My favourite Einstein quotes

A colleague has recently been using the following brilliant line quite a bit recently, with regard to people who keep making the same mistakes. It didn’t take much research to find it came from that wonderful scientist and philosopher Albert Einstein.

* Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Einstein also came up with quite a few quotable quotes on the topic of knowledge:

* Information is not knowledge.

* The only source of knowledge is experience.

* Imagination is more important than knowledge.

* The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The Brainy Quote website has a whole A to Z of Einstein’s one liners.

Librarians of the future discussed at the Online Information Show

My fellow SLA Europe Board member Marie Madeleine Salmon went to a lot of trouble to organise three international events during the recent Online Information Conference.

I spoke at the first of these on the Tuesday, and had been planning to write up a summary until time slipped away from me.

Fortunately an excellent summary was written by Penny Crossland, and appears on the Resource Shelf blog here. A longer version is published on the VIP LiveWire blog here.

What’s not to like about LIKE?

In a year that has seen cuts in commercial library and and information services resulting from the UK recession, and the sad demise of the City Information Group in the summer (CiG – RIP), it is good to have something new and positive to talk about.

LIKE (London Information and Knowledge Exchange) is a networking group for Library, Information, Knowledge and Communication professionals, who meet on a monthly basis to share stories, learn and exchange knowledge in an informal and relaxed setting.

According to one of their fans: “The best thing about LIKE meetings is that they attract interesting and friendly people. It’s rather like a very good dinner party.”

They are already up to their tenth meeting, to be held on 28 January in The Perseverance in Lamb’s Conduit Street, featuring Liz Scott-Wilson Head of Information Management at Tube Lines talking about Information behaviour & culture change.

At their previous get together in December they looked forward to the coming year, and recorded some LIKE members’ New Year Resolutions.

SLA name to stay SLA

The last few weeks have seen what must be the most hotly discussed library profession related topics since the (UK) Library Association changed its name in 2002 to CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals).

The results of the electronic voting was finally announced on 10 December on the SLA Blog SLA Name Will Stay: Alignment of Association to Continue. The vote against the new name was fairly convincing with 2071 voting yes and 3225 voting no.

Although I initially felt a bit deflated by the result after all the efforts those in favour, I was all too aware that the proposed new name was not particularly engaging. Although I wonder if we could ever find one that would be. At the previous failed name change vote in 2003, the choice was Information Professionals International, which to my mind is equally anodyne.

Perhaps the biggest mistake in the campaign was to give the impression we were moving away from the ‘L’ word rather than creating a bigger ‘tribe’ (to quote Seth Godin) in which librarians would be a big and welcome part. Many traditional librarians in the United States seemed to feel it was something of an either or situation.

Also the heat of the discussion has shown that although the stereotype of information professionals is of a shy and retiring middle aged woman wearing a bun, if they feel strongly about an issue, they are prepared to ’storm the barricades’. I am reminded of the acknowledgement from Michael Moore, after librarians saved his book Stupid White Men from being pulped in the wake of the 9-11 attacks in America:

“I really didn’t realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.
They are subversive. You think they’re just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They’re like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn’t mess with them. You know, they’ve had their budgets cut. They’re paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?”

EnterQuest’s business support survey – the results

The wonderful people who produce our COBRA (Complete Business Reference Adviser) have started surveying subscribers to their free EnterQuest weekly tips and ideas bulletin for startups and small business owner managers.

Their first one was designed to gauge their opinions and levels of satisfaction of business support services they had received or experienced over the last 12 months:

 

The results of the survey were in certain respects rather surprising, and in other ways quite predictable. The survey asked readers for their views relating to sources of support received, ie from Business Link, enterprise agency, local council, and Chamber of Commerce. They were quizzed about what satisfied them the most, what was most disappointing, and asked for suggestions for improvements.

The most striking result was the performance of Business Link, with two-thirds (65%) of respondents satisfied with the support received (43% were very satisfied), but with over a third (35%) not very satisfied or totally unsatisfied. General satisfaction levels were very similar for support from local enterprise agencies, but fewer of these (only 35%) were very satisfied.

While there are encouraging signs that things are moving in the right direction with attitudes towards Business Link,it still remains a stark fact that one out of three businesses were still not satisfied with the support they received, and 44% were not satisfied across all types of local business support provision.

Overall, survey responses from recipients of business support across all providers are summarised as follows:

Very satisfied 26%
Fairly satisfied 30%
Not very satisfied 22%
Totally unsatisfied 22%
So in aggregate the results are 56% satisfied with support received and 44% not satisfied. Survey respondents were located in all regions of the UK.

In terms of the specific questions asked in the survey and qualified answers given, the responses were varied and in certain cases quite animated. The following is a summary of some of the typical responses given for three of the main question areas.

What disappointed you the most?

- lateness of the adviser, lack of respect shown
- e-mails and phone calls unanswered/ not returned
- the adviser did not understand my business or my industry
- lack of clear written steps for funding applications
- no new advice given, I knew what was said already
- excellent support programmes stop when their funding is withdrawn or ends
- lack of understanding of local business needs

What pleased you the most?

- quick response to grant application, given answer in five days
- the adviser understood our business model
- we got what was written on the tin, and in good time
- excellent training sessions from Business Link
- free Business Link support
- wealth of free information provided by adviser
- good follow-up range of courses available

What do you suggest that would improve the service you received or would like to receive in the future?

- the adviser should have real, practical experience of business
- specialist rather than general help and advice is needed
- more empathy with first-timers
- more long term funding for successful support programmes
- more local services and resources available
- loans available for true micros
- more interest in customer needs than in ticking boxes

Key likes – courses, free services, local support and advice.

Key dislikes – supplier driven (need to tick their boxes), exclusion of micros and sole traders, general rather than specialist advice.

Hazel Hall wins Information World Review Information Professional of the Year 2009

As the fortunate recipient of this award in 2003, I was very pleased to see it go to Hazel Hall this year. I have known Hazel for many years and always been impressed by her support and enthusiasm for her students, and at promoting the potential of the information and knowledge profession.

