Postcards from the Edge : Cross Border

European startups in Futures mag

claireoh — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:29:00 GMT

Good article about French and Finnish startups in the latest edition of Futures magazine and some of the latest start-ups featured on Startupzone from Europe. The Irish invaded Silicon Valley last week too, as part of our work with Enterprise Ireland - read more here.

This week sees the much-anticipated Le Web in Paris. More from there later.

PM Visits

claireoh — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:45:00 GMT

Ah........I was wondering why there were so many people with little blue and yellow lapel pins milling around the entrance of the BA lounge at Seattle airport last Friday. Some of them had those earpieces you see in the movies - I'm guessing bodyguards. It transpires that the PM of Finland was in town.

The same week Gordon Brown was in China accompanied by Richard Branson and CBI boss Richard Lambert among others. I hear Peter Jones went along but can't find any evidence of this on his website. Though it does make for interesting reading.

Also on the UK trade mission to China was Ian Robertson from NCGE who signed an agreement with a Chinese educational institution. NCGE and Kaufmann are heavily involved in Global Enterprise Week (launched in London before Christmas) and the Chinese are planning on taking part.

Good news that the Chinese sovereign fund is heading to London but not sure what percentage of this will make it into the venture market and with UK start-ups (rather than buyouts). Microsoft's presence in China is on the increase having ramped up investment in 2002. Then BillG visited last July.

Intel Capital are already investing there as you'd expect. This is an interesting site about venture funds in China. And good blog from Richard Spencer in Bejing.

Gordon Brown then went on to India where the emphasis was on providing assistance for the rural poor and technology plays a role in this. A contrast to his first visit to India this time last year as Chancellor, with Karan Billamoria (Cobra Beer) who had just published his book.

Interesting commentary from Peter Foster before he left Delhi for NZ a few months ago. One bullish bunch is TiE - now the largest entrepreneur organisation worldwide apparently.

Anyway I'm off to watch Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott on the This Week couch.

Diane has just said "It's the age of the blog" as Andrew Neil serialises what he calls "a tough week for Gordon" but I was pleased to see the markets recover somewhat today...feeling relatively upbeat until Gerry Robinson came on and talked about an impending global recession........time for bed I think....

Emerging Markets and UK Trade

claireoh — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Greetings from a grey (but great) Palo Alto. Having been awake since 3:30am, with CNN on in the background (those Viagra jingles can be very distracting) and my cup of Zen tea in hand (how apt), I thought I'd share my findings from the excellent briefing by UK Trade & Investment on Emerging Markets in London on Wednesday. Sir Digby headlined the session, delivering the first such speech after six months in the role of Trade Minister to a select gathering of City folks and international businesspeople.

Of course this meeting gave a UK perspective but also a very compelling update of how we are all faring on the world stage. Lord Jones started by reminding us that "Governments don't create wealth - you do" and said he thought he was being successful as a change agent at UKTI though he was finding that change wasn't "everybody's cup of tea". He inherited a "great group going the right direction" but there was so much more to do and complacency wasn't an option 18 months into the five-year strategy. He travels more than I do: In six months he's done six long haul, six short haul to Europe and six visits to regional development agencies. He joked that his wife Pat thought he had left her - he just hadn't told her yet.

In the last fiscal, UKTI spent £280m of taxpayers money. £65m went to four key trade services generating £1.13bn for the economy. Financial Services and Professional Services remain the strongest performing sectors while Creative Industries is showing signs of being a player in the near future: UK has 1% of the world population engaged in this sector but generated 16% of related worldwide GDP. UKTI recently published the ICT strategy and it does make for good bedtime reading if you're contemplating an export strategy.

Of the so-called BRIC countries, it goes without saying that India and China attracted a lot of attention at Wednesday's session. The UK India Business Council set up by Lord Karan Billamoria (founder of Cobra Beer) is seen by Dibgy as a "great engine for real wealth creation; they only got £1m from UKTI after they got it off the ground". (Along with TiE, Microsoft is working with UKIBC to build more business bridges between Indian entrepreneurs and the UK investor community for instance). Digby met with the head of Tata (who bought Corus) on his recent visit who mentioned they would have to re-purpose c400 jobs at the north Wales facility to India over the next four years - but they would retain the UK workforce so there is no impact on the local or national economy. This re-emphasises he said why "Britain has nothing to fear from Globalisation - if we do two things: (1) Skill our People and (2) Continue to invest in markets around the world".

