David Gill’s working trip and
his previous experiences.

My name is David Gill. I am CEO of St John’s
Innovation Centre in Cambridge. The Centre
started in 1987 to house and advise highpotential, innovative new firms, and we’ve
stayed true to that mission ever since. Most
of the companies we work with are going
through the first stage of scaling up – finding
new customers, raising equity, recruiting
key employees- and though there is no rule
that companies in the Centre must have a
connection with the University of Cambridge,
many founders are graduates of the University.
Before running St John’s, I worked in venture
capital and ran the national Innovation &
Technology team for HSBC in the UK. I also serve
as a non-executive director of a venture firm, a
responsible finance provider for SMEs, an equity
crowdfunding platform and the European
Business and Innovation Network (EBN).

The main goals and objectives for 2021 and beyond.
The past year has been disrupted by the pandemic everywhere. Despite the
challenges, including restrictions on being able to work onsite in St John’s
Innovation Centre, our goals have remained constant: to continue to provide
a home and community (virtual if necessary) for fast-growth, innovative firms,
to advise them on raising investment and building their business, and prepare
for when a relatively normal form of working can return.
The challenges facing the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in
developed and developing countries?
Challenges to innovation often stem from entrepreneurs not understanding the
need to solve a major, real-world problem in such a way that people will pay for
what is being supplied. Novelty or invention on its own is not enough, and the old
saying that you must build something people need (or at least want) remains true.
The real heavy lifting is taking an idea and making it practical, scalable, robust
and efficient – not coming up with the idea in the first place. I am concerned
that in many markets, fashionable memes about ephemeral consumer products
or building ‘unicorns’ undermine the hard work and realism needed to build a
sustainable business.
On the other hand, one risk that developing countries in particular may run
is a lack of innovative or ‘venturesome’ consumers (retail or corporate): until
innovation is treated as a commercial norm, it can be hard even for the most
helpful new products or services to be widely accepted.
work and realism needed to build a sustainable
business.
On the other hand, one risk that developing
countries in particular may run is a lack of
innovative or ‘venturesome’ consumers (retail
or corporate): until innovation is treated as a
commercial norm, it can be hard even for the
most helpful new products or services to be
widely accepted.
Some of the opportunities facing the innovation
and entrepreneurship ecosystem in developed
and developing countries.
Opportunities often emerge from adversity, of
which the Covid pandemic has been an extreme
example. To take an obvious case, people around
the world have learned to adapt to remote
working practices, remote schooling and even
social activities or personal training. Before the
pandemic, few employers or workers would
have attempted what has been achieved in
recent months, and I fully expect hybrid working
practices to continue, making ‘cross-border’
companies a reality even for relatively small firms.

Furthermore, the extraordinary pace at which new vaccines have
been developed has made clear to governments and the private
sector alike that the real question to ask when faced with major
challenges is ‘why not go flat out for a solution’ rather than dream
up objections based on inertia. Just imagine how powerful this
approach can be in solving the climate emergency – something
that previously might have been seen as just too difficult.
And one advantage that developing countries have is that real
problems – from access to healthcare to mobile banking to
delivery of education remotely – are so much closer to home
than in developed countries.
Solving major social challenges is both urgent and important
for developing countries, whereas start-ups in the developed
world might more naturally default to ‘safer’ but less compelling
consumer issues such as yet another photo-sharing app.
The best innovation strategy implemented to leverage the
ranking of the countries.
To succeed in raising social and commercial impact through
national innovation strategies, countries need to recognize
that each case is unique: you must start with a well-informed
understanding of what your current strengths and weaknesses
are, recognizing that transformation takes years, sometimes
decades. Of course, you can begin by seeking out the easier wins,
and using those to build momentum and morale. The worst
thing you can do is look at somewhere successful and try to copy
it: as soon as I hear a policymaker say, ‘XYZ location will be the
next Silicon Valley,’ I know they have lost the battle before they
start. Instead, identify your real capacities and match them to
opportunities that you are uniquely well-placed to meet. Along
the way, you can also fix your weaknesses. Of course, there
is nothing wrong with selective adaptation of key elements
from established clusters (for instance, borrowing the American
government’s Small Business Innovation Research program for
public procurement from new, innovative firms).
But the overall design of what worked in one location will not
transfer elsewhere.
David Gill’s opinion about the roadmap of economic
growth & diversification through Technology, Innovation,
entrepreneurships programs
Innovation needs entrepreneurs, and both are necessary for
society – not just the economy – to develop. I tend to look at
innovation in the broad sense – for instance, it can be a new
technique, such as a hospital queuing system to prioritize the most
demanding cases – rather than just see it as having a practical
application of new technology. That said, countries which seek
to embed technological competence as an enduring advantage
must accept that investment at the ‘blue skies’ level cannot be
neglected in favor of simply focusing on applications that are
close to market. In practice, this is likely to mean considerable
investment in basic science by government via universities and
dedicated institutes. As for entrepreneurship training, public
intervention in many countries has been invaluable in jumpstarting activity. Over time, private initiatives such as accelerators
can take up the heavy lifting.
The future recommendations which support the ecosystem of
technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
The most compelling conceptual framework I have come across
for understanding how to embed innovation over the long term
is by Safi Bahcall, physicist-entrepreneur and former member of
President Obama’s council of science advisers.
In his 2019 book Loonshots, he sets out a comprehensive system
for how companies and countries alike can make practical
innovation a way of life. Put simply, you begin by recognizing
that breakthroughs happen through ‘loonshots’ – ideas that most
people dismiss because they seem crazy or far-fetched (as do the
innovators who propose them). Then, larger teams of people are
needed to translate the breakthroughs into real technologies
for saving lives or lowering energy usage or changing industry
or society in some other transformative way.
Finally, you have to apply the science of ‘phase transition’ to
how teams behave, separating but valuing equally the creative
‘outsiders’ and those running established business lines that
enable you ultimately to scale your breakthroughs once the
bugs are ironed out. Phase transition refers to when a substance
changes state. Think of water becoming ice: a truly entrepreneurial
ecosystem will keep the liquid hovering either side of freezing
point, so that neither water (creatives) nor ice (established
businesses) dominates.
David Grill’s opinion about who we deploy the innovation
mindsets in any organization.
I’d like to apply the Loonshot framework in some detail. In practice,
that means that if you are in charge, you have to implement
systems and processes that reward both your creative ‘artists’
and your dependable ‘soldiers’ equally. Simply having a corporate
culture that is permissive isn’t enough: your rules need to ensure
that everyone has a stake in the success of the organization
as a whole. As the leader, you need to cherish both types of
business, ensure flow between them, and recognize that you
are there to support the whole team: your own favorite projects
or other prejudices need to be to one side. As Bahcall puts, the
Chief Executive Officer is emphatically not the Chief Innovation
Officer – innovation is only one outcome of what you do, as the
leader you must act in a rounded way.