She has published and presented widely in international journals and at conferences including keynote presentations, plus numerous publications in the professional press and books.

She has also been in the vanguard of adopting social media activities such as Twitter, and trying to persuade  resistant information professionals of their benefits.

Hazel is Director of the Centre for Social Informatics in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University. She is also leading the implementation of the UK Library and Information Science Research Coalition.

The awards are organised by IWR magazine and Online Information Conference organisers, Incisive Media.

Peter Williams, Editor of IWR magazine, described Hazel during the presentations as an energetic and enthusiastic information professional whose work invigorates the professional landscape, both within and beyond the UK.  2009 has been an outstanding year of achievement for her and one on which future success will be built for the profession as a whole, as well as on a personal level.

More Asian and African surprises from the British Library collections

Another year on and another show and tell from the idiosyncratic Hedley Sutton with more Asian surprises at the British Library. This time he added a few African ones to boot.

Hedley started the show off with an exotic quiz in the shape of a black and white photo of a European looking woman wearing a belly dancer’s outfit. After a short pause while the audience considered their options I blurted out, “is she Mata Hari?” I was rewarded with a knowing smile from Hedley and the appearance of an original letter from 1917 from an agent of the French secret service to their British equivalent. The letter identified her as a double agent for the Germans. Soon after in October Mata Hari (which was Indonesian for ‘eye of the day’), was executed by firing squad as a spy. It turned out she was in fact a Dutch subject and her original name was Margaretha Zelle.

Pat Shipman one of her biographers argues that Mata Hari was never a double agent, speculating that she was used as a scapegoat by the head of French counter-espionage. The fact that she was seen by some as a ‘wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress’, may not have helped her case.

Next Hedley showed off what appeared to be an ancient religious text hailing from the famous Dunhuang Archaeological Sites in Xinjiang China. In fact it turns out this was actually a sophisticated fake, and part of a cottage industry which flourished in that part of China around the late 1800’s. The items were produced in response to an invasion of European collectors eager to get hold of historical documents from the area preserved for hundreds of years by the desert conditions.

This led on to a discussion about the the International Dunhuang Project, which is an international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet.

Next we were shown a surprisingly recent publication, which turned out to be a new (and limited print run) version of the Szyk Haggadah.

The Szyk Haggadah is a Passover Haggadah illustrated by Arthur Szyk in Poland in the 1930s. According to the The Times it is ‘worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has ever produced’.

What makes the beautiful illustrations so unusual is Szyk’s approach of portraying contemporary political issues in medieval style. His first set of illustrations were clear and unfavourable references to the Nazis, including such detail as Nazi armbands on the Egyptians oppressing and murdering the Israelites, and the faces of Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring on two snakes.

.

TFPL Connect International – Monday 30 November

I managed to force my flu wracked body along to this Monday evening pre-Online Exhibition discussion organised by TFPL. As well as the impressive panel listed below, I noted the room was full to bursting with 80 of the great and good of the information world. Many had flown in early for the Online show from the United States and Europe to be able to attend this event.

As something of an old stager at these kinds of events, I recognised quite a few faces around the room. These including three previous winners of the SLA Europe Information Professional Award (which was previously called the European Special Librarian of the Year); the current holder Gimena Campos Cervera , Annabel Colley and ex-Surrey Policeman Kevin Miles who I nominated for the award way back in 1999.

Natalie Ceeney

The panel consisted of Natalie Ceeney (NC) the CEO of The National Archives, Doris Springer (DS), Manager Information Services at Bain & Company in Germany, and Morten Nicholaisen (MN), the Executive Director of Dialog.

Although I enjoyed the evening, somehow it didn’t quite live up to it’s billing. I think part of the problem may have been that it was a Monday night. Also, although Natalie was as controversial as her reputation predicted, the other panellists were not able to match her, and so the sparks did not fly.

The questions for the evening included:

How can we improve Britain’s economy?
NC. By making more effective use of knowledge. We should treat it as the third big asset after money and people. We should encourage mashups and innovation, and allow public access to the data and let them work out what to do with it, and to question its accuracy. She pointed out that the Welsh government already has a policy covering every document and how which element they will make available on the web.
MN. We should encourage better and more creative use of published information.

How can we improve personal use of information as exemplified by the Scandinavian countries?
MN. Recent surveys have shown that part of the reason why Scandinavians are statistically some of the happiest people in the world, is because they are happy to share personal information. The older generations do not understand how the younger generation think and works with online information. For example the fact they don’t look beyond Google when searching for information. He finds showing a product like Dialog to young consumers is difficult. It does not look cool compared to free web products. And this is coming from the boss of Dialog.
NC. Felt the culture was different in Britain and the public would not accept sharing of personal data. We draw the line between private personal data and public access much closer to home in the UK to compared to Scandinavian countries. She thought that UK citizens are coming increasingly concerned about how much personal information is open via social media sites such as Facebook..

Victoria Ginnetta – we have seen much more flexible working as a way of responding to the recession likely. How likely is this approach to carry on in the future?
DS. Full time workers are still key to Bain in Germany.
MN. This recession has been the worst he has seen in forty years. 2010 will be better, but perhaps not by much.
NC. The UK public sector will see a delayed response to recession, they are now heading towards a spending recession. The result will be more outsourcing, the growth of long delivery chains. We won’t be able to rely on long term employees.

Liz Blankson-Hemans – What attributes does the profession need to help break out of traditional roles?
MN. Info pro’s in corporates need to be better at sharing critical information with more people in their organisations. Desk top info does solve this problem as it leads to information overload. An info pro can determine what information is critical.
NC. By being the people who are best at getting the most out of information.
DS. Info pros have not been good at internal marketing.

