Summly founder Nick D’Aloisio @British Library

I couldn’t see how my colleagues could top the speakers at our first Digital Library Conversations @British Library. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf (known as one of the fathers of the internet) and Ted Nelson who founded Project Xanadu, the first hypertext project in 1960. There is a video of the meeting if you are interested.

However, I was wrong. As a result of Stella Wisdom (one of our Digital Curators) reading an article in the Metro newspaper, we were privileged to hear from 16-year-old ‘internet genius’ Nick D’Aloisio, the founder of Summly.

This iPhone app has made international headlines and attracted backing of an investment company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing..

Summly is an iPhone app which summarises and simplifies the content of web pages and search results. Currently it can condense reference pages, news articles and reviews but according to Nick,  has the potential to go a lot further.

Nick has been profiled in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired and FastCompany for his entrepreneurial success and interest in Artificial Intelligence. Before founding Summly, Nick created Facemood, a service which used sentiment analysis to determine the mood of Facebook users, and SongStumblr, a geosocial music discovery service.

Did I mention he was 16 years old?

According to an interview with the BBC, Summly came from his frustration in researching for his exams.

“I was revising for a history exam and using Google, clicking in and out of search results, and it seemed quite inefficient. If I found myself on a site that was interesting I was reading it and that was wasting time,” he said.

“I thought that what I needed was a way of simplifying and summarising these web searches. Google has Instant Preview but that is just an image of the page. What I wanted was a content preview,” he says.

What impressed me most from our meeting with Nick at the British Library (which you can get a glimpse of here thanks to Reuters), was his intelligence and modesty.

I’m sure he has had plenty of practice, but his ‘elevator pitch’  (which is something of an obsession with me), was superb.

And when I asked him if he was planning to pursue an entrepreneurial path or go on to university, he talked enthusiastically about studying philosophy after his A levels. This is from someone just back from a series of meetings with high powered investors and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

I came away with the impression that he was quite possibly the most confident and mature person in the meeting.

The Key Trends for 2012 from Cate Trotter – Insider Trends

I have been covering sessions from  founder and Head of Trends at Insider Trends Cate Trotter for a while now: Insider Trends – The Future of Online Marketing, The growing grey market in the UK and How to become a cutting-edge retailer.

As previously, Cate showed an impressive grasp of the trends that new and existing businesses need to know about, to keep ahead of the competitive curve.

Tonight’s topic proved even more popular than before, requiring a move to a larger room, and an overflow event last-night.

Here are my notes from the event:

Cate started the evening by identifying three headline trends for 2012 of Doom and Gloom, Ubiquitous Digital and Humanness.

Doom and Gloom (aka – the economic recession is killing business opportunities – or is it?)

• If you only read the papers or watched TV you would think the end is nigh.
• Unemployment is at a 17 year high in the UK, with over 1 million young people out of work.
• The UK economy is predicted to grow by 0.2% in 2012 (i.e. no growth to speak of).
• But…
• Interest in entrepreneurship is at an all-time high, and barriers to entry are at an all-time low, thanks to technology and the internet, with the likes of Facebook, PayPal and on-demand printing.
• Slowly we are shifting to become a nation of entrepreneurs.
• There are plenty of opportunities for person-to-person (P2P) businesses thanks to the likes of Kickstarter and SellAnApp. Or how about MinuteBox which allows you sell your expertise by the minute.
• Opportunities also exist in the off-line world too, such as ‘cheap and cheerful’ offices for start-ups like The Ugli Campus, or how about opening the first cafe for entrepreneurs.
• Too many business websites use ‘me too’ branding with stock photography and unclear messages – Cate gave the example of BubbleWebs  as one that ‘shows what it does on the tin’.

Ubiquitous digital (it really is everywhere now)

• 65% of adult internet users now use a social networking site of some kind.
• By the summer of 2012 over 50% of Brits will be using a smartphone.
• So:
• Cate’s tip no.1 – Mark your location on Google Places to boost traffic to your website.
• Cate’s tip no.2 – Make sure you website is mobile friendly using 11 Excellent Solutions for Making Your Website Mobile Friendly.
• Need to think beyond using social media just for marketing and PR – add customer support roles (e.g. Hippo Munchies in India using twitter prompts from customers to re-fill their vending machines).
• Companies will develop intelligent and selective strategies for social media channels. No more scatter-gun approach to digital marketing.
• Digital data will give commercial insights. E.g Klout score to measure your online influence.
• A/B test your website your website using Optimizely to maximise visitors.

Humanness (the importance of trust in a digital commercial world)

• Ask yourself how is your digital strategy enhancing the lives of your customers?
• More targeted communications and email lists – less scatter-gun.
• Google is starting to highlight more human related content, so you need to have people talking about your business in social media.
• Which means you have to do stuff that people think is worth talking about.
• Results in a move away from novelty campaigns to real customer value. E.g. Zappos.com have a 24 hour staffed phone line, and up to a year to return products.

• Inspirational brands talk about why they do what they do, not what they do, or how they do it – read Start with why by Simon Sinek or watch him speak at TED.
• The need to stay human, once you grow beyond a single person business, think of your brand as a personality or celebrity.

2012 is all about being connected – individuals, networks and businesses
Use customer value to cut through the ubiquitous social media noise. Connections through honest communication is key.

Cate ended her talk by encouraging us to go away and start experimenting with some of the ideas covered. We now had 11 months lead on our competitors.

She really wants to hear from us how we a get on, so please get in touch with her at cate@insider-trends.com

The Web in Feb 2012 – coming soon

Last year we had a great Web in Feb month (The Power of Social Media – an Inspiring Entrepreneurs evening and What is the Business & IP Centre doing with social media?)

And we are anticipating another excellent month of events for 2012 to help you reach and grow your online audience.

Join us this February for our special workshops and events in the Business & IP Centre. Regardless of what stage of business, this will be your chance to interact with experts, entrepreneurs and potential clients.

During Web in Feb you can learn how to:

• Protect your online and mobile technology
• Get your site noticed on search engines
• Sell your products effectively over the Internet
• Manage your business on the web
• Chose the right channels of communication through social media

Here is a summary what’s going on this February:

Ask an Expert

Throughout February IP Lawyer, David Warrilow, will be running free, confidential, one-to-one advice clinics to help entrepreneurs and inventors understand the different options available when protecting a new online or mobile technology.

• Introducing trademarks
• Digital Marketing: Search engine optimisation for small businesses
• Using eBay: How to sell your products online and make money
• Social Media Week
• Manage your business on the web
• Introducing copyright
• Make your words sell
• The Business Blog – live!
• The cutting edge of social media
• Pitching for contracts
• Marketing masterclass for small businesses

Use our hashtag #webinfeb to see what people are saying on Twitter?

Interview with Jesús Montero freelance film maker

My colleague Fran Taylor recently interviewed Jesús Montero, a freelance film maker on how the British Library has helped his work.

I am a freelance film maker and have used the British Library consistently over the last few years. I have worked for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and Animal Planet. The collections I have consulted at the Library vary hugely according to the content of the programme I am researching; anything from ancient Egypt to Meerkats. At present, I am working on a part-time basis for National Geographic on a very popular show called Air Crash Investigation.

One project I worked on for National Geographic was Seconds from disaster: Inferno at Guadalajara. One of the books I consulted at the British Library to make this documentary was a compelling account of some of the people who survived this terrible human disaster in Mexico. Once I finished my research, I packed my bags and travelled to Mexico, in search of one particular survivor depicted in this book: a Mexican woman with an incredible story to tell. Eventually, I did find her and she became one of our contributors, which was all down to this extraordinary book.