Jim O'Neill, Head of Global Economic Research at Goldman Sachs, and disappointingly a Man Utd fan, coined the term BRIC and believes "they should not be regarded as emerging or developing any longer" saying that if it weren't for these countries the world economy would be in a lot more trouble after the US downturn. The G7 really is out of date and is becoming "almost an embarrassment". Having said that the US still accounts for 30% of world GDP and the BRIC nearly 14% but the G7 share declined to around 55%. China's share grew to make it bigger than the UK and Jim thinks it will soon be #3 overtaking Germany (behind US at #1 and Japan at #2). Domestic demand in China was greater than that off all the Eurozone countries put together. What's most interesting in Jim's presentation is the view now versus the [possible] view in 2050:

% WW GDP 2006	% WW GDP 2050
US	China
Japan	US
Germany	India
China	Brazil
UK	Russia
France	Japan
Italy	UK
Canada	Germany
Brazil	France
Russia	Canada
India	Italy

Andrew Cahn, Chief Executive of UKTI said they have 17 priority markets and in each of these business councils play a vital role "creating business where UKTI can then add resource and animate the opportunity". He mentioned they Govt had been conducting a study to see how the [decentralised] model of regional development can drive export strategies for local business and inward investment to that region. "There are two options: better co-ordination or a single entity". Speaking of "converting innovation into jobs and profit", he said there are 60 large-scale projects underway linking R&D to international trade through academic partnerships.

A lot has happened in the last fifty years - in the 1950's Asia accounted for 18% of world GDP. Today it is 30%. The UK is now the largest investor in China and in the past few years 69 Indian and 52 Chinese companies invested in the UK.

So outside of BRIC and the G7 which other markets are going to feature in the next fifty? Jim O'Neill (calling them the N-11 or 'next eleven' with large populations) highlighted some interesting candidates: "Look out for Bangladesh and Vietnam (7.6% GDP growth) - particularly for low-cost production; Mexico probably has as big a potential as Russia; Nigeria is seeing 5.6% GDP growth and if it fulfilled its potential it could be just outside the Top 10 (above); if the leadership changes mindset in Iran it could become a player; Egypt is growing 4.2% and Korea has such a high GES (Growth Environment Score) it shouldn't feature on the 'emerging' list anymore". Others in the N-11 were Pakistan, Turkey, Philippines and Indonesia.

The 4 growth levers that helped form this picture are:

1. Openness

2. Education

3. Stable macro-economic policies

4. Strong and stable - but not necessarily democratic - political system

Digby touched on the fine line between politics and business in his speech, talking about the delicate area of defence equipment - what he called the "jewel in the crown" and he plans on spending time in the Middle East to help create the right environment for this trade (led by the UKTI Defence and Security Group). When he fielded objections recently during the visit of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia he replied "They will buy the defence equipment anyway - if not from us from someone else (like the French) so we may as well do it and have some influence and become a leading example, a force for good". I like this sentiment. Better to be at the table and enlighten folks than not.

In his summation, Andrew Cahn rather profoundly said "trade produces peace through interdependence". Jim mentioned the "politicially awful but commercially great" situation in Russia and said in emerging markets we have "nothing to fear and everything to gain" from getting involved.

Armadillo hits BA lounges worldwide

claireoh — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:44:00 GMT

Time to move on and take on the world... Here's what I'll be up to in the coming year:

As of 1^st December I will be part of Microsoft Corporation’s DPE group (and hence departing Microsoft UK Partner Group) focussing on Emerging Business and building our Local Software Economy initiative.

With the EB team, based in Silicon Valley, we'll continue to identify high-growth start-ups, work with the entrepreneur community and manage investor relations across the EU. It is a great opportunity to support emerging companies particularly with a cross-border strategy.

I will continue to be involved with Voices for Innovation and I'd encourage you all to sign up and get involved in helping me influence EU policy!!!!