Steven Philips – Given the pressures on publishers income streams can we expect to see a divergence in Business to Business (B to B) and Business to Consumer (B to C) revenue models. Will the B to B begin to subsidise consumer access?
MN – Not much experience of publishers selling directly to consumers. Currently very protective, but need to be less risk averse.
NC. Admitted she had not successful when at The British Library, but felt it is happening in Government publishers such as in Met Office free public information is used to get people to trade up to charged content.
SP. Publishers may have shot themselves in the foot by giving too much away for free. This makes life difficult when trying to charge corporates.

Is Stephen Fry a social media saint or sinner?
None of the panel are users of Twitter and admitted that they didn’t really get it.
Hazel Hall felt they were missing out on something important and explained how it took her eight weeks to really get Twitter. If Facebook is suburbia then Twitter is the city centre. She reminded the audience that when email first came along we had much more time to get used to it than with these new social media technologies.
Mary Dee Ojala pointed out that even if you don’t Tweet you must be monitoring what people are saying about your organisation on Twitter.

He stole my idea – what can I do about it? – Workshop

I’m still catching up on my notes from some of the events I attended during a manic Global Entrepreneurship Week  (GEW) at The British Library.

Although somewhat sexist in tone, He stole my idea – what can I do about it? really caught my attention. It was presented by Denise Nurse, the co-founder of Halebury one of our partners providing legal advice.  They aim to make law more accessible to everyone, in particular start-ups and medium sized companies.

Here are my notes from the workshop:

1.      What is Intellectual Property?

1. Ideas are not protected until you do something with it. It has to turned into something tangible.
2. Often compared to physical property. You wouldn’t buy a house without research and professional advice. Once purchased you need to maintain and develop it in order to protect or increase its value.
3. You need to identify the various aspects of IP in the manifestation of your idea:

-       Copyright – automatically covers any creative output, but you need to prove you did it first.

-       Trademarks – your unique identifier for you business. Can be registered for ten years with the Intellectual Property Office or the EU for a Community Mark. Start with business name, might want to include your strap line. Need to develop a strategy, but budgetary restrictions are often a factor. If you have an established brand which can not be registered as it is descriptive you can use the ‘passing off’ laws to gain some protection.

-       Patents – a long, complicated and expensive process. Covers an inventive process. Must be completely new and secret, but if successful gives you a monopoly for 20 years. Can be licensed to others.

-       Designs – often overlooked, but relatively cheap and easy to register. Covers the shape of something and how it fits with something else. Does not have to be registered, but this gives more protection.

-       Database rights – relate to the organisation of information. Protection from staff walking away with customer lists etc.

-       Confidential information – take time to ensure you have the correct confidentiality agreement. How long will it need to last? Who does it cover? Be careful using standard agreements found on the internet.

2.      How is IP Infringed?

1. Copy, publish, distribute
2. Sell, rent, lend
3. Produce, manufacture
4. Perform, broadcast
5. Adapt

3.      What is the Damage?

1. Music industry claims 20% lost income due to piracy.
2. Your reputation can be damaged – e.g. counterfeit goods which are poor quality
3. Money – loss of IP eats into your income.
4. Dilution of rights – e.g. by allowing its use to become generic you lose the value of your rights such as a trade mark.
5. Weakened commercial position – will have an impact on potential partners, licence agreements.

4.      Protection = Preparation and Perception

1. Mark and / or register – e.g. use copyright symbol.
2. Insure – a growing field, especially in the field of products and patenting. Can cover legal fees to attack or defend from attack. Can help when going for investment.
3. Monitor use – the IPO do not act as IP police. You have to check. Not difficult these days with the internet and search engines. Some trade mark attorneys offer this service.
4. Take swift action – very important not to hang about, but don’t act rashly, get legal advice.
5. Follow through – do you have the resources to follow up on original letter? Nine times out ten the initial letter and demands within it will work. In some cases your trade association can provide support.
6. Make an example of someone who is blatantly abusing your IP.
7. Get warranties from third parties you are working with.

5.      What if someone is infringing your IP?

1. Identify
2. Gather evidence – such as witness statements.
3. Get insurance – can be bought after the event.
4. Call a lawyer – better if you already have a relationship and they know you IP situation.
5. Contact the infringer
6. Make a claim
7. Notify the authorities – some acts are illegal in addition to civil. E.g. counterfeiting goods.
8. Settlement agreement – you may be able to work out a licensing deal.

6.      Defences – anticipating

1. Dispute ownership or title – prove the IP is yours. E.g. in the film world need to ensure all aspects are covered.
2. License to use – check the small print of original documentation.
3. Lack of knowledge – if your work is not widely available it is possible the infringers have not copied your work, although they will still be in breach of your IP.
4. Rights have expired or have been exhausted – can be a geographical factor.
5. Jurisdiction – disputes may be taking place in other locations.
6. Acquiescence – you haven’t used your registered trade mark for too long.

7.      What will you win?

1. Stop infringement
2. Seize copies
3. Account for profits – example of Brats dolls dispute with Matel – $100 damages.
4. Damages
5. Criminal sanctions – e.g. Pirate Bay founders

8.      Practical steps

1. Set up processes
2. Keep an up to date record of your IP – don’t forget to renew trademarks
3. Document your agreements
4. Monitor the market place – be aware of IP use and trends in your market area.
5. Build an aggressive reputation – lessons learnt from working for Rupert Murdoch.
6. Publicising your success – e.g. when you make an example of an infringer.
7. Research and take advice – sometimes you will need professional advice, build this into your plan.
8. Have a strategy – always worth going through your IP assets even at a late stage.

 Audience comment: “For most companies ethics is a small county in the south east of England.”

Sustainable Supply Chains workshop

Today I attended an excellent workshop on Sustainable Supply Chains. It was presented by Stephen Taiwo, who was the sustainable policy adviser and architect of the Government Office for London and Defra’s Sustainable Food Procurement project. He now works for Supply London – an LDA and European funded initiative, provides advice and support. http://www.supplylondon.com/

Here are my notes from the workshop:

Definition of sustainability – Bruntland 1987 – “Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission 

1. Resources consumed in line with nature’s patterns
2. Consider long term impact
3. Minimise risk and cost
4. Not just about environmental impacts, includes social and economic.