The British Library has been a constant and constructive road companion for me over the last fifteen years. It keeps the films that I work on, accurately informed. It gives them focus. More importantly, it fuels my pen.

You can follow Jesús on his blog at The Hidden Cracks of Oblivion, or on his Twitter feed.

Spring Market competition for designers and makers

Fran Taylor our Marketing Manager for the Creative Industries has launched an exciting Spring Market competition.

The prize is a stall at our Spring Market  to be held on 1 March on the British Library piazza.

The Market is part of our Spring Festival and will show off the work of 12 of the most innovative jewellery, fashion, home-ware and craft designers who have used the British Library.

If you have attended an event, used our Business & IP Centre, seen an exhibition or have a Reader Pass you are eligible to enter.

As well as the market stall, your work will be featured on the British Library website and promoted on our Twitter feed, Facebook  and our blogs. As well as a British Library press release sent to major national and local publications.

We are looking for designers and makers who:

• Produce fine art and photography, graphic art, jewellery, crafts, home-ware, fashion or other products.
• Have been trading for at least six months in the UK.
• Have a product range which has potential to make a fantastic visual display on a market stall.
• Can sell the majority of products for around £30 or less (so that it is affordable for passing trade).  Although it is fine to have a small range of high-end products to show the full range of your work.
• Are able to attend the workshop for competition winners on Mon 13 Feb 10am – 12 midday at the British Library.
• Have used the British Library e.g. for events, exhibitions, our collections and Business & IP Centre.

Spring Market competition entry details.

Digital Strategies for Heritage – DISH 2011 Rotterdam

The Digital Strategies for Heritage 2011 conference (DISH 2011) was a new name to me until quite recently.

This could be explained by the fact that my job is all about helping aspiring entrepreneurs with their information needs, rather than digitising parts of the enormous British Library collection.

However, one of the four strands of DISH 2011, held from 7 December in Rotterdam, was Business for Heritage, and I was asked to speak at session on Organisations that Redesigned their Business  Models.

I certainly believe the Business & IP Centre is an excellent example of how a library can deliver a different kind of service, to support its community and economy. As well as giving a talk about the development of the Centre and the services we deliver, I was also asked to offer myself up as a trained business advisor.

Quite a few conference attendees applied for these one to one advice sessions, and I selected four I felt I could help the most. It was fascinating to hear first hand about some of the projects my clients were undertaking, and the challenges they were facing. In most cases it involved persuading staff with somewhat traditional and cautious attitudes to adopt new technologies and new ways of working. These were issues we had faced in developing the Business & IP Centre.

Overall I found the conference to be extremely well organised with fascinating speakers and interesting and engaged attendees. I would thoroughly recommend attending any future DISH conferences.

Here are my notes from the two days of the event:

I got off to an excellent start when I found myself sitting next to the conference chair Chris Batt and his charming wife Adie, who also happens to be his business partner, on the flight out to Schiphol airport. So I was able to get the inside track even before arriving in Rotterdam.

Chris has been a key figure in the information world for many years including  Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). However, this was the first time I had had the opportunity to speak to him.

Wednesday 7th December – Introduction from Chris Batt, Conference Chair

DISH has now seven years experience, and aims to be a toolbox with practical solutions, rather than just keep on saying it is a ‘good thing’.

The four themes for the conference are:

• ­    Business for heritage
• ­    Crowdsourcing and co-creation
• ­    Institutional change
• ­    Building a New Public Space

Image by DEN (Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland)

We are living in a time of uncertainty, complexity and change, but more than ever a need for us to think strategically.

In the private sector it is a case of ‘a thousand flowers blooming’, but each one is aiming for market domination. And how can you tell which will be the success story?

We are moving from Evolution to Revolution (look at the recent changes in the music industry), also in some cases Extinction.

There are big differences between the public and private sectors, but both are serving the same customers.

In the public sector how does the weeding of the ‘thousand flowers’ take place, when there isn’t the private sector market control elements.

Do we undertake cost benefit analysis for our digitisation projects?

When looking at the UK government departmental strategies and cooperation, it is a case of ‘the whole being less than the sum of the parts’.

Chris asked the audience what ‘being ahead of the wave’ meant to them.
Is it the Institution, the Project, the Sector, or Public knowledge institutions?

To make progress we need to move from being technicians to strategists, and from an institutional focus to a consumer focus.

Living the Digital Shift – Katherine Watson – Director, European Cultural Foundation

• We need to start with the person not with the technical tool.
• We should look into the future, and ask ourselves how will the current six year old in school be wanting to use your services when they are ready?
• Looking to the past is not helpful.
• The economic crisis means that our funding landscape is crumbling around us.
• In the future it will not be ‘back to business as normal’.
• Rapid change means that it is not possible to predict the future with risk free certainty.

Cyborg anthropology and the future of interfaces – Amber Case

Although something of a surprising presence at a conference on digital strategies, Amber’s talk was absolutely fascinating, and I am still pondering on the implications of what she said. You can catch some of the same points in her TED Women talk.

The traditional tools that humans use have changed very little over thousands of years. Whereas computers have changed beyond recognition in less than 50 years.

The idea of Cyborg Anthropology first came about in 1941, when a group of scientists and technologists first met to review impact of computer technology on people. In 1992 it became a formal academic subject.

Becoming a cyborg
When you first go online, you have to start making decisions about how you will present your virtual self, and how closely related this will be to your ‘real’ self. You are likely to adjust this version of you based on feedback from your contacts.

The future

• We will see more Calm Technology, which appears when you need it, and disappears when you don’t.
• Technologists try to digitise old technology and nearly always fail. For example trying to ‘grab’ a virtual page and turn it, instead of pressing a button.
• We need to have technologies which give us superhuman powers, eg Flipboard
• There will be an increasing merging of tech with real life. E.g. body implants.
• Real-time gaming eg MapAttack
• Home automation that actually works.
• The interface will begin to disappear, so that actions are reduced, queries are eliminated. E.g. Kinect for Xbox®
• The best technology is invisible… like a book.

Q&A
Q. How do you cope with the way technology negatively impacts available time and the ability to concentrate?
A. Amber recommended moderation in all things includes technology. She recently took 3 weeks away from her email and social media to read a book a day. The government in Singapore has proposed its citizens should turn off technology an hour before bed-time to give their brains time to settle down so their sleep is effective.

Culture and Social Media – Charles Leadbetter

The answer lies in ‘creative muddling through’, using skill-full incompleteness.

Charles used an excellent analogy of the development of the wine industry over the last 50 years to illustrate different models of customer service that relate to the Cultural Heritage sector.

French wine is elitist, their bottles (with just a front label) give almost no clue to an amateur wine drinker as to the nature of the wine they will find inside. You need to know their language, geography, horticulture and coding systems.
The message is, ‘keep away, unless you know what you are dealing with’.

In contrast Australian wines are consumer friendly. They have colourful modern labels on the front and lots of helpful information on the back, explaining the grapes that make up the contents, and what the wine will smell and taste like. They a have a handy screw top, so you don’t even need to drink the whole bottle in one go.
The message is, ‘I go very well with your Chicken Korma’.

Because of these changes New World wines are now the largest selling in the world.

Then there is the rapidly expanding area of home made wine. People are planting their own garden vineyards and buying the wine making kit from the web. Needless to say the quality of wine produced ranges from the undrinkable to excellent.
The message here is, ‘anyone can have a go’.

Next Charles looked at four distribution models and the challenges they present for the cultural sector.

1. How we communicate

2. Where ideas come from.

Compare this to what he called the evil genius of Simon Cowel managed to operate in three out of four sectors.

