Shhh - It's Chatham House Rules

Well, the most interesting occurrence since my last post I can't really talk about! I attended the West Midlands Economic Forum where one of the Conservative MPs who had been responsible for the LEP proposal as a member of "Localis" - the think tank on localism - gave a very interesting talk. One of the attendees, vice chair of our local RDA, being scrapped under the LEP proposal, had some views on this.

And that's about as much as I can say.

Despite the flux in funding, and the uncertainty over the future of support of any kind, whether central or local, business goes on; even new businesses. One of the areas I'm currently involved in is finding "trailblazer" applications. An inventor has a technology. He knows the lucrative market, but there are regulatory or technical hurdles acting as a barrier to entry. He knows the cost, but doesn't have the money. What he needs is a "trailblazer" application; not as lucrative as his target, but with much lower entry costs, and it will mean his company is revenue generating (as opposed to pre-revenue) in a much shorter timescale, and he will have case studies showing that the technology works in real world situations. All of which means that his company is now a much more attractive proposition to potential investors, and at a much greater valuation. These trailblazer applications may not be obvious to someone who has a particular longer term goal in mind, and it's an area where a view from outside can be enormously useful, and can lead to some very fruitful collaborations.