Current practice

Figures from One World – currently consume the equivalent of 1.3 planets to provide the resource we use and absorb our waste. 

At current trends UN predicts 2030 will require equivalent of 2 earths.

Supply Chain

A linked set of resources and processes that begins with the sourcing of raw materials and extends through to delivery of end items to the consumer. 

Cradle to grave for products.

Development – identification & buying – manufacturing – sale & dist – consumption – end of life & disposal

Sustainability Issues

• impact on air quality
• water consumption & pollution
• loss of biodiversity e.g. land clearance – mono-crops
• impact on limited resources – is it resource intensive
• impact on greenhouse gases – climate
• waste production
• health & safety
• quality of life – wages for producers

 Examples of cotton production in India with negative impact on the soil and water supply. Intensive tomato production in southern Portugal.

 Why a sustainable Supply Chain

• reduce costs and improve productivity
• reduce risk – includes brand damage resulting from negative press
• reduce absenteeism through better staff welfare
• creates healthier environments
• to be a market leader – public sector suppliers now ask questions related to sustainability

Drawbacks to Sustainable Supply Chains (less true than in the past)

• no motivation other than complying with the law.
• Consumers often go for cheapest option rather than sustainable products.
• Short term focus of government, business and consumers – relates to 12 month business budgeting – government departments have individual targets which weren’t linked up.

Help from:

Soil association – http://www.soilassociation.org/

Sustain – http://www.sustain.co.uk/

Ten Ten Campaign – http://www.1010uk.org/

Greenworks – http://www.green-works.co.uk/

How to implement a sustainable supply chain

1. Analyse your internal process & impacts
2. Identify your supply chain and at which point you sit. Also the suppliers of your suppliers.
3. Make sustainability part of your organisational strategy – must have top level buy-in – need to develop KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) – develop an action plan for delivery.
4. Implement practical measures suited to your organisation – SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely).
   1. Written policies
   2. Communication materials
   3. Evaluate suppliers.
   4. Purchasing guidelines
   5. Supplier partnerships
5. Get all internal and external stakeholders involved
   1. Driven from the top, but must involve everyone.
   2. Supplier engagement
   3. Use relationships with customer.

Support from Supply London

-          ISO 9001 help and support which can save consultants fees.

The workshop ended first with the quote below from Mahatma Gandhi, and then a screening of the Story of Stuff (a 20-minute animation of the consumerist society, narrated by Anne Leonard).

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed” Mahatma Gandhi

My podcast on the Guardian’s Small is Beautiful website

An interview I recorded a couple of weeks ago has now made it onto the Guardian’s Small is Beautiful website.

The aim of the recently launched section is to show why growing firms are the economy’s best hope.  And to highlight the potential for small business to lead Britain out of recession, by focussing on the issues facing small and medium sized companies.

They have used a comment I picked up from one of our earliest supporters Mandy Haberman, who believes that the Business & IP Centre is a ’safe haven’ for inventors and entrepreneurs.

Karen Blakeman likes our business essentials wiki

I’ve just read Karen Blakeman’s latest blog post which mentions our new business essentials wiki in glowing terms.

This is high praise indeed given Karen’s legendary knowledge and experience of all things related to business information. And the fact her website Business Information on the Internet has consistently come up first on Google, when searching for the term business information.

We have certainly noticed a great deal of additional content appearing since we launched it on 5 November.

Launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) at The British Library

Peter Jones and Priya Lakhani from Masala Masala discuss enterprise education

I spent Monday morning at the launch of GEW from the comfort of The British Library conference centre.

The event was well chaired by Simon Jack from the BBC, and included some light-hearted banter between him and Peter Jones (of BBC’s Dragon’s Den fame). Peter persuaded Simon to spend a day with him in order to experience the world of the entrepreneur from the inside. He also got him to agree to give a plug for GEW one morning during the BBC Breakfast Show this week, so watch this space.

1. Our Chief Executive Lynne Brindley gave the welcome speech and included the intriguing concept that The British Library has more good ideas inside it than any other building in the world. I think it is a line I can see myself using in future.

2. The opening words were from Miles Templeman Director General at the Institute of Directors. Who felt that talent is not enough to ensure success in business – inspiration is necessary to start things off. But what unless potential talent is developed and nurtured business survival and growth is unlikely.

3. Next we watched a short video from Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

4. Then we had a fascinating panel session with Carl Schramm the Chief Executive of the Kauffman Foundation and Jim O’Neill the Head of Global Economic Research at Goldman Sachs.

Schramm acknowledged Prime Minister Gordon Brown as the key driver behind turning the original UK Enterprise Week into Global Entrepreneurship Week, which now includes 88 countries. In order to learn how to teach people to become entrepreneurs to start high growth businesses they have created the Kauffman Laboratories for Enterprise Creation – http://www.kauffman.org/entrepreneurship/kauffman-laboratories-for-innovation-and-entrepreneurship.aspx

Their research shows that entrepreneurship has been the key to recovery of the last seven economic declines. In recessions economists and governments turn back to Keynesian economics and decide that government intervention is the key to economic recovery. Schramm believes government industrial policy is antithetical to entrepreneurship. Instead what we need is government policy and pragmatic coaching skills to support creation of new entrepreneurs. He believes there is a  sea-change occurring, so we now see enterprise as the key to economic growth, and gave the economies of China and India as proof of this.

Libraries and support – Andrew Carnegie created the US public library system – the Kauffman Foundation are looking very closely at libraries as incubators for business.

5. O’Neill who’s claim to fame is having coined the term BRIC nations (Brazil, India and China), stated that entrepreneurship is the future of our and the world economy.