He was particularly impressed by how Apple have been so successful, by creating a ‘guild’ of followers (customers) who believe their Apple products are helping them to live better, more modern lives.

3. How has society changed?

In the future to grow big with small investment will require seeing yourself as a movement, or networks with values and ideologies, not institutions, with opening hours, collections and catalogues. Social media and the web gives an opportunity to do this.

He gave the example of Barcelona football club as the kind of organisation which exemplifies this approach.

The English, who invented football, developed a game in which defenders never went beyond the half-way line. They repelled attacks with physicality and generally ‘booted’ the ball up the pitch to their attackers who had the skill to put the ball in to their opponents net.

The ball only ever went straight up and down the pitch. The occasional creative player would attempt to move the ball across the pitch instead.

However, Barcelona developed ‘total football’, where everyone is a key player with skill. The ball always moves across the pitch, never along it, the team aim is to never lose possession, and everyone has to contribute.

This has made them into the most successful football team in the world.

For Charles cultural institutions must learn that the way to win is, not to be brilliant and individualistic, but to remain part of the network, to pass, to constantly move, look for space and find interesting angles, to always remain linked. If you are not open to people passing the ‘ball’ to you, no one will be interested in playing with you.

In other words, play culture, like Barcelona play football.

Thursday 8 December

Come let us go boldly into the Future – Michael Edson

Michael gave the closing keynote talk, which was more a call to arms than an academic treatise.

He spent some time talking about future predictions from the last 50 years. He pointed out that even those ideas we think of as new, such as The Long Tail, Joy’s Law, Cognitive Surplus, Network Effects, Moores’s Law & Mobile, and Every user a Hero are no longer really new.

He built towards his message that the ‘future is now’. So we should stop worrying about what may or may not be coming down the wire, and start engaging with our present future.

He summed up with three key questions we should all be asking ourselves:
1.    What world am I living in?
2.    What impact do I want to have?
3.    What should I do today?

He also strongly recommended The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun.

I have been attending keynote talks at library and information conferences for over 20 years now, and in all that time I have only seen two genuinely evangelical speakers from an information background.

The first was Eugenie Prime at SLA Conference in Seattle in 1997, when she called on all librarians to quit whining about image and begin walking the walk. And to earn respect by forgetting about our negative image and doing our jobs better than anyone else could.

Michael Edson qualifies as the second. The audience left his session inspired to tackle this particular professional challenge. No more whinging about all the problems we face, but to focus on the solutions.

You can watch his talk on Vimeo.

British Standard for a cup of tea – BS 6008 (revisited)

Today we had a visit from British Standards Institution demonstrating their British Standards Online service (BSOL), to which we have full access in the British Library.

It reminded me of one of my earliest posts on this blog, way back in 2007, British Standard for a cup of tea – BS 6008. Surprisingly this has become my third most popular topic of all time (after the Bic Crystal ballpoint pen and the not so simple paper clip)

Perhaps not so surprising when you know (according to the United Kingdom Tea Council), tea is the most popular drink consumed in Britain, with over 165,000,000 cups being (image by porah) drunk in the UK every single day of the year.

Drinking tea the right way has it’s own popular website and book with A nice cup of tea and a sit down.

Sadly the vexed topic of when to put in the milk has the nation (and families) divided, despite the British Standard suggestion of putting it in last (for tea brewed ‘properly’ in a pot);

7.2.2 Preparation with milk
Pour milk free from any off-flavour (for example raw milk or unboiled pasteurized milk) into the bowl (5.2), using approximately 5 ml for the large bowl and 2,5 ml for the small bowl described in the Annex.

Prepare the liquor as described in 7.2.1 but pour it into the bowl after the milk, in order to avoid scalding the milk, unless this procedure is contrary to the normal practice in the organization concerned.

If the milk is added afterwards, experience has shown that the best results are obtained when the temperature of the liquor is in the range 65 to 80 °C when the milk is added. While addition of milk is not essential, it sometimes helps to accentuate differences in flavour and colour.

Many, including that great British writer George Orwell, who wrote a detailed eleven point set of tea making instructions, insist on putting the milk in second;

Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.

Needless to say, the Tea Council have their own ideas;

• Use a good quality loose leaf or bagged tea
• This must be stored in an air-tight container at room temperature
• Always use freshly drawn boiling water
• In order to draw the best flavour out of the tea the water must contain oxygen, this is reduced if the water is boiled more than once.
• Measure the tea carefully
• Use 1 tea bag or 1 rounded teaspoon of loose tea for each cup to be served
• Allow the tea to brew for the recommended time before pouring
• Brewing tea from a bag in a mug? Milk in last is best

And of course Wikipedia have a wealth of information on the topic of tea preparation.

The only ‘proper’ way to make a cuppa – image by rubenshito

Customised Design event at the British Library

Many thanks to my colleague Fran Taylor for this story:

On 7 December we ran an event in partnership with the University of Hertfordshire on customised design, and how designers can create unique, tailored goods for their customers – either at the luxury or mass-produce ends of the market.

It’s a challenging area for businesses. On the one hand it is a way of finding your USP (unique selling point) and potentially being able to charge more for your products. On the other hand it also makes the manufacturing and ordering process much more complicated.

The first speaker was Shaun Borstrock, who has worked with Asprey, Thomas Pink, and the British Luxury Council and he spoke about the luxury end of customisation. He talked about how the luxury market is forecast to grow by 57% over the next five years to £9.4bn. He talked about how a lot of companies often create the impression of offering customised products, but in reality just offer small changes e.g. by adding initials to a designer hand-bag or offering different colour options. He also gave the example of the Prada Lace-up project.

In contrast, Sarah Maynard from SML offers an extremely high end, bespoke service in the luxury transportation market. She has a team of craftsmen who can provide anything from working with a team of chemists to choose a specific colour pigment to a gold-plated gear stick. For her business, customisation is achieved through one-to-one relationships with clients over a longer period of time. Customisation is her USP and her customers are willing to pay a lot of money for the craftsmanship involved.

Our last speaker was jewellery designer Mark Bloomfield from Electrobloom. He is a huge fan of 3D printing and explained how it opens up opportunities for customised design, low-cost manufacturing and experimentation.  Through 3D printing you can produce prototypes quickly and the creative process can be very iterative.  It also reduces the cost and energy required for shipping and manufacturing abroad.

He produces beautiful flower-inspired designs in around 20 different colour and shape combinations. They are made out of nylon (which incidentally is also dishwasher proof).

90 Tiny Tips to Build Your Personal Brand

In the past, Rasheed Ogunlaru (who presents our monthly Your Life, Your Business workshop), has talked about the importance of building your personal brand.

So this list of tips from Alissa Alvarez at Online MBA is welcome.

90 Tiny Tips to Build Your Personal Brand

Personal branding isn’t something you can just sit down and work on for a day and then forget about. Rather, personal branding is built in small pieces, as your day-to-day actions all add up to the brand that is you. That’s exactly why we’ve found so many small tips that can help you build your personal brand, taking things one tiny step at a time. Read on, and we’ll share 90 tips that can help you slowly but steadily build your personal brand.

Finding Your Niche

Personal branding is all about figuring out who you are and how you want to project your image. Use these tips to help identify what you’re really all about.

