Dynamic boards are now using expertise form generation y to inform their business development. In this TV show Peter Klauber discusses this change.

Modern thinking in dynamic boards

I think Y generation has a lot to answer for. I think it is fantastic. Ideas come from everywhere in an organisation not just the board. I think most switched on companies will enable everyone to add some opinion to the process of business development. We now have very dynamic boards with all ages, looking for expertise to help and there's no fear in using it.

If you want to hear more about dynamic boards, the role of directors and generation Y, keep browsing Inside Finance TV.

Disruptive innovation is well known to have had an huge impact in the music industry. In this TV show Graeme Codrington discusses what happened and how other industries can learn a lesson from it.

Disruptive innovation in music

The best examples of structural change are those industries that we can already see have been impacted by the digital revolution.  Your best examples there come out of the entertainment industries.  So music for example, is an industry that just is in chaos at the moment, I mean they don’t know how to make money anymore, they don’t know where their income streams come from.  They’re the only industry in the world who are currently suing their own clients, you know it’s crazy.  But they really don’t know how to make money at the moment.  And we’re going to see a lot more chaos in the music industry because they’re not innovating, they’re not working out new ways of getting income, they’re not working out new ways of connecting with clients.  And of course because of how they’ve handled themselves over the last decade or so, most of their customers are very comfortable ripping them off and downloading stuff for free and so on.  So it’s a mess.  But it’s easy to look at that industry and of course DVDs and the movies industry are following close behind them and close behind them are the newspapers and the magazines.  And it’s easy to laugh at them, but every other industry has the potential to be digitised in pretty much the same way.  So even the medical profession which you’d think, well, that’s not going to really going to be digitised, it can be done at a digital distance.  The type of advice you get from your general practitioner, you can get via Skype from anyone in a call centre anywhere.  You might not prefer it that way, but it is accessible that way.  And so you think of any industry you like and this digitisation has the potential to disrupt your industry as much as it has disrupted the entertainment industry in the last decade.

Inside finance will continue to follow the impacts of disruptive innovation and the discussions around it. We have more great shows from Graeme Codrington.

Digital technology is growing and growing. In this TV show Nigel Huddleston explains why the future of Google+ is exciting for business and pleasure.

Social digital technology

We’re really excited about Google Plus because as a social platform it’s not a standalone, we’re integrating it with search. But it’s really exciting because we’ve not only got more than 400 million unique users, but they’re using it in a really creative way that maybe they aren’t with other social platforms. The video content capability is great, showing photos of course is really, really important. But what we’re seeing from an advertiser’s angle as well is that they’re able to example, link to their Google Plus page in the advertising. We’re seeing a five to ten percent uplift in click through rates, to the link to the Google Plus page. So that’s really important, we call that social extensions. So there’s a meaningful impact from an advertiser’s side in terms of having that Google Plus social platform.

Keep an eye on Inside Finance if you are interested in social digital technology. There will be more TV shows from knowledgeable business insiders like Nigel Huddleston.

 

In this business growth show Colin Stevens explains how BetterBathrooms responded to customer needs in a way the industry had never done before.

Business growth show: Improving the industry standard

Predominantly the bathroom industry was Monday to Friday 9-5, you know, when everyone was at work, it seems madness looking back. So we included weekend opening hours, Saturday and Sunday, we did that from day one, seven days from when we opened the door. But what we did about three years ago, we changed the operating hours to ten o’clock at night in the week. So that’s sales, over the phone, showrooms, customer service, and again that has grown our sales quite tremendously. But were the first people to do that in the industry. Obviously the National Business Awards recognise that as being quite disruptive in the marketplace and that’s one of the other things. Another thing is transport system. We deliver nationwide so were are dealing with lots of logistics people all over the country, we found that we couldn’t keep full control of that so we’ve actually, in the north-west started our own transport network internally, so we’ve created a load more jobs, got a load of better bathrooms vans on the road. Service has increased dramatically because of it, for instance satisfaction rating went from, on our own transport vehicles, it went from 8.2 out of 1o to 9.9 out of 10 in the north-west. So its amazing when you listen to the customer and you think, actually this makes sense. It ramps your business. If you found this business growth TV show interesting why not watch more shows on Inside Finance?

Progressive technology has allowed people to stay connected wherever they are. Stuff TV's Lucy Hedges discusses the Tablet.

