Wales eBusiness Network

Walter May

Welsh entrepreneurs need nurturing body

The Coffee Shop, welsh Comments Off

Apr 242012

At a time when Wales needs to see growth in its entrepreneurial activity we are experiencing low levels of business start-ups and the permanent loss of some of our talented and most experienced entrepreneurs.

In my view we tend to focus too much on the specifics of the business idea and traditional ways of gaining financial support. In spite of being told repeatedly that investors back the entrepreneur, not his or her idea, we fail to nurture our best entrepreneurial talent especially when they experience failure, often losing them to other regions of the UK or by them becoming reluctant employees.

Equally we put them through the proverbial ringer when it comes to agreeing to finance their ideas and impose onerous conditions that often stifle rather than encourage risk taking often reducing their chances of success.

While all entrepreneurial activity is welcome, some possess greater economical potential, so are we effectively segmenting entrepreneurial activity? Often due to their funding terms we precipitate failure of our stars of the future usually at an inflection point in their development.

On a more strategic level, all the high status professions, namely law, banking, medicine etc, have their own think tanks and institutions but arguably, the most important of them all, entrepreneurship or wealth creation, as no central or regional voice lobbying to create an environment where enterprise and innovation can flourish.

Imagine a situation where the focus was on the talent and potential of the entrepreneur? Where failure was seen as a ‘right of passage’ and not stigmatised. When failures occur and a temporary period of respite is required, during which latent ideas for the next venture are being developed, the private sector was able to offer gainful employment to our best entrepreneurial talent – not unlike what happened prior to rugby becoming professional, when first class players worked for sympathetic companies within the community that the player represented. These nurturing companies and their communities could potentially benefit from supporting and developing talent, by sharing in their future success.

Equally we need to shift our thinking when it comes to finance. There are two basic ways of bringing cash into a business, namely, loan finance and revenue. Young Welsh businesses have been too dependent on the former for too long and many fail because of this.

Smart ways exist to fund young businesses and dramatically reduce ‘time to revenue’, but these ‘Lean Sales’ processes and methodologies are not understood by many. This is not surprising, since it takes a career to acquire this level of knowledge and it cannot be found in any text book. Shortening ‘time to revenue’, reduces the need to borrow but if, or when growth finance is required the the entrepreneur is in a much stronger position to achieve favourable terms from our reluctant banking or VC institutions.

So how are the interests of the entrepreneur best represented to ensure we create and sustain the environment for them to succeed? Moreover how can we nurture young talent and bring the smartest, leanest and most effective business practices to them leveraging the collective knowledge of those that went before? For example, how can we ensure that every leader of a potentially ‘game changing’ or disruptive technology business understands the ‘technology adoption cycle’ prior to defining their go-to-market strategy?

This is where we need to create a representative body that can influence the development of a coherent strategy for ‘Welsh Entrepreneurs’. One of the key aims would be to find ways to leverage current knowledge and ‘best practice’, facilitate integration of the various pillars of a vibrant business start-up community, needed to build entrepreneurial success.

There is no reason why Wales couldn’t be the best place to start a business in the UK, indeed we have many of the necessary features as well as a autonomous regional government with expanding powers.

Only through empathy for our entrepreneurs will we develop the insights necessary to create the environment for them and Wales to succeed. That process may be best served by creating a national body to act as a voice and focus for our wealth creators. To me, it seems perverse that one doesn’t already exist!

Your ‘personal’ computer – who’s really in control?

Business News Comments Off

Aug 092011

New columnist Walter May takes a sideways look at technology.

We live in an increasingly IT dominated world. Popular opinion suggests we are liberated by being connected 24/7, constantly in touch via laptops, iPads and smart phones (according to a recent report from Ofcom one third of UK adults now use smartphones). On-demand, on-the-move seems to be the mantra of the 21st century generation and a small percentage of us baby boomers.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the platforms on which we build our professional and social lives. Increasingly we are also watching internet TV via mobile devices using the BBC’s iPlayer, etc.

Happily and seemingly with little of no restraint, we give up our personal details and information on our likes and dislikes, needs and wants to those unseen, unknown data analysts who categorise each of us via some demographic algorithm or criteria that feed ads and other promotions aimed at appealing to our purchasing preferences.

Whilst we accept that this is the price we pay for free access to the world of the internet and popular TV, there are other areas of our personal IT world that impact us in less obvious ways.

Have you ever been frustrated by trying to meet a deadline only to find your PC runs incredibly slow or locks up, ultimately resulting in a complete reboot in the hope that the problem goes away? We shrug our shoulders until the next time we are forced to do the same, no wiser than before.

Why is it that external processes such as updates and other intrusive, even sinister, applications are given higher priority use of your computer memory and disk space, leaving you increasingly frustrated waiting for a response from a web page or a painfully slow graphics application? Are you left thinking, “it’s my computer, I paid for it and I seem to have little say on how it is being used”?

Ever felt someone, somewhere is creating this situation for commercial gain?

If poor customer service or product failure can be confidently attributed to the supplier, then that organisation will suffer the consequences in terms of a lowering of turnover and profit. However, in the network and increasingly ‘cloud’ dominated application environment, we cannot easily assess good or poor service or attribute blame when things go wrong.

Is the problem related to the hardware, software, network, ISP, virus, spyware, etc? It sometimes feels like you are a victim of a conspiracy to force premature replacement of a perfectly functioning product. If you think that’s a little far fetched, remember the millennium bug?

The fear of IT meltdown at midnight on December 31st 1999 forced the biggest IT investment ever seen. Application software providers and IT consultants cashed in, in a big way, as every responsible business the world over scrambled to replace their business critical systems and migrate their data. Once the date had passed without incident, IT Directors breathed a sigh of relief, patted themselves on the back and moved on – not wanting to reflect on if the threat was real or an IT industry con.

Can anything be done to remedy the progressively poor performance of your PC? Investing in tune-up software, in my experience, suggests not.

We all know who stands to gain when a 2 to 4 year old PC stops performing to the point where increasing frustration and declining personal productivity forces you to buy a new one.

Is it always wise to switch off automatic updates (surrendering the benefits of additional functionality and a shiny new interface) and/or disable your resource-hungry anti-virus software, or are we too risk averse when it comes to our IT dependent world?

The call for openness and transparency is being echoed in many aspects of our daily lives (banking, politics, media) so let’s end the fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding how our personal networked PC’s (which an increasing number of home-based self-employed people are relying on for their income) are being utilised to the benefit of others, often to the computer owner’s detriment and cost.

I for one would like more control on how my critically important gateway to the outside world is used with easy-to-use and understand management tools to ensure I maximise my personal productivity and return on investment.