Consider what makes you different

1.    When determining your niche, you should think about what makes you different from other brands out there.

2.    Identify your primary product

3.    Think about what you have to offer others, whether it’s a service, resource, or special ability.

4.    Find out what your talents are

5.    Consider what your talents are, what you’ve been recognized for and what you’re better at than most people.

6.    Think about how others identify you

7.    Take a look at your brand attributes and confirm that your brand matches what others would say about you.

8.    Do something remarkable

9.    Instead of playing it self and sticking to what you know, do something that’s worthy of taking notice.

10.    Identify your core values

11.    Share what really matters to you in order to identify what your core values are.

12.    Be unique

13.    Don’t feel like you need to copy another person’s brand. Be unique and stand out.

14.    Think about your passions

15.    Identify the things and ideas that you love, and identify your passions.

16.    Ask colleagues and friends to sum up your professional image

17.    Get a true reflection of what you’re all about by asking others to define you.

Creating A Message

Follow these tips to find out how you can share the personal branding message you have created.

1.    Physically make a message

2.    Write a paragraph and tag line that tells your story and emphasizes your specialty and talents.

3.    Share your message

4.    Once you have your message, be sure to actually share it with someone.

5.    Be authentic

6.    Don’t create a message that’s about someone else: be true to yourself.

7.    Control your message

8.    Don’t be too many different things to too many people. Stick to your primary message and focus on that.

9.    Find your target audience

10.    Consider who you really want to be talking to, and use your target audience to define what kind of presence you want to create for your brand.

11.    Know your audience

12.    Think about to whom you’re directing your personal brand, and communicate your messages appropriately.

13.    Be yourself

14.    Let your personality shine through and show the real authentic “you.”

15.    Use the right vocabulary

16.    Communicate with your audience using the right words from the industry so you can show your understanding of what’s going on.

Credibility

1.    Use personal branding to establish yourself as a trusted professional in your industry with the help of these tips.

2.    Be useful

3.    In everything you do, take a moment to consider how you are being useful to others.
4.    Live what you say

5.    Have a trustworthy, transparent, and educated voice to build your credibility.

6.    Be trustworthy

7.    Be careful not to offer anything you can’t provide, and deliver on what you’ve promised.

8.    Believe in your brand

9.    Commit to and invest in the ideas that support your brand.

10.    Create a portfolio of successes

11.    Showcase your past work, get testimonials, and do whatever you can do show off how great you are.

12.    Find and share great content

13.    Create a buzz around your own personal brand by finding great content and sharing them with others.

14.    Create a visual hook

15.    Find a memorable visual hook that people will enjoy and remember you by.

16.    Find out what other leaders are doing right

17.    Find the experts and leaders in your profession, and see what they are doing to promote their brands.

18.    Cultivate a personal style

19.    Select clothing that represents you and makes you stand out from the crowd in an attractive way.

20.    Be a leader

21.    Lead by helping people, and use leadership to grow your influence.

22.    Get featured in the media

23.    Find opportunities to be featured in the media, possibly creating even more opportunities for exposure and credibility.

24.    Show your confidence

25.    Don’t be arrogant, but be sure to project confidence so that others will be comfortable with you.

26.    Contribute to Q&A sections

27.    LinkedIn, eHow, About.com, and lots of forums offer opportunities for sharing your expertise.

28.    Be a speaker

29.    Much more effective than just attending, speaking at events shares the opportunity for showcasing your expertise.

30.    Be consistent

31.    Make sure your resume, LinkedIn, and Facebook are all saying the same thing.

32.    Win awards

33.    First, do work that’s worthy of awards, and be sure to apply for awards in your field. This can bring lots of recognition and credibility to your personal brand.

34.    Take a writing class

35.    The way you write has a major impact on how you are perceived, so take a writing class to make sure you’re getting it right.

36.    Stay on top of trends

37.    Educate yourself and stay on top of newly emerging trends in your industry.

38.    Back everything up with proof

39.    Share objective proof to back up broad statements, using numbers, dates, statistics, and more.

40.    Toot your own horn

41.    Publicize awards, achievements, and anything else that’s remarkable so that people actually know about it.

Efficiency

1.    Keep personal branding from taking over your life with these tips that will help you streamline your efforts.

2.    Interact effectively

3.    Give yourself a time window for interaction so that you don’t spend all day networking and using social media.

4.    Determine where to invest your energy

5.    Building a brand is a major undertaking, and there’s only so much you can do in a day. Think about where you really want to invest your energy in brand building.

6.    Be brief

7.    State your value quickly and in bite sized chunks, or you run the risk of droning on and becoming forgettable.

Online Presence

1.    Maintain an online presence that reflects who you are with the help of these tips.

2.    Own your domain

3.    Register your name or unique URL to project a more professional image.

4.    Have a great website

5.    Your website is still like a virtual lobby, offering a jumping off point for your entire online presence.

6.    Learn about SEO

7.    Search engine optimization might sound a little scary and daunting, but in reality, it’s actually quite easy, as long as you’re creating quality content. Taking the time to do SEO right can make all the difference when making your brand stand out.

8.    Keep your personal and company brand separate

9.    Establish yourself as a person, rather than a company, so that you don’t limit the power of your personal brand. This is especially helpful if you may not be with the company forever.

10.    Be a polite emailer

11.    Check your grammar, etiquette, and writing skills so that you’re communicating like a professional.

12.    Pay attention to your email address

13.    Your email address offers a significant opportunity for building your brand, especially if you use your real name.

14.    Do your best to lock down your name online

15.    Whether you have a common name or an unusual one, put out as much quality content as you can, with your name one it, so that you can better control your online presence.

16.    Find out where you are online

17.    Do a Google search to check in on your online presence to see you you’re doing and if you need to make any changes.

18.    Monitor your online brand

19.    Carefully keep an eye on what is being said about you online, and make corrections as needed.

Networking

1.    Get connected and establish your brand with others by following these tips.

2.    Find relevant people

3.    Seek out the recommendations of colleagues, check out Twitter, and more to find relevant people that you should be connecting with.

4.    Join industry associations

5.    Meet up with people who can help you build your brand and career by joining industry associations.

6.    Be generous with your time

7.    Take time to do charitable work and go beyond the call of duty.

8.    Say yes more often

9.    Accept more invitations and go to more events, finding opportunities and taking advantage of ways to explore and experience.

10.    Have business cards

11.    Even if you don’t have a job, create business cards with your contact information to share with others who want to contact and remember you.

12.    Do your research

13.    Before any networking event, be sure to know who is going and what will be discussed so that you’re well prepared.

14.    Be accessible

15.    Let people know you’re out there, and that they can reach you on a regular basis.

16.    Don’t miss out on events

17.    Attend conferences, seminars, and other events to get out there and shake hands and meet other relevant people.

18.    Ask for testimonials

19.    Ask other people to recommend you for your expertise, and then be sure to publish what they’ve said about you.

20.    Be an active alumni

21.    Make the most of where you went to school by joining the alumni association and taking advantage of networking events.

22.    Show support for others

23.    Be passionate about helping other people when they need it.

24.    Learn how to introduce yourself

25.    Be ready to communicate who you are with others, concisely sharing the answer to “Tell me about yourself.”

26.    Get connected with passionate people

27.    Find other people who live passionately, and get together with them regularly for inspiration.

28.    Take guest blogging opportunities

29.    Extend your reach beyond your immediate network by taking opportunities to guest blog and share your expertise.

30.    Promote others rather than yourself

31.    Instead of spending all your time promoting yourself, take the time to point out what others are doing really well.

Job Hunting

1.    These personal branding tips are especially relevant for job hunters.

2.    Work for free

3.    Your experience is worth its weight in gold, so when it comes to getting a job, any past experience can really pay off, even work you’ve done for free.

4.    Create a value statement

5.    Highlight your values and strengths to get the attention of a hiring manager.

6.    Put your resume online

7.    Add social features, photos, and more to your photo by putting it online.

8.    Quantify your results

9.    Prove your value by showing quantified outcomes.

Social Media

1.    Follow these tips for great ideas in building your personal brand through social media.

2.    Carefully consider which tools you want to use

3.    If you can’t effectively use a social media tool, there’s little point to having it at all. A poorly managed social media presence can be worse than not having one in the first place.