Progressive technology from Apple

Well lets think about 5 or 6 years ago. Smart phones were good but they weren't incredible, which is what you're seeing now. Tablet was almost a foreign term. We had PDAs, we had Netbooks, so miniature laptops, but we didn't necessarily have this rectangle. This little slate that we can fling in our bags its effortless use, its effortless to carry around. That's what we've got now. We've progressed to a level, mainly bolstered by Apple and the iPad. Its completely carved out an entirely new category that's enabling us to get the most out of consumption on the move, be it retail, multimedia, general information or work based stuff. It's allowing us to, with a simple tap and a swipe, have access to online tools, emails and web-browsing. It's great for productivity. There's so much you can do now, and that's partly or mainly down to all of these new gadgets. _______________________________________________________________________________________Progressive technology and digital connectivity have huge implications for business and Inside Finance TV will continue to follow the effects.

Of all the innovative technology mentioned in Robert Scoble's book, it's the sensors that get Bob Barker's attention on today's TV show.

Innovative Technology - Sensors are a "hub of context"

Okay so the Age of Context book that Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal have written. I began to read it and it started going into the five things that were important, that were big data and social and mobile and location and I’m thinking, I’ve heard about that a lot. But then came the sensor fifth thing which really bought the book alive for me, because throughout the whole book he’s talking about the sensors that are, I think you have on average seven sensors in your phone now. So that’s your kind of hub of context because it knows where you are, it knows what day it is, it knows your calendar, there’s all those things. Then he talks about the sensors that Google glass can help you with, then he talks about the sensors that are in the ground, the sensors that are on pills, it just goes on and on and on about all these things that clever companies are doing in the health industry, in the government, in the defence industry, all kinds of industries with all this new technology and it really brings it alive. And of course the great thing about Scoble is he’s been around and interviewed all these companies that are really doing real things now and it’s very inspiring that people from across the world, not just Silicone Valley, but companies in Barcelona and companies in Japan and all over the place, so really, really fascinating book. Inside Finance TV will continue to follow discussions about innovative technology - Look out for more from Bob Barker.

Innovative technology has overcome the limits of our muscles and now it is overcoming the limits of our minds. In this TV show Andrew McAfee graphs the revolutions through human history.

Innovative technology is a "huge deal for humanity"

Well if you take a geek approach to human history you start to graph it, because geeks love numbers, they love quantifying things. So a geeky approach to human history would be one where you start graphing over a time things like how many people there are, total population, or some metric about how advanced our civilisations are. Now it turns out people have come up with those, so you can graph those numbers as well. Those two curves look exactly the same, either the population curve or the social development curve, what’s really weird about them is that they are totally flat throughout almost all of human history and then at one point in time they bend almost 90 degrees and they go from basically horizontal to basically vertical and that point in time was the industrial revolution. So in other words all the other revolutions that we’ve had, revolutions and philosophy in religion and how we approach the world, the opening up of the world via trade, lots of things have happened over the course of history. If you take this kind of geeky approach to graphing the course of humanity you come to the conclusion none of those things have mattered very much and what did matter was overcoming the limitations of our muscles, of muscle power, via the industrial revolution. What we’re doing now with the computer revolution is overcoming the limitations of our individual minds or our brains, to at least the same extent as we overcame the limitations of our muscles with the industrial revolution. So if the simple question is how could this not be a huge, huge deal for humanity. Inside Finance TV has further expert discussion about innovative technology - Look out for more from Andrew McAfee

Business innovation skills can be brought in from outside an organisation. David Moschella discusses changing the structure of a business to incorporate external capabilities:

Business innovation skills are everywhere.

We talk a lot in our work about this shift from an inside out to more of an outside in organisation. And what we mean by that is really quite simple. That traditionally firms were very focused on their own internal resources, internal capabilities and skills and had their own internal value chain of how they did things. But today there’s so much capability outside in the marketplace of cloud services, the knowledge of employees, partners, the emerging ecosystems, that firms need to in many cases look first to the outside world to find resources, capabilities, transient issues, and secondary to their own organisations. And that's that’s a big shift particularly for enterprise IT people who have grown up in a world of internal systems, internal procedures, internal processes and internal controls. This is a very big change from inside out to outside in. But it’s not one or the other. You know, internal processes, internal  systems, internal skills and values are still amazingly important. Apple is a company that does a tremendous amount internally. It has been a tremendous success. But the trend in terms of where innovation is heading, where market developments, and where sort of the competition is really happening is increasingly outside the walls of the firm. So it’s more of a significant adjustment  than a total transformation. Inside Finance will continue to follow ideas about business innovation skills and we will have more videos from David Moschella.

Disruptive innovation puts static businesses at risk. It is important to make changes in the workplace to survive. Dean Van Leeuwen discusses:

Disruptive innovation can be great if businesses adapt.

