and
Martin fund their new enterprise.
Yet he is very aware that elever ide as
are one thing, but the business still
has to stay firmly on track.
He added: "ln these times of
recession you have to be fairly
sanguine. To quote Michael
Schumacher, 'If you want to finish
first, you first of all have to finish'.

37

You have to be careful that you are

relatively disciplined. You have to be
sure you can coyer costs but you
must also be ready to take every
opportunity forward. Working
closely with your clients is crucial."

Intelligence

is exported

On a larger scale, ARM Holdings

employs over 2,000 people. They
specialise in computer chips,
designing and licensing intellectual
property, known as IP. Also based in
Cambridge, ARM is the world's
leading IP company, having shipped
over 20 billion chips and sold 800
licences to more than 250 companies.
A spokesman said: "We have
offices around the world including
design centres in Taiwan, France,
India, Sweden and the US. We
license IP to a network of partners
who pay for the licence and a royalty
on every chip."
The success of ARM shows that
technology can be a very high earner
indeed and the rewards will continue
to flood in through royalties on the
product. The lesson here is that an
ide a need not be a one-off earner. It
can continue to produce revenue into
the future if handled carefully.

No need to fear

Coing it alone with a good ide a can

seem scary. Alastair Crawford,
founder of 192.com, was inspired by
advice from his father. "He would tell
me 1 didn't need to find security in a
job, 1 could make work for myself."
His brainwave came about when
he looked at a telephone directory
one day and realised that technology
was moving fast and an online
version would be a winner. Today 10
million people use the website every
month, last year bringing in

learning curve

revenue of l5.5m for the company,

which has 40 staffbased in Fulham,
West London.
Alastair came up with his scheme
after dropping out of two universities
where he had planned to study
accounting. He said: "Knowledge of
accounting and law is valu able when
starting a business but sometimes it
can make you look at things in a
blinkered way."
ln the early days he struggled
to get access to the information he
needed but managed to launch his
directory in 1997 and has continued
te grow, despite setbacks along the
way. He is happy to let others know
what is needed to turn a dream into
reality.
He said: " If your idea is good and
you are failing, you are not pushing
hard enough. Success is 1%
inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Innovation

Ideas in unlikely places

"If yOuf idea is good and

you are failing you are not
pushing ha rd enough.
Success is 1% inspiration
and 99% perspiration"

He opted to install a multi-user

service from a company called
Gradwell and is pleased he did,
adding: "The line is very c1ear and
customers don'r notice the difference.
Small businesses like ours find VoiP
ideal because we are able to make
calls efficiently without running up
huge costs." There are sorne great
ideas out there. They don't have to be
yours, but looking into them is well
worth the time taken. Spend a
moment to check what is available
and save, money.
e

can eut costs

Ideas are born of necessity and

nothing matters more than keeping
costs down. Sorne small businesses
spend a fortune on phone calls but
until now there seemed to be no
alternative. However, latest
technology allows firms to use VoiP,
or Voice over Internet Protocol,
which uses an internet connection to
make telephone calls. It has seen the
number of fixed-line phones fail by
1.5 million in the five years to 2010
and the trend is still downwards.
Calls between staff are free and
savings of more than 20% are
common. Cornish business Total
Energy Solutions took the VoiP
route three years ago.
Director Alastair Carnegie said:
"We were working on two sites and
the phone bill was becoming
ridiculous as we were making so
many calls between them."

Even the big boys need to

look forwrd

Everyone-h,';s heard ofIBM,

As a

global group of more than 430,000

employees, it was always seen as a
safe bet, but Chief Executive
Stephen LOnard reveals that IBM
had a "nea~=death exprience" in the
early Nineties. Ir all boiled down to
the fact that the company had too
much reliance on mainframe
computers. Just in time, they made
the switch to softwr~ and earlier
this year sh;h hit"a rec~rd high','
./

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having risen 20% in 1Zmonths,

Now workersat IBM develop
middleware ::'the_~secret sauce,"
according to Mr Leonard, that ties
hardware and software together. The
moral? Even l~rge concerns can .be~
caught napping. Stay alert to new.,
opportunities or doze to disaster.

CITY JET JOURNAL

38

Bright sparks look where the rest of

us fear to tread. Take ROOf tiles.
Who would imagine they could be a
way to conserve energy and bring
down bills? Yet in the new Westfield
Shopping Centre in London they are
doingjust that. A company called
Pavegen is using the kinetic energy
produced by anything that moves, in
this case shoppers' feet on floor tiles,
to generate renewable electricity.
Scientists are predicting that kinetic
energy could be powering our lives
in many other ways before long.
The need to find c1ever solutions
does not stop there. Dirty water can
be cleaned using plants, which is
already happening to great effect in
Singapore. Over there, 30% of the
total water demand is met by new
technology, and this is expected to
rise to 50% by 2060 - unless
sornething even better cornes along.
\ So~e orthe new ideas in the
pipeline include using bacteria
within concrete to help it "heal"
cracks. We may also be able to
harness the ability of algae to use
carbon dioxide and light to create
het in our buildings. There's more. _
"Active pints and surfaces on
exteriors can rem ove carbon dioxide
and pollutants ta render them
harrnless," says Dr Rachel
Armstrong of Greenwich University ..
"These 'can do' approaches and
technologiesare
ernpowering."
S9'e has a very valid point.
H~ving theright attitude, eeking,
a new answer
an old problem,
is what British ~business has been
doing for decades,
Irs not justelever to come up with
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new ideas. Being.aware of what is out '-.:.
and fird(ig a place for.it.within
::'a. ~siness' not onlyrnakes sense, it' is ,
the smartest way forward.
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SEPTEMBER 2012

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