• He thought it unfortunate that economists have proved why they are known at the miserable profession.
• The consensus forecast for world economy is 3.7%, down from 5% over the last five years. This is due to continued progress in BRIC economies. The assumption that our recession is reflected elsewhere is not true.
• Economically speaking China has created the equivalent of 2 UK’s in the last eight years.
• Brazil is due to overtake Italy in terms of GDP (gross domestic product).
• In China 13 million a month taking mobile phone contracts
• Twice as many cars will be sold in China this year than the United States.
• The expansion of BRIC economies provides opportunities for British entrepreneurs. He gave example of UK football league as an example of world business success.

6. Question time:

The British know how to invent, but not how to market themselves.

Rod Aldrich Foundation – http://www.aldridgefoundation.com/

What is the secret to growing economies entrepreneurship success. Awareness that they have been given the chance to become wealthy. People in Britain like to be regarded as creative, but following it through to economic wealth is a cultural issue.

Over half of the US fasted growing 500 companies never wrote a business plan.

Business academies can’t spark entrepreneurial attitudes, although they can help with best practice.

7. Video from Karen Kanaan the Global Entrepreneurship Week host in Brazil. Their goal was for 1% of the population to become involved (2 million people), but actually ended up with 4.5 million people registered.

8. Panel Session:

Matt Brittin the Managing the Director of Google UK.

• Google perspective – The Internet allows business to be global. The world has gone digital, so there is a big opportunity for entrepreneurs.
• Example of purely gadgets digital business. Example of dustbag.co.uk, used internet searching keyword targeting to bring their service to their intention.

David Wei the Chief Executive of Alibaba.com, China’s biggest internet business.

• Entrepreneurship cannot be educated, trained or supported by Government, it can be inspired. We need to take away comfortable safety net to create a culture of entrepreneurship.
• Who is the new idol for entrepreneurship, why do we still see a video of Richard Branson twenty years on.
• PowerPoint leaves your power and point on the screen. You end up with no power and no point.
• The internet is the equivalent of the railways and highways of the last century.

Emma Harrison the founder A4E

• Started an illegal tuck-shop at school.
• Elected as a school governor at 15, but was still truanting from school.
• Failed her A –levels, so went back to college to get engineering qualifications, put learner plates on a motorbike and drove to Universities to get places.
• Joined her dad in business who left after 18 days and learnt how to survive in business.
• Advice – find your own path, find a mentor, every day find four ways to market your business.

9. Panel discussion

• Intro from Lord Davies, Minister of State for Trade, Investment and Small Business.
• 4.8 million SME’s – we are a nation of entrepreneurs – appealed to the press to celebrate our success, not to concentrate on failures.
• Peter Jones wants to introduce entrepreneurship into every school in the UK. He believes entrepreneurship can be taught.
• Julie Meyer – entrepreneur country . net – We need to become a nation of believers (not a religious belief). A surprising lack given this country produced Winston Churchill. Business success is a like a drug, once successful they will want to help others build their success.

In conversation with Lord Sugar

Tonight was definitely one of the highlights of Global Entrepreneurship Week for me. Our event in the British Library conference centre In conversation with Lord Sugar was full to bursting.

As time is short and it is now after midnight, I am going to post my notes of his gems and leave it at that.

Is now a good time to be setting up a new business?
Lord Sugar’s route into business was by learning business skills by working in a company and then applying these to his new business.

He is concerned that people wake up one day and decide to start a business, but don’t have the relevant skills or experience to make a go of it.

Opportunities currently exist in the property market if you have the money, but the banks will not be interested in lending.

His move into computers was a natural development of his business selling transistor radios, rather than a revolutionary move.

What is the best piece of business advice he has ever taken?
He used his bank as a barometer in his early days in the 1960’s to find out how fast he could and should develop. This is in contrast to more recent times when the banks give too easily and freely.

He encourages youngsters to start small with their own money and grow from there.

I have not been very successful in investing in the property market. I took all the money I earned from technology and put it into safe and boring properties. There was no rocket science in what I did.

What do you think about MBA’s in entrepreneurship
You can’t train entrepreneurs, you either have the spirit or you don’t. Business training is important but not a substitute for an entrepreneurial spirit.

Has reading business books been useful?
No, not really, I last used one for a wobbly table.

How important is a business plan?
The key point is the business idea any good. For instance if it is a service it is all about the quality of the person providing the service. No excel spreadsheet is magically going to make it work.

There is no point of any business support unless the idea is any good.

How important are work teams?
The team found Lord Sugar rather than vice versa.

Tell us about challenging periods and mistakes made.
Over 40 years in business made less mistakes than good decisions. You learn by your mistakes. He encourages young business to do a weekly health check. What has gone right this week and what has gone wrong?

How do you use sweat equity?
I’m a thick bloke from Hackney, so keep it simple. I don’t understand what you are talking about.

Advice on partnerships
When you need to add a level of expertise to your business you can either add a partner or find a suitable employee.

Can government employees give help to small business when they read them from a computer screen?
Business Links centres have the tools to take some of the burden away from business people with practical advice on employment law, tax regulations etc. They are not giving business advice, but practical help.

Common attributes for entrepreneurial spirit?
(Exasperated) I wish someone would give me an answer to this one.

Have you had a mentor?
Yes. In my business career my mentors were people I aspired to. In my family there was only my uncle. Later on my supplier of electrical equipment became my mentor. Grew beyond them on to the likes of Lord Weinstock at GEC and Rupert Murdoch. Looked, listened and tried to replicate what they were doing.

The role of PR
Differentiates the role of business PR and personal PR. Editorial on a product or service is worth more than advertising. Has a lot to do with connections with media. PR companies who don’t specialise are not as successful as the ones that don’t.

Selling and the art of closing a deal
I the person running the business is not a good sales person then why are they in business. This is another art that can’t really be taught. If you can’t do it, employ someone who is.

How do you like people to communicate in Business?
Very openly in my place, everybody shares the story and knows what is going on.

I admire people who have reached contentment with their lives and know how to enjoy themselves.