4.    Listen up and stay in the loop

5.    Don’t be one sided: be sure to listen and respond to what others are saying.

6.    Fill out your profile completely

7.    Fill out all of the information fields to promote everything important about yourself.

8.    Go out and find new followers

9.    New followers will find you, but you can build your presence much faster by seeking them out yourself.

10.    Listen first

11.    See what others are saying on social networks, and even set up Google Alerts to listen in on how social networks are working before you get started with them.

12.    Engage and interact

13.    Participate in the back and forth of social media, engaging with others and interacting with content.

14.    Create multiple streams

15.    Be ubiquitous, creating an online presence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and more, as many as you can reasonably maintain on a regular basis.

16.    Be adaptable

17.    Social media is constantly changing, so always be ready to adapt to new developments with a consistent approach.

18.    Don’t forget videos

19.    Video projects can pay off in a big way and offer a great way to really showcase your brand.

20.    Manage and optimize your social media systems

21.    When creating your social media accounts, set them up so that they can be automatically updated, pushing to your blog, home page, and more.

22.    Stay interesting

23.    Don’t just set up social media and walk away: keep things interesting by writing, sharing videos, photos, and more.

24.    Curate content like it’s fine art

25.    Think carefully about how you share links, news, and resources, curating your content like a museum director might select works for an exhibit.

26.    Use the same profile photo

27.    Make your online presence easily recognizable by using the same profile photo everywhere.

28.    Use a consistent name, too

29.    Build recognition by using the same name in everything you do online, preferably one that is close to your actual name or profession.

30.    Schedule regular posts

31.    Stay on top of your online presence with scheduled tweets and blog posts, so you always have something new to share.

32.    Think before you Tweet

33.    Be careful not to write anything that’s embarrassing or offensive, or anything you wouldn’t get away with in any other professional setting.

34.    Keep everything PG

35.    Be careful not to post anything you wouldn’t want your grandma (or potential employers) to see.

36.    Point to your social media presence elsewhere

37.    Promote your social media presence everywhere, on your website, blog, and even email.

38.    Bring offline relationships online

39.    Ask your “real life” friends if they are on Twitter or Facebook.

40.    Blog your voice on the web

41.    Blogging is a great way to find natural traffic without too much marketing effort.

42.    Don’t give away too much personal information

43.    Be careful not to over-share information or be inflammatory when building your brand.

44.    Make some accounts private

45.    If you feel the need to share things online that aren’t professionally appropriate, be sure to make those accounts private.

 

Boost your business growth with the 2011 Leadership and Management Grant

Many thanks to Alasdair Inglis from our partners Grow, the small business marketing experts, for passing on this information:

2011 Leadership and Management Grant

Although specialist business advice is usually beyond the reach of most SMEs, the new LMAS £1,000 match-funded grant provides ambitious, fast-growing businesses with a great opportunity to access Grow’s Business Growth Programme

The key eligibility criteria for the government grant are:

• You are an existing business with growth potential
• You have a minimum of two people working in the business (ie yourself and one other)
• The grant is match-funded, so you pay £2,000 and receive a £1,000 reimbursement from the government.

 

Open Innovation: Working with others to make new ideas fly

My colleague Nigel Spencer, Research and Business Development Manager reports on our exciting workshop next Monday 29 November:

Do you have access to all the skills, knowledge, experience and perspectives needed to develop innovative products and services within your own organisation?

No matter how large that organisation is, it is highly unlikely that you do.  If you seek input from other businesses, often in different sectors, customers, and others you are much more likely to identify innovative ideas and solutions and to build the type of partnerships which will help you turn those ideas into sustainable products and services.  This simple premise is the basis of open innovation.

Stefan Lindegaard 15inno says that people should view  open innovation as ‘a philosophy or a mindset that they should embrace within their organization. This mindset should enable their organization to work with external input to the innovation process just as naturally as it does with internal input’.

So,you should not look at  open innovation as a rigid business or innovation model. It  is a shorthand that describes a diverse range of engagement and collabration activity with differing levels of formality and structure.  Examples of these include crowdsourcing, online competitions, online jams and more closely facilitated relationships. There are many examples of  global corporations that have applied open innovation methods. These include  ‘Orange’, Procter & Gamble, Boots, Lego and Virgin Atlantic but the growth in social media and online open innovation platforms like Innocentive, mean that anyone can find a way of applying open innovation principles.

However, if you are looking to embrace the world of open innovation, or even dip your toe in the water, a number of perceived and genuine barriers and challenges may make you hesitate. Some of these are:

• How to make the contacts needed with external organisations and people and develop long-term mutually beneficial relationships. This a particular concern if the businesses are of differing sizes.
• How to overcome the internal organisational cultures which may be uncomfortable with the kind of openness, transparency and perceived loss of direct control which are involved in applying these ideas.
• How to protect ideas and creative outputs when these are being shared and an uncertainty as to how intellectual property fits into an open innovation environment.

On 29 November 2011 the BL is hosting a half-day conference which looks at these challenges head on.  It is called ‘Open Innovation: The Challenges & Solutions’.

We have brought together a great selection of experts and practitioners from organisations like 100% Open, Creative Barcode, Procter and Gamble and Quantum Innovation Centre to debate these issues.

More information and booking on the event.

The event is part of an EU-funded Interreg IVB NEW project called The Open Innovation Project.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson – A monster of a book about a monster of a man

Many thanks to Debbie Epstein for giving me this amazing book as a present.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson is the only authorised story of the life and death of one of the most influential figures of the last 50 years, who died on 5 October this year, aged 56, from pancreatic cancer.

The book is something of a monster at 627 pages, and chronicles Steve Jobs‘ life from his childhood, through the creation and early days of Apple computers, his battles with Microsoft, his sacking and 12 year later return to the company he founded. Isaacson managed to interview Jobs himself over forty times, and tracked down more than a hundred friends, family, colleagues, competitors and adversaries.

I found it a compelling read, and managed to complete it in less than a week. It is perhaps the most honest and revealing authorised biography ever written of an industry leader. Isaacson uncovers both the amazing stories behind the revolutionary products Apple produced. However, he also reveals something of a monster of a man.

Jobs was a sensitive person, perhaps more so due to being adopted at birth, who spent several months wandering across India in his youth looking for spiritual enlightenment and followed Buddhism for the rest of his life. But he could also be the most manipulative and down-right nasty person it is possible to imagine. So much so, that his early colleagues referred to his ability to distort reality to his own ends (Reality distortion field even has its own Wikipedia entry).

Having been something of a computer nerd as a teenager in the mid-1970s I first came across his creations in the form of an Apple II computer. As you can see it was some way from the sleek and sexy design of the more recent iMacs. So reading the story of how Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed these machines made for riveting reading.

Although he made many mistakes along the way, as well as many enemies, and a trail of broken colleagues, his vision and passion resulted in products which have truly revolutionised the computer industry, and made Apple the most valuable company in the world.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Steve Jobs was that he never felt the need to conduct market research (something we recommend all our clients in the Business & IP Centre should do). Instead he worked on creating ‘insanely great’ products people would discover they didn’t know they needed until they saw them.

Make it, Sell it in the Business & IP Centre at the British Library

Many thanks to Fran Taylor for this report on Make it, Sell it:

On Friday we ran the very first of our ‘Make it, Sell it’ events, designed to help jewellery and crafts makers to commercialise their designs.

Around 90 makers came to the Business & IP Centre networking area during the day.  In a ‘speed dating’ style format, they got to meet some great names from brands such as Etsy, Real Business, Tatty Devine, Folksy, Artquest, the Design Trust and Wolf & Badger.