Local Software Economy (LSE) is something very close to my heart as many of you know. LSE focuses on Microsoft taking a leadership role in the growth of local software economies. For me this is about investing in great partnerships across academia, public sector, working with government bodies and enterprise agencies, software associations and those interested in creating an environment where enterprise and innovation flourish. Microsoft has a great opportunity to grow the overall contribution to the economy, particularly in Emerging Markets.

My work will take me to China, India, SE Asia, Russia, Middle East and Africa. In fact there aren’t many BA lounges I won’t be visiting!!

Congrats to Paul Smith and team

claireoh — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:15:00 GMT

Harvey Nash software division's route to world domination gets a boost this week with their news of the acquisition of Silk Road in Vietnam. Paul's write up of the recent trip to Hanoi is also worth a read. At least Paul has figured out how to upload pics on to his blog...

Congrats to Xero team

claireoh — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:33:00 GMT

Bit of a milestone for my mate Mr Drury and his team of star players in Wellington, NZ, last week. Listing on the stock exchange is Xero's first step towards world domination me thinks.

Warm fuzzy feeling seeing this. They are a great bunch, it's a killer Web 2.0 app, and I can't wait to help them take on the UK SMB market later this year. Bring it on. I was lucky enough to spend a few days out there and see it in the flesh. Dodgy photo though :-)

Greetings from Danang

claireoh — Mon, 28 May 2007 18:11:00 GMT

Hello from the coast of central Vietnam - what a fab place! Being a bit of a beach bum, this means I am in heaven. I've spent my bank holiday weekend lying on the sunbed, swimming in the South China Sea, and eating the most incredible (healthy) Asian cuisine. OK enough, enough..... I hear it's raining at home. (It rained here too last night but that meant today was an even-more-pleasant-less-humid 34 degrees :-0)...

Due to enforced vacation relaxation, I am incapable of original thought (and typing) so here are some wise words passed on by the lovely JohnC today:

“Networks rock, especially electronic ones. In the history of the world there has been nothing like them - telegraph, telephone, cellular mobile, broadcast radio, cable television, internet - to democratise the global, political economy, to bring us prosperity and freedom. Astonishing as they are, electronic networks can't hold a synaptic spark to the human brain." - Robert M. Metcalfe. The Founder of Ethernet

“Marketer Alert. Historically you filled your funnel with attention, and you slowly turned that funnel into cash - the bad news is your funnel is broken. You are not in charge anymore." - Seth Godin

“You want to be living in a space of good solutions, so when the problem changes, you're still there.” - Bruce Sawhill. Day Jet

“The Internet is not a wonderful new world. The internet just is a natural extension of the free market.” - P.J. O'Rourke

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” - Herbert Simon

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” - Linus Pauling. Chemist

“People get very creative if you include them." - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor, California

“In 1776 Adam Smith, the founder of free market economics said - There are three factors that constitute the free market, pursuit of self-interest, division of labour and freedom of trade. There you have the internet without so much of a mouse click.” - P.J. O'Rourke.

“The single most important thing a company needs to show in a crisis is that it cares.” - Bruce Blythe, CEO, Crisis Management International

“The smartest marketers aim to inspire, not control.” - Seth Godin

“The network effect is expanding the collective intelligence of the human race. We can hope that on the whole we humans are getting smarter by the square of some very large numbers. It’s enough to make one optimistic.” - Robert M. Metcalfe, The Founder of Ethernet

“Great companies don't push, they lead.” - Seth Godin

Sign up for the Trade Mission to SE Asia

claireoh — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:55:00 GMT

Helping ISV’s access Microsoft Skills Overseas

Following on from successful events in October and January to highlight the opportunity around off-shore development to SE Asia, UK Trade & Investment (DTI) in association with Microsoft are taking a trade delegation of UK companies to Vietnam and the Philippines at the end of May.

What’s the opportunity?

There are still places remaining for ISV’s and Enterprises on this trip. In Hanoi, you will have the chance to meet with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and senior ministers from the Govt. The itinerary in Manila also includes a reception at the British Embassy with President Arroyo. There will be significant press engagement associated with this mission.

You can do both or either of the country visits: w/c 21^st May in Hanoi and/or w/c 28^th May in Manila.

Why should I attend?