How challenging have you found this new Business Champion role?
This is not a challenge, I’m not looking for a headache. I won’t don’t it if I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to give something back to young people

Do you invest outside of the UK?
We have in the past with electronics. I don’t have any at the moment. There are problems with investing in Africa. It is a difficult market. It needs some African entrepreneurs to create the new markets and some business traffic.

What is the main cause of the 95% of business start-up failures.
Should do a weekly health check. Immediately you know where you business is going. Do not lose track of the basics. Do the simple maths every week.

How do we encourage an enterprise culture in the UK? Rachel Elnaugh – ex Dragons Den
Programmes like Dragons Den and The Apprentice have provided a great service to this country to spread the message that there are no free gifts or free lunches. That you actually have to do it yourself. There is too much of a culture that expects to be spoon fed.

If someone could invent a positive journalist then this would encourage people. Get away from this blame culture.

I don’t like the way we have changed to a knocking culture in recent years.

What could schools do to improve things for business?
We need to make plumbing cool again.

Do you set yourself goals?
Right at the beginning it was just to earn more money than in the job I had just left. If by Wednesday I had achieve £60 of net profit then I had achieved my goal.

I never had a five year plan. In the electronics business this is bullshit. You can’t see that far ahead.

Ideas have to be endorsed by a third party, it is no good getting your friends and family to say how great it is. You need a wake call.

You make people believe in your potential by your past successes.

Information Law with Charles Oppenheim

 

Picture from OneIS

A late night last Thursday due to attending an excellent talk by Professor Charles Oppenheim on information law. The event was the second in a series of talks organised by the wonderfully entrepreneurial information professional Jennifer Smith and sponsored by her OneIS company. Charles generously agreed to make his slides available on the One IS website

For his talk Charles cantered through a range of important and controversial topics, which was described as a chocolate box taster approach rather than an in depth analysis due to time constraints.

Having known Charles for many years I was already aware of his amazing ability – not only to bring what could be quite dry topics to life with amusing examples, but to explain really quite difficult subjects with clarity and brevity.

The topics covered were data protection, personal data, cloud computing, protecting your reputation online, disability discrimination, contracts and last, but by no means least, copyright.

Data protection

This is a notoriously difficult and worrying topic for information professionals, and in fact anyone whole collects data about people in the United Kingdom. It all stems from the Data Protection Act of 1998, and covers information about individuals ranging from the innocuous to highly sensitive. One curious exception to its provenance is financial information, and we spent some time during the lengthy questions and answers session at the end pondering why this might be the case. My theory is that the UK banks recognised the law would have a disruptive impact on their activities, and used their considerable influence to ring-fence this area.

The Data Protection Act is based on the following eight principles, all of which have legal status (either civil or criminal), and is regulated by an Information Commissioner:

1. Personal data must be obtained fairly, and for a bona fide purpose.
2. It can only be used for one or more purpose, which must be clearly specified.
3. The data obtained must be adequate, relevant and not excessive. Charles gave a wonderful example of a town council who included a question on chest size on their form for all new employees. The reason they asked the question was to help them keep their stocks of overalls correct for those staff who did ‘dirty jobs’, such as dustmen and women. However, when a secretary complained about the question the council (and the vast majority elsewhere in the country) were forced to change their policy.
4. The data must be accurate and up to date (where relevant).
5. It should not be kept for longer than necessary. (This led to a discussion of the recent news story about the UK police being forced to delete their DNA records of innocent civilians after six years, instead of keeping them forever).
6. The data should be processed in accordance of the rights of individuals, who retain the right to sue for inaccurate information.
7. It must be protected from loss, damage or destruction.
8. It must not be transferred outside the European Economic Area. (This led to a discussion of Google and Amazon data servers which are based in the United States).

Charles then went on to give brief overviews of five more information law topics:

1. Cloud Computing – In particular the risks of exporting or storing data outside of the European Economic Area. Many organisations are not aware that by using Google or Amazon S3 servers their data is being stored in the United States, and so in breach of UK law.

2. Protecting your reputation online:

-       This topic was about slander (temporary) and libel (published) where the reputation of an individual is harmed by false statements, to more than one ‘third’ party.

-       It only applies if there is a reputation to be harmed. So saying Jeffrey Archer is a crook would not be libellous.

-       An email to an individual is not libellous, but if it leaks out to others, then it becomes so.

-       This is a particularly thorny topic due to the big differences in libel law between countries, in particular between the United States and the UK. We currently have the strictest libel laws in the world.

-       Charles recommended regularly ‘Googling’ yourself to see what has been written about you online.

3. Disability discrimination – How you must make reasonable adjustments to cater for those with disabilities.

4. Contract law – This consists of five key elements. Offer and acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, legal capacity and formalities. Charles reviewed the three levels of formality. 1. A verbal or email agreement (unlikely to accepted in court). 2. An email with a digital signature (generally accepted as binding). 3. An email with a signature and full encryption (full legal strength).

5. Copyright – Charles ended on this most complicated and controversial topic which led on to a lengthy question and answer session. He wanted to ensure we were all aware of the fact that just because content was freely available on the Internet, this did not mean it was not covered by copyright law. He recommended using sites such as Flickr which are covered under Creative Commons licences.

Business and IP Centre launches New Business Podcast featuring… me

I have to say I was somewhat nervous about being interviewed for Business Bytes. This our new monthly podcast narrated by business journalist Jamie Oliver, and designed to give inspiration and practical advice with the challenges in setting up and growing your own business.

Actually, I just do the inroduction and the really interesting content comes from designer Sebastian Conran of Conran & Partners, business expert Jane Khedair from Business Plan Services, and Dee Wright  founder of The Hair Force.

Each month, Jamie will be interviewing entrepreneurs, business experts and some of the Library’s success stories, who are just at the start of their entrepreneurial journeys. But we have hit he ground running with a mention on the Telegraph newspaper website.