In what was described by Time Out as “an Antiques Roadshow-esque” show and tell, attendees could also bring along their work. I loved all the products on show, but here were some of the ones that caught my eye:

Camilla Smith-Westergaard from Butterscotch & Beesting has designed an amazing range of circus and magic inspired confectionery. She has created a really distinct and strong brand through her own illustrations.

Laura Brannon produces unusual, fine-art style pieces of jewellery under the theme of ‘Dead lights’.   She reuses household materials from shower heads to rubber and foam.

Belinda from Bels Art World produces fantastic illustrations in the form of calendars, bags, cards and zines.

Last but not least, Jo Cameron of Wild Fowl Designs makes contemporary earrings, necklaces, rings and bracelets.  This was one of my favourite designs from her range, which Jo also wore on the day. It’s always good to wear your own products…

Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Question Time for Entrepreneurs 2011

Tonight as night as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week we held another great Inspiring Entrepreneurs. This time the topic was Question Time for Entrepreneurs, and was a chance to grill our assembled panel of experts.

Emma Bridgewater, Chairman and Founder of Emma Bridgewater Ltd, Vernon W. Hill II, Co-founder and Vice Chairman of Metro Bank, Lara Morgan, Founder of Pacific Direct Group Ltd and Company Shortcuts Ltd and Tim Campbell, Founder of the Bright Ideas Trust.

Jonathan Moules, enterprise correspondent at The Financial Times, was in charge of moderating the team.

Emma Bridgewater admitted her business was more home counties than ‘wild west’.

You will have to go through tough times. So even if you don’t feel strong enough, when it is your company, you feel differently about it.

You will surprised how creative you can be in business when you first start out and have no money.

Having to think about accounts was something unpleasant, but necessary.

Her value add, was to make modern dishwater friendly pottery.

‘We have spent ‘shed loads’ of money trying to protect our designs. I don’t think it is possible to protect them.’ The next new design is the key to success. And your brand.

Vernon W. Hill II managed to extend his five minute introduction into an impassioned 15 minute talk about the amazing success of his banking ventures.

Be aware of the brand hierarchy: Basic brands,
Emotional Brands and Legendary Brands. When you reach the top stage you have fans not customers.

You need a clear business model that differentiates you from the competition. The culture of your company must be unique but matched to your business model. Your business execution must be fanatatical

In the US they gave away 28 million pens, and they were trying to get the number up. They let dogs in on the theory that if you love my dog, you must love me.

Metro Bank have 90 percent customer satisfaction rate, Barlcays has minus 35 percent.

Emotional brands create massive value. Look at the example of Apple who grew from a five percent market share less than 10 years ago.

Are you really emotionally and equipped to go down the entrepreneurial road? Ask yourselves does your product or service add value? What is different about you? Successful entrepreneurs start with the end result, not the process of getting there. In the UK we concentrate too much on the technicalities.

He went through 15 years of the press saying ‘this won’t work’, so having a thick skin is essential.

Ninety percent of people they see looking for investment don’t have a business plan, they just have hope. Not good enough! If you don’t have convincing numbers to raise money you will fail.

‘My problem is dealing with the government every day!’

In the US they were recruiting 6,000 jobs a year, most came from existing staff contacts. If they didn’t smile in the first interview then they were out.

Lara Morgan.

The ability to just keep going is vitally important. Jack of all trades and a master of one, where you recruit others to fill in the other roles required.

She worked on her own for two years, morning, noon and night. Her first recruit was a ‘gobby’ hocky player who had the ability, and could be taught the skill required.

Be aware that you can recruit people if you are creative as employers, find out what will lure someone in other than money.

You can actually learn lots of good stuff from books. This is a solution Lara has applied on many occasions.

Understanding finance was a painful part of becoming a successful business. You don’t need to to do the numbers, you do need to understand them.

Finding the right staff, means being utterly rigorous in you recruitment process. Make sure you test skills, because there is a lot of flannel from candidates. Check with your receptionist for their behaviour. Maths, English and culture tests are key. Invest time in this and you will be rewarded.

It took several years to work out what our USP was. It became representing the best products to the best hotels. A key to this was understanding the market place and the competition better than anyone else.

There are very few new ideas, so you just need be aware of how you are different and better.

Tim Campbell

There is a huge value in mentors and advisors. Having a wise head behind you will help solve some of your issues. Having a loyal team with you on your journey will be a key to your success.

Entrepreneurs need to learn to rely on others to deliver the expertise required for the business.

You may need to extend your sales technique to family and friends in order to raise capital for your business. However, business angels are sitting there waiting to find ideas to invest in. There needs to be a better way to bring these two together.

You can’t expect people to invest in your idea if you aren’t prepared to stand by the loan, or put in your own money.

Employing people who don’t have the same passion as you do, is the biggest problem. Managing them out is incredibly difficult. You need to be incredibly clear about what you want from your recruits.

Don’t compete on price, there will always be someone cheaper.

Intellectual protection can be a very costly route to protect something that may not be unique enough. Speed to market is your best protection.

You can learn from other first mover’s mistakes.

The time to pull the plug on his business, was when he realised he could not get the 2,000 outlets needed to reach the minimum size. There is an inner voice you can hear when you go to sleep at night. Listen to it, and to advisers you trust.

There is nothing wrong with a lifestyle business (small scale).

 

Video now live here, Question Time for Entrepreneurs 2011 by BIPCTV’s channel

Question Time for Entrepreneurs 2011

by BIPCTV’s channe

Visit to the British Invention Show 2011

After a couple of years absence I decided to re-visit the British Invention Show (BIS). For this year they had moved from the echoing halls of Ally Pally in north London, to the recently revamped Spitalfields market in east London.

For sixteen years Spitalfields  had been my regular lunchtime haunt, so I was curious to see how much it had changed since its rebuilding. The area now consists of a mixture of shiny new office buildings, trendy boutique stores and restaurants, as well as the traditional brick-a-brack and jewellery market stalls based in the old food market. The visit got off to an expensive start when allowed myself to be lured into a branch of Montezuma’s  chocolate shop and purchase a bar of Brighton’s best ethical chocolate ginger.

The British Invention Show exhibition space had been built underneath the market hall and was smaller than I was expecting. However, once inside the material ‘roof’ meant you forgot about the market outside and concentrated on the exhibiting stands.

As in previous years the number of British inventors was really quite small, compared to those from abroad, especially from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. There were even a few from Iran.

However, as in the past there were still a few exhibitors who made the trip worthwhile for me.

An additional incentive for going along was an opportunity to meet Tara Roskell writes two excellent blogs – graphic design blog and Ideas Uploaded, about inventing and licensing. She interviewed me December last year, so it was nice to finally get to meet her in person. We teamed up to question the more interesting inventors at the show, and you can read her critical review of the exhibition (British Invention Show 2011 Hit or Miss).

First on the list was a set of intriguing ‘inventions’ from the Museum of Ideas & Inventions Barcelona (MIBA). These included:
-    A dining plate with a mirror in the middle (to help those on a diet)
-    Fluorescent dog biscuits (to help pedestrians avoid putting a foot wrong in the dog poo blighted streets of Barcelona)
-    A floor mop with a built in microphone (for those ‘X-factor’ moments while washing the floor)
-    A single bed with a ‘home and away’ score board (unknown dubious purpose)

It turned out that many of these wacky inventions were the brainchild of famous Spanish designer and promoter Pep Torres. They are not intended for production but to stimulate visitors to be creative themselves. Children who visit the museum are encouraged to draw their inventions, and each month the best ones are awarded a patent by the Spanish patent office.