Are you:

· Finding it difficult to get dev resource in the UK?

· Thinking about outsourcing to India or elsewhere?

· Considering migration off other platform to .NET or SQL but can’t find the time to do it?

Then this is an opportunity not to be missed.

What about travel costs?

UKTI will subsidise this trip (100%) for some companies as spokespeople and the Regional Development Agencies will provide grants to the remaining delegates. Our partners and Microsoft in the region will be providing substantial support on the ground so your costs are minimised.

I’m interested. How do I sign up?

For a detailed itinerary and an application form please contact Donna Chubb asap.

Going global from NZ

claireoh — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:25:00 GMT

Good to see my mate Rod in the news recently talking about his latest venture: Xero is a SaaS accounting solution for SME's. Read more about their raison d'etre. So why SaaS? Craig in their Development team thinks it's the only way to go.

Rod was also honoured by Microsoft once again this year as an MVP and his latest blogpost features a nice pic of SteveB in NZ! I've v excited at the prospect of meeting SteveB in Hanoi in May when we take a UK ISV delegation over to SE Asia to create cross-border partnerships in the region.

China's lack of talent

claireoh — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:16:00 GMT

A recent McKinsey report highlights some of the challenges faced in China around the quality of their graduates, pointing out that their dominance around manufacturing and IT oustourcing won't necessarily mean leadership in the service industries. Poor english language skills are thought to be a factor.

Microsoft has formed partnerships with four universities in China to establish software labs where students learn practical software development skills.

The chinese government is encouraging foreign firms locating in China to invest more in training and developing the talent they need, while the government concentrates on reforming the country's educational system. They need to improve the quality of their graduates, ensuring they have the necessary skills for services occupations, if they are to avoid a labour shortage in the future.

Meanwhile, Chris Boorman speaking at a recent conference in Bejing, also talks about language - this time, the need for foreign firms to adapt to local cultures if they are to make the most of the Olympics there next year.

Globalisation & Immigration

claireoh — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:29:00 GMT

George Magnus (senior economic advisor at UBS) writes in this month’s BA Business Life about skilled migrants – how the people arriving in the UK these days are often not escaping poor countries – but rather are “simply choosing to work in countries other than those of their birth”.

I am a case in point. I left Ireland and a good job with IBM in Dublin to come to the UK ten years ago. How time flies. I was actually aiming for South Africa and ended up in Milton Keynes. But that’s another story. A decade later, I’m still here (not in MK though – Henley is much nicer) and, I’d like to think, have contributed quite a bit to the UK Exchequer in that time. I appear to have missed out on the Celtic Tiger – much to my mother’s dismay. That's the ecomomic boom - not the Michael Flatley show. I am quite glad to say I missed that one.

I’m not the only one that is attracted to the bright lights of the UK: my brother texted to say he was sitting next to Damien Duff on the plane last night. See? We have our part to play. Even if it is for Chelsea. They paid £17m for him so he must count as 'skilled'.

George Magnus continues: the UN reckons “of the world’s 200 million migrants in 2005, roughly one third moved from one developing country to another. Moreover, almost half of those migrants aged 25 and over coming into OECD countries in the last 15 years, were highly skilled. In the UK, it is highly probable that immigration is largely responsible for raising the country’s potential growth rate from about 2.7 per cent to about 3 per cent”.

Intrigued, I did a a bit of digging and found a fascinating site with a section on the Highly Skilled Migrant Program. I particularly like the area where you can read about Commons debates and uncovered an enlightening exchange between MP's about Women, Justice and Gender Equality from International Women's Day on the 8th March. Good to know while I was having breakfast, lunch and dinner that day in the company of some fine women and celebrating success, our elected representatives were busy grappling with the more serious issues. We've come a long way but we've got so much more to do. And as a 'skilled' migrant I'm more than happy to contribute to the debate and perhaps even change the world.

Vietnam and the Philippines

claireoh — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:29:00 GMT

The extract below is from Ralph Schonenbach's speech at eServices in Manila. The Philippines and Vietnam has started to appear on the agenda more and more and we're pleased to see support coming from UK Trade & Industry to help Microsoft facilitate cross-border partnerships in this region. We're organising a delegation of UK companies to the two countries in May with their sponsorship.