Episode one: From idea to business
19 October 09
In our first pilot episode, Jamie introduces himself and the Business & IP Centre, and interviews a range of experts and entrepreneurs about the importance of ideas, how to take them to the next stage, and why you should protect them.

• Neil Infield, Business & IP Centre Manager
• Designer Sebastian Conran, Conran & Partners
• Business expert Jane Khedair, Business Plan Services
• Dee Wright, founder of The Hair Force

Business & IP Centre goes ‘On the Buses’

Although this has to be one of the most culturally embarassing references I have used in this blog, I couldn’t resist – now that we are advertising on London buses (see my YouTube link below if you are in need of a cringefest).

This is part of our promotional activities around Global Entrepreneurship Week, for which we have lots of exciting events, including In conversation with Lord Sugar (the event is now sold out, but you can watch online at www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk).

We have had great success in the past with our posters in and around a selection of London Underground stations, so we are both excited and nervous about our experiment with London buses.

Please let me know if you happen to spot one around town.

.

.

Our new business information wiki – Business Essentials on the Web

As part of our continuing experimination with all things Web 2.0 (Social Media) we have created a wiki for essential business information. Still currently in beta, this wiki is a designed to allow any of my British Library business information colleagues to add useful links.

 

But more revolutionary (for the British Library) is that we are also opening up the wiki to anyone who has useful information to add. In particular our partners, who have expertise in a wide range of business support activities.

 

The wiki will be of help to people who are not able to come and visit our St Pancras building, and who find that Google does not provide all the answers.

 

Obviously we ony want useful content on the wiki, and will be taking any spam off straight away, much like you see on Wikipedia. Our wiki guidelines explain in more detail.

 

Please join our little community and add your comments and submit links of your own.

http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com

 

The current hot topics are, Business planning, Grants and finance, Industry specific, Intellectual property, Marketing and PR.

If you have any ideas or comments on the wiki, you can email bipc@bl.uk

Free vs Fee – the Future of News – SLA Europe meeting 3 November

Another successful SLA Europe event this evening, this time at the swanky venue of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, five minutes away from Blackfriars station.

The hot topic was Free vs Fee – the Future of News. And stemmed from the fact that most newspapers have offered their content via the Internet for free with the expectation that display advertising would create enough revenue to cover the cost of creating and distributing their content. However, with the continuing decline in physical newspaper sales and the softening of the display advertising market, news organisations are exploring new ways to charge for their digital content.

On the panel were Jeremy  Lawson  VP Sales, EMEA, Dow Jones & Company, Andrew Hughes – Commercial Director for the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D. – CEO of Acquire Media and Laurence Kaye – Principal at Laurence Kay Solicitors. The panel was excellently moderated by Donald Roll – Managing Director, Europe for Alacra.

Here are my notes from the evening:

Don Roll introduced the evening by talking about the steep decline in newspaper circulation, the recent arrival of the first free quality newspaper in the form of the London Evening Standard, and how the NLA wants to ensure newspaper publishers receive payment for web content.

Andrew Hughes – NLA initiatives

NLA are moving towards creating a set of licences for commercial use of newspaper websites.

UK newspapers spend £1b a year in creating this content, which is quite different from paper published information. For example 31% of newspaper websites has never appeared in print.

The plan is that for those who charge for access to newspaper content will be charged by the NLA, who will also charge end user clients for access to content.

Existing licences will be extended and new ones created where necessary

e-Clips Web – Working to improve access to content by using newspaper CMS systems.

Laurence Kay – The legal view – 10 key points

1. Professional journalism, ‘trusted content’ and UGC (user generated content)

2. Change takes time! Business models and culture takes time to change.

3. Global Media / local copyright?

4. If content is going to be free, why does copyright matter? Provides the framework for access and usage rights.

5. B2B versus consumer copyrights

6. ‘Effects-based’ approach to copyright. Helps to work out how to apply rules to the real world. Look at the commercial impact of activities.

7. ‘Legal’ versus ‘Illegal’ content. When to take action or technical measures over infringements.

8. Who are the ‘intermediaries’ in the value chain? E.g. Where does Google fit in? Searched for or ‘scraped’ conent?

9. ‘Fair Use’. Big variations across Europe. United States has a broad definition. If the use is commercial is that no longer fair use?

10. We are still lacking 21^st century infrastructure to cope with licensing and payments for use.

Laurence C. Rafsky – What do we mean by free?

Once freedom has been tasted there is no going back.

Value chain –

1. professionally produced but given away selectively – e.g. advertiser supported
2. Non-professional content
3. Gifted professional content. E.g. Stephen King novel
4. Free to some but not others
5. Content that should not be free.

Two enemy camps

1. Information wants to be free – the hippies
2. Corporate suits who want to charge for everything

The solution will need to be  a compromise.

A question for the NLA to consider:

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without payment to content owners?

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without permission from the content owners as we understand it?

The crux of the debate is between these two viewpoints.

Can we separate business use from personal use? Google don’t distinguish between the two.

Jeremy  Lawson – Supporting publishers and their right to monetise their content.

Questions from the audience:

Did the newspaper industry start digging its own grave by giving away content?

New York Times started with some free and mainly fee access. They ended it because when compared pay per click ads versus pay for access would give ten times the revenue. But as ad revenues fall they may go back to first model.

Should be driven by economics.

Do you think news aggregators are a serious threat to publishers?

Links are fine, but extracts complicate the issue as readers may not link through to content. But as web content grows and newspaper content becomes a smaller fraction, increasing hits to newspaper sites lose their economic value to the publishers.

85% of newspaper traffic comes via Google. So should Google pay the majority share?

Is the Kindle from Amazon a potential future model for subscription access to newspaper content?

Disagreement – ability to break news up into selected streams for readers counts against Kindle model.

When will paper newspapers die?

Laurence C. Rafsky predicted that by 2030 newspapers would cease to exist in paper form as a  mainstream product.