Our guide to the MIBA stand – something of a miniature version of the museum located in central Barcelona, was passionate about this new venture. And explained each of the real and imaginary inventions with great enthusiasm (with the notable exception of the Single Bed which she seemed rather embarrassed about).

As Tara and I were leaving she offered us a red pill from a large glass bowl. I assumed this was the traditional exhibition freebie sweet, so was rather surprised when she stopped me swallowing, it and insisted I open it up to reveal a rolled up paper business card.

She responded to our puzzled expressions by referring to the famous scene in the Matrix film; After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

The other highlight for me was meeting the enthusiastic inventor of the  FreedMan Chair – Simon Freedman.

He is an osteopath by profession and and has spent many years and even more prototypes developing his unique solution to lower back pain.

I have to admit it does look a bit weird, but having never regreted spending £800 on Scandinavia’s finest ergonomic seating in the shape of an RH Logic 400 over ten years ago, any chair that relieves back pain is worth investigating.

Simon explained that his seat does not need cushions because we all come equiped with inbuilt human cushioning

The concavity of the FreedMan seat pads provides support around the ischial tuberosities in such a way that the need for padding is reduced and even eliminated.

Located around the tuberosities are the ischial fat pads and further out are the buttock muscles. The concavity of the seat pads around the tuberosities supports these structures and hence the body provides its own cushioning. In chairs with flat seat pads, the pointy tuberosities push through the surrounding layers, which soon causes discomfort.

You can read much more technical information about the development of the FreedMan Chair on his website.

It was great to hear that Simon is a fan of the Business & IP Centre and has been a regular visitor as his chair developed.

I look forward to hearing much more about this exciting re-invention of the chair.

Global Entrepreneurship Week 2011 is on its way

We have had some excellent events during Global Entrepreneurship Weeks over the past few years (Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010).

And it looks like this year will be just as good. It will run from 14 to 18 November, and includes Speed mentoring sessions and Question Time for Entrepreneurs.

Speed mentoring

Each day we’ll be running informal half-day networking sessions. The Centre will be full of business experts and successful entrepreneurs who you can talk with informally and get advice.

The themes for this year are:

Monday – Absolute Beginners

Tuesday – IP & Innovation

Wednesday – Women in Business

Thursday – Marketing Maestros

Friday – Make It, Sell It!

The speed mentoring sessions run from 10.00am – 13.00pm and 14.00pm – 17.00pm and are free.

Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Question Time for Entrepreneurs

   

Photos: Tim Campbell,  Lara Morgan and Vernon W. Hill II

Our special evening event will give you the opportunity to question some of the most successful and influential people in British business today. Speakers include Emma Bridgewater, Lara Morgan, Vernon W. Hill II and former Apprentice winner Tim Campbell. A networking reception will follow the event.

Business Startup Show

Join us on stand 412 at the Business Startup Show in Earls Court on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 November! Along with our partners, Business Plan Services, Trademark Direct and Grow, members of the Business & IP Centre team will be on hand to explain how we can help kick-start your business.

Find out more about Global Entrepreneurship Week.

‘Absolute Beginners’ day

The essentials you’ll need to get going in business – finance, market research and business planning.

‘IP & Innovation’ day

Meet experts who can help you innovate and stay creative as well as protecting your ideas

‘Women in business’ day

Meet a whole host of female entrepreneurs, from the big names to women that are just getting started.

‘Marketing Maestros’ day

Find out how to improve your brand and marketing strategy on the Marketing Maestros day in Global Entrepreneurship Week.

‘Make It, Sell It!’ day

Meet craft experts to help you grow and develop your business.

Question Time for Entrepreneurs

Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Question Time for Entrepreneurs

Dana Levy Bags & Jewellery Design – another Success Story

My colleague Julie Simkin has written this post on one of her success stories:

I always get excited when I hear from one of my Business Start-Up clients and hear that their business is doing well. This was the case last week when I heard from Dana Levy. I first met with Dana in November 2009 when her business was established, but Dana felt it was the right time to grow and expand into new areas.

When I asked Dana about her experiences with the Business & IP Centre she said:

‘The Business and IP Centre has been very useful in helping me move forward with my business. As well as using the library’s extensive research facilities, I have also had one to one sessions with their knowledgeable Information specialist , Julie Simpkin, and also I had  a one to one session with an ex- ‘Dragon’. These sessions were really useful as they were personal and tailored to my business needs.

The Business & IP Centre also organises really interesting lectures, events and workshops. The most recent workshop I was lucky enough to attend was on Social Networking by Kimberley Davis who featured on the Apprentice a few years ago. She was absolutely brilliant – Very informative and delivered her presentation in such a fun and interesting way.’

Designer Dana Levy grew up in London and has been designing handmade jewellery and accessories for over 10 years. Her creative journey began by spending long summers in the spiritual city of Jerusalem, which then lured her to relocate there and complete a Fine Arts degree at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design. It was while she was based there for 7 years, immersed in Jerusalem’s rich culture and beauty, that her inspiration for designing jewellery and accessories truly began.

Once back in London, the Dana Levy brand began with yoga & meditation accessories using beautiful silk damask fabrics found on her travels in the Middle East. Those damask fabrics soon became her trademark across all of the lifestyle accessories ranging from yoga & meditation accessories, to backgammon travel rolls and tote & evening bags. The careful selection of luxurious materials matched uniquely with symbolic charms is an expression of the ancient and modern worlds coming together.

As soon as the Dana Levy lifestyle range was established, the designer started her jewellery lines inspired by the exotic sights and traditions from the Middle East. All of Dana’s jewellery pieces are handmade and incorporate semi-precious gemstones, Czech glass beads and beautiful charms, amulets and talismans that have spiritual meaning, such as the ‘Hamsa’ hand, a symbol for good luck, and the Evil Eye, a symbol for protection.

All collections are designed by Dana and hand-made using the highest quality materials exclusively sourced from around the world, including the Middle East and Russia.

Dana Levy’s unique pieces have been featured in fashion magazines all around the world such as Vogue, Red, Grazia, and Elle to name just a few. They are also firm favourites with fashion editors and stylists alike.

http://www.danalevy.co.uk/

Create your elevator pitch with Amber Raney-Kincade

Photo by Abdou.W

You step into a lift and someone asks “What do you do?” They are getting off in a few floors, so you only have seconds to gain their interest and pass off your business card. How will they remember you? Amber Raney-Kincade’s workshop is dedicated to creating your specific elevator pitch. You will leave this seminar with a pitch you can begin using immediately.

I attended this workshop yesterday at the City Business Library near the Barbican as part of my journey to create the perfect elevator pitch for the Business & IP Centre (How elevated is your pitch?) Read on to see if I have succeeded.

I have included Amber’s description of her workshop in full above, as it is a wonderful example of a pitch in its own right.

I have decided for this workshop review to try and give an insight into the process. So I am going to include my working notes for my pitch, along with the topics covered by Amber.

1. The five W’s and H are common approaches when first tackling a business related problem, and are used here:

Who is the subject of the elevator pitch?
The British Library Business & IP Centre
What does the person or business do?
We provide information, training and support for inventors and start-up business.
Where does the business or service operate?
We are located within the British Library at St Pancras in north London. Next door to Kings Cross.
When is the service available?
We are open Monday to Saturday from 9.30am to 8pm (5pm on Fridays and Saturdays).
Why offer the product or service?
We want to make use of our existing information to make the British Library more useful to inventors and start-up business.
How does the product or service work?
We give free on-site access to millions of pounds of market research reports, directories, trade journals, company databases, with workshops and free advice clinics.