Wondering what Harvey Nash are doing in Vietnam? Paul Smith's journal is a great way to find out more. The recent eServices conference was a great success - you can download presentations here.

Trestle Foundation and Group CEO honoured again

claireoh — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:50:00 GMT

Schonenbach Receives Government Award During the eServices Philippines: 7th Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition

EDSA Shangri-la Manila Hotel, Manila, Philippines – 15 February 2007

Trestle Group CEO and Trestle Group Foundation Board Member Ralph Schonenbach today delivered a non-traditional presentation titled “Survival of the Focused – A Collage of Perspectives” at the eServices Philippines: 7th Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition.

At the outset, Mr. Schonenbach joked, “As I begin, many people in the audience will probably ask themselves – what does this speech have to do with global sourcing?” Continuing the innovative presentation, Schonenbach merged four specific topics – entrepreneurship, shifting economies, environment and women – into a single theme and highlighted the following conclusions:

• “The next significant entrepreneurs – the next Bill Gates’ – will not come from the United States; they will come from here, from people like you. You will build the next billion dollar businesses - the billion dollar businesses that will shift economies.”

• “As governments recognize that global sourcing can provide significant new opportunities for their people, new infrastructure is being created, beautiful buildings built, highways constructed and telecommunications systems developed. But, through this build in infrastructure, we are also negatively impacting our environment.”

• “We need the entrepreneurs in this room to help find a solution for our environment. When I consider global sourcing today, I think, how can we use the collective intelligence of the world’s population to save our home for our children? And when I say collective, I mean collective and not 50% collective. In many societies, we are failing to engage the full promise and potential of women.”

• “Countries who do not engage both men and women will fail to realize their full potential. The sourcing of talent cannot be gender-based.”

Offshoring is about Tapping Global Talent

claireoh — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:50:58 GMT

Thanks to Nicola (our resident ebullient South African and newsletter editor) for highlighting this article where I also found a piece called called Outsourcing's own Long Tail. It is about "selling more of less" of course...but how does this phenomenon impact outsourcing?

Globalisation means services can be delivered from and to anywhere and historically people would flock to the low-cost high-skills centres like India - or increasingly places like China, Philippines or Ukraine. I even had contact from someone with a centre in Sri Lanka recently.

The study quoted in the first article found that "small entrepreneurial companies are more likely to initiate offshoring of high-value functions than large corporations. Forty-eight percent of the companies with fewer than 500 employees reported that their first offshoring initiative involved product development, innovation or engineering as compared to 16% in the case of large companies".

Open Borders

claireoh — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 13:15:42 GMT

Outsourcing in general is an emotive subject - we're used to seeing newspaper headlines with the words "redundancies....call centre......Bangalore" and widespread perception is that offshore software development is bad for UK plc.

However, it seems it may be inevitable and a phenomenon that is here to stay. Companies can either embrace globalization or fail to compete. Last year, Microsoft collaborated with the British Computer Society and Lancaster University to produce a report on Developing the Future which addressed this as an issue. You can download our response to DtF here.

Our new Chief Business & Marketing Officer in the UK, Matthew Bishop, delivered a great keynote at our recent Offshoring event at St Martin's Lane hotel (nice venue btw). Read more about Matt's comments.

There are significant advantanges to be had for firms going down this route - interestingly "access to skilled labour" comes top of most lists of reasons companies do this; closely followed by "cost savings" as one might expect. Trestle Group have some useful research and the BCS has since published more guidance on the subject. CIO have good commentary.

Unishores, acting as one of our advisors for this initiative, provide assistance to companies looking to offshore.Their MD, Sanj Prabhakar, is a member of the NOA and the standards body ComQual.

Sanj writes about our experiences in October 2006 where we brought together people from India, Vietnam and the Philippines to meet with UK companies interested in exploring cross-border partnerships. QuickStart Global were one of the partners presenting at that event.

Much of the work we are doing is in partnership with Microsoft Philippines' developer partners and Harvey Nash - probably better known to most of us as one of the world's largest recruitment companies. Their software development centre in Vietnam has proved very popular with a good proportion of our UK ISV community. Read their Three Top Tips on the process here.