He compares their future to candles today – they will become a decorative only production.

As he pointed out, if you had a choice, why would you use paper for something that only has a value for a few hours, and then you need to scan it to create a digital version which can be archived.

B2B vs B2C

Issues about consumers within a business environment – now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get individuals in a corporate environment to accept paying for information.

The event was kindly sponsored by Dow Jones.

What is a CRM, and when are they best used by small business? Lucidica workshop Tuesday 3 November

This morning I managed to find the time to attend a workshop by one of our partners. Lucidica are a relatively new partner for the Business & IP Centre and currently provide six workshops related to IT and business.

This particular half day workshop on what is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and when are they best used by small business, was presented by immensely knowledgeable founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Thomas Jeffs.

He got straight down to business by explaining that a successful CRM implementation requires both staff discipline and management buy-in. With out both of these you will be wasting both your time and and your money.

Here are my notes from the morning:

What can a CRM system do?

1. Contact Management

• the most basic function of a CRM
• who they are
• what they are doing
• central point for all staff

Shared office address book – suppliers – customers – for many business this is just a piece of paper stuck onto a computer terminal

if people don’t use it and keep it up to date it become worthless

2.  Sales Force Automation – now the most popular aspect of CRM – making sure you make the best use of your sales force

• What to do and when, with regards to sales and follow ups
• Helps make sure you chase opportunities when you need to
• Allows you to forecast your predicted sales and leads – only tends to work on larger scale of operation
• Allows you to see how your sales agents are doing
• Essentially automating your sales force and sales force reporting
• Benefits not so clear to staff due to reluctance to fill in details of customer interactions

3.  Marketing Campaign Management – linked to previous activity

• How much did £100 in marketing spend raise in sales?
• How many leads did a marketing campaign generate?
• How many internal resources were required as a result of a marketing campaign? E.g. Did it attract the wrong kind of customer who were ‘high maintenance’?

4. Customer Service Management – support tickets – complaints – consistency across the Business & IP Centre

• A centralised place for tracking – breaks dependency on one member of staff
• Can provide automated responses to issues. E.g. generated ticket number and expected response from the company
• Can monitor and escalate issues if still outstanding
• Result in – consistency  and efficiency of service
• Benefits clearly visible to staff and customers

It is important to establish which of the above are the most relevant to your business, as this will have an impact the the most suitable package for you.

How do CRM systems help your business?

1. How do they do it? – Automation

Health warning

-       Automation to internal users is good

• Creation of follow-up tasks/ reminders
• Workflow tools
• Creation of templates, timelines and standards

-       Automation to external users is mixed

• Acknowledgement of complaints/issues/feedback work well
• Automated quarterly sales email – don’t work so well – de-personalises the business.

2. How do they do it? – Tracking / Recording

-       Change of address for existing clients

-       Client moves to a new company

-       Recording emails and phone contacts with sales leads

-       Recording information that client is under contract with competitor for next three months

-       Has your entire team access to this information

3. How do they do it? – Reporting

-       Reporting is the purpose for a CRM for management

-       Some things a CRM can tell you:

• Predicted sales for next three months
• Which clients haven’t been in contact for a while
• Which sales agents are getting the most leads
• Which sales agents are making the most sales
• Which contracts are up for renewal
• What total sales have you achieved from each marketing campaign
• Which clients have service level issues
• Which people work for which clients

Thomas reviewed several case studies based on real experiences at Lucidica.

Which CRM is right for you?

1. Which CRM? – Questions to ask

1. What is the function of the CRM?
2. What will it need to integrate with?
3. Who will need to use it, and from where?
4. What is the potential benefit for my business in £’s?

2. Which CRM? – Quick and dirty recommendations

-       Excel – 1st choice for people thinking about what they need to track

-       SharePoint – 1st choice for precision applications and power users

-       Sage ACT! – 1st choice for integrating into Outloook and Sage, below 10 users, primary use for contact management and sales force automation

-       SugarCRM – 1st choice for Linux users

-       SalesForce.com – 1st choice for users with little infrastructure and who rely on internet traffic for business

-       Goldmine – 1st choice for businesses with over 10 users but can’t afford Microsoft CRM

-       Microsoft CRM – 1st choice for businesses with high volume of sales and contracts

Summary

-       Make sure your CRM does not have superfluous functions

-       Make sure it can scale both up and down

-       Make sure you can get your data out of the system

-       start small and evaluate after six months

Lucidica Technology Seminars

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

- how to improve your website so search engines, like Google, lists or ranks it better/higher.

Email Marketing

- how to use professional looking emails, in bulk, to market effectively, and/or keep your clients informed (e.g. newsletters).

Technology “Must-Have’s” For Small Businesses

- from the best computers and laptops, virus-protection and back-up software we know of; to “what is a server and when does my business need one” and many free software and technology tips to reduce technology risk and increase value in your business.

An Intranet and more with Microsoft Sharepoint

- touted as a big thing in the 1990s, Intranets are finally adding value to business – especially small business now they are affordable with products like Microsoft Sharepoint. In this seminar we explain what an Intranet is, how you can use Sharepoint and how to get this powerful solution from Microsoft for FREE. We’ll talk and show you how you can use Sharepoint for your own CRM, wiki, time sheeting forms and reporting, expense summary forms, other procedures and forms with built-in workflow and much, much more.

What is a CRM, when are they best used by small business and which one to select

- Client Relationship Management (CRM) software can bolster your relationship with existing clients as well as help you work on your prospective client contacts better and more frequently with ease. We’ll outline what a CRM, how it should be used for small business and profile the top 4 or 5 CRMs affordable to small business.

Designing, developing and maintaining an effective website

- every small business should have a website. Here we dispel many myths about designing, developing and maintaining a website – it’s really not that hard! For most websites we design and build for our clients we recommend they buy some great Adobe software which allows them to maintain their website like they edit Word documents. We provide plenty of advice and tips on what is a good design, and what your developers should be including in the code when they build it.