2. Understand the pains of your customers, so you can present your solutions to their problems.
For the Business & IP Centre customers this includes a lack of knowledge of:
o    Their market place
o    Their competitors
o    Relevant legislation
o    Intellectual Property protection
o    Facts to back up their gut feelings
o    How to prioritise

3. Next Amber made us look at the components of our business or service
What is the service, product, company etc?
Information, training and support for inventors and start-up business.
What problems does it solve?
Inventors and start-up business need to know more about their market place, their competitors, relevant legislation, Intellectual Property  protection, facts to back up their gut feelings and how to prioritise.
How am I different?
We hold the largest collection of freely available market research and business information in the world. We understand the role of intellectual property in protecting a start-up or growing business.
Why should your customers care?
So you don’t waste time and money, and make the right decisions for your business.

4. Amber showed us how to structure a pitch. It needs to:
-    Have a hook
-    Be straightforward (especially no jargon)
-    Establish credibility (name drop if possible)
-    Show passion for what you are doing
-    Be about informing, not bragging about you or your business
-    Not be all about you – needs to be about their needs – not yours

5. Then you need to think about background information
Who are your competitors now (be honest and realistic)?
o    For the Business & IP Centre we have partners and competitors in the shape of other business libraries, Business Link and local authority enterprise agencies.
­Who are you not like?
o    We are not patent attorneys giving legal advice
o    We do not provide incubation space
o    We don’t register companies or trademarks
­ What are your Unique Selling Points?
o    The depth and breadth of our content.
o    Our specialist knowledge and expertise.
o    Our combination of business and intellectual property knowledge.
­ What is your motivation / objectives?
o    To help inventors and individuals start and grow successful businesses.
o    To contribute to the growth of the UK economy.
­ Who is your idea client?
o    Inventors and early stage business start-ups

5. Amber ran through lots of good, bad and indifferent real examples of elevator pitches she has come across. This lead to a heated debate amongst the attendees, but with broad agreement of which was best and why.

6. We then had five minutes to come up with a pitch, which we presented to the room. The next twenty minutes consisted of a lively session where we helped each other improve our pitches.

7. Finally Amber gave us a formula to apply in the unlikely event that we had not managed to produce a suitable pitch during the workshop.

 

So after all that work, here is my shiny new pitch:

Are you ready to take the leap to start your own business?

At the Business & IP Centre in the British Library we provide free information, workshops and advice on your markets, competitors, legislation and in fact pretty much anything you need to start or grow your business.

Please let me know what you think, and how it could be improved.

Thanks again to Amber for a great workshop.

http://www.raney-kincade.co.uk/Raney-Kincade/Home.html

http://ninfield.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/how-elevated-is-your-pitch/

Baby Beamers another Success Story for the Business & IP Centre

Birgitte Lydum recently got in contact with some lovely comments about her experiences of using the Business & IP Centre.

I first went to British Library’s IP & Business Centre in 2009, when I realised that I needed help with pretty much everything to do with my business idea – a multi-configuration pram cover. I’d just moved past the point where I thought a good product idea was enough, and had realised that I was going to need to educate myself on many levels, before even hoping to succeed getting the product on the market.

So I signed up for seminars on the subjects of intellectual property, business plans, market research, marketing, business finance, a one-on-one with an invention specialist, a one-on-one with a successful entrepreneur, and three hours of free market research with a full report delivered to me – just to mention a few of the amazing services available. I also attended several brilliant networking events listening to and meeting various well known and inspirational entrepreneurs. Many of the people I’ve met at these events, fellow business owners I’m still in contact with today.

I was blown away by the quality of the seminars, the staff’s helpfulness, and the amount of information available to me, all for free. I had no idea that there was so much to learn in this wonderful building, buzzing with ideas, creativity, enthusiasm and determination. A bit annoyed with myself for not discovering the place earlier I decided to go there whenever possible, to focus, to learn and to develop my business in the best possible way.

One day, when preparing my patent application in the quiet, clean and comfortable computer area of the centre, I was encouraged by a staff member to try a one-to-one with one of their Information Specialists, who in my case turned out to be Julie Simpkin. It’s without a doubt one of the best decisions I was to make for helping my business materialise. In just one hour Julie taught me so much more about what I wanted from my business than I’d ever be able to learn by myself, from a book or the internet.

For me, she had the effect of a really good business/life coach. We discussed my ideas for the product and the business, and gave me a lot of constructive and sincere encouragement. Julie was the one to suggest that I separated the company name (Baby Beamers) from the product name (SunSnoozer, instead of Baby Beamers Pram Cover), in case I wanted to add more products later. Good practical advice like all the other nuggets of brilliant advice I left with. She made me commit to my goals there and then by getting me to sign a to-do list for our next meeting, and I floated away from there, head and notebook crammed with new ideas, and a much better and clearer understanding of what it was that I wanted from my business.

Baby Beamers

Baby Beamers Ltd was founded by Danish designer Birgitte Lydum, when she realised that a pram sun cover she had invented to protect her baby against the sun and make it easier for her to sleep, filled a gap in the market. After numerous prototypes, extensive market research and product testing the SunSnoozer is now available to buy. Other products to help make life easier for new parents are in development.

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Baby Beamers:

• Encourages better sleep by eliminating bright light and visual distractions.
• Allows constant view of baby, while still eliminating direct sun or wind.
• 7 different configurations allow full protection no matter the wind/sun’s direction.
• Easy access – no need to detach cover when lifting baby in and out of pram.
• Can be left on the pram, saving valuable storage space. Machine washable.
• Fits easily under rain covers, mosquito nets and any other pram accessories.
• UPF 50+ (click HERE for test details, and further info on baby sun protection).
• The ultimate no fuss, all-season, all-round pram accessory for new parents.

British Library and the Open Innovation Project – Working with others to make new ideas fly

My colleague Nigel Spencer reports on an exciting new project at the British Library:

Working with others to make new ideas fly is the strap-line for a European Union funded project to promote open innovation principles across the North West Europe region.  The British Library is a partner in this three year project along with partners from France, Germany, Belgium, Ireland and other parts of the UK.

openinnovationproject.co.uk

The concept of open innovation is simply that by being open to external input you are more likely to develop innovative and successful products or services. This is because it is unlikely that any single organisation will have all the skills, knowledge, experience and perspectives needed in-house. Open innovation covers a range of types of activity including crowd-sourcing, co-creation and includes activities with varying levels of openness and transparency.

Stefan Lindegaard from 15inno says that people should view  open innovation as ‘a philosophy or a mindset that they should embrace within their organization. This mindset should enable their organization to work with external input to the innovation process just as naturally as it does with internal input’.

Examples of organisations that have applied open innovation are:  ‘Orange, Procter & Gamble, Boots, Lego and Virgin Atlantic.

There are a number of perceived and genuine barriers and challenges which prevent businesses of all sizes from taking the leap to applying open innovation principles; Some of these challenges are:

•  How to make the contacts needed with external organisations and people and develop long-term mutually beneficial relationships. This a particular concern if businesses are of differing sizes.
• How to overcome the internal organisational cultures which may be uncomfortable with the kind of openness, transparency and perceived loss of direct control which are involved in applying these ideas.
• How to protect ideas and creative outputs when these are being shared and an uncertainty as to how intellectual property fits into an open innovation environment.

On 29 November the British Library is hosting a half-day conference which looks at these challenges head on.  It is called ‘Open Innovation: The Challenges & Solutions’. We have brought together a great selection of experts and practitioners from organisations like 100% Open, Creative Barcode, Procter and Gamble and Quantum Innovation Centre to debate these issues.

More information and booking on the event, and you can follow the Open Innovation Project on Twitter at @OIProject