We’re living in a golden era of change. Amazing technological innovations that are happening at the moment. We actually believe that the period that we are living during is going to have as big an impact as the industrial revolution. And you can look back every sort of 150, 200 years there’s inflection points where everything seems to change. The size of forces just come rushing in and they converge and they change and they transform the world dramatically. And we believe that we’re living during one of those times. I believe that historians will name the period that we are living in at the moment. And like that has important implications for business leaders. Because if that prediction is true, even if it’s just half true, then that means that you can’t go back to your workplaces and take last year’s strategy and add 10%. It means that you can’t go back and just do the same things that you’ve done over and over again just because they’ve worked in… in the past. And the surest way to fail in a world that is changing like this is just to continue doing the same things over and over again. Inside Finance will continue to discuss disruptive innovation in future videos.

Disruptive technologies that can completely change the way an industry works may be developed by another industry all together. Keith Coats Discusses:

Disruptive technologies could originate from any industry

Disruption in business is probably not going to come from within your own industry, and the danger of benchmarking is that we mark ourselves and our progress against those who are running the same race.  So you would have expected Yellow Pages to be at the forefront of search engines – Google didn’t come from Yellow Pages.

There’s a large bank in Africa who rolled out an entire African strategy who, by benchmarking themselves against fellow competitors, that’s all they looked at.  They went into Africa to discover that the biggest competitor to banking came from cell phone technology, or mobile technology, people transacting through their mobile devices, that changes the rules of the game.

So, the principle is this, is if we’re only looking within our industry, at people running in the same race as us, the chances are we’re not going to see the disruption.  And smart organisations today are looking far enough and wide enough outside of their windows to … and asking the right questions to see the disruption that will change the rules of the game.

And our message to big companies who are leaders in their own particular sphere is don’t wait to be disrupted, be the disruption in your own industry, change the rules of the game.  And if you don’t and you become complacent and you focus on business efficiencies, there will come a time when somebody will disrupt your industry and it’s going to come from outside.

We will have more videos about disruptive technologies on Inside Finance, where you can also watch more from Keith Coats.

Business strategy models need to be looked at in a different way. Dean Van Leeuwen has six key questions your business needs to ask:

Business strategy models during turbulent times

I think it’s not about throwing the baby out of the bathwater. There are a number of things that are important that will still work. Most of the things that have worked in the past… Well, there’s two aspects to this. And just because you’ve succeeded in the… in the past doing something in a particular way it doesn’t mean that you’re going to succeed going into the future. I think Peter Drucker said the danger during times of turbulences is not the… the turbulence itself, it’s acting with yesterday’s logic. So I think the surest way to fail in the world that is changing is just to continue doing the same things over and over again because they seem to work in the past. What we need to recognise is that the rules for success are changing. And when the rules of success have changed we need to change as well. So Jack Welch said that if the pace of change outside is faster than the pace of change inside you’re going to become a dinosaur. So what do need to be doing to be successful? And I think there are six or seven things that business leaders really need to be looking at differently. Kind of let’s call them six new competencies for your… your business. Leaders need to be asking questions and analysing storytelling. What’s the story the business is telling? What’s the higher calling? What’s the quest? How do you collaborate? How do you build collaborative communities within your business and… and the communities that are important to you? What does risk and reward mean for your organisation because those are changing dramatically? Innovation, intelligence are… are two important aspects. People, both people inside your business and… and outside your business, especially with shifting and changing generations. So those are… are key things. And how do you build passionate tribes of… of people? And then trust and transparency are… are really important. And I think those kind of six core areas or focus areas that businesses need to be analysing, questioning and understanding the impact for their business and how they can build competitive advantage around that. And once they start getting those six competencies… together, we find that then strategic intuition improves and you can actually start delivering strategy at speed. We will continue to discuss business strategy models on Inside Finance, where you can also hear more from Dean Van Leeuwen

I don’t think it’s way too complex, I think it’s way too fast. You know, I was talking to a senior partner from an accounting firm now long since retired who was reminiscing about how he used to get instructions by letter. And you know, you’d get round to implementing them, whereas of course now it’s, you know, microseconds basically and it’s Twitter and it’s email and it’s everything, so it’s instant. The trouble is that because people can communicate instantly, they expect instant replies. And I think we’re in danger of doing everything too fast and not doing everything sensibly. You know, I think the hardest thing in business now is to find time to think, find time to stand back and give yourself space and not to react immediately, not to follow the crowd, just to stay calm and so, you know, most of what happens can be ignored. And that’s a very courageous thing to do, but I think that’s probably the most sensible thing that most people can do. Most news is noise, ignore it.

Entrepreneurial spirit will be portrayed in various parts of a persons character. In this TV show Julie Meyer discusses persistence.

The intensity of an entrepreneurial spirit

I’m fairly good at picking up on how much steel somebody has in their spine.  So, you can tell and it’s not just the level of intensity or the stare that they give you,  it’s more you can kind of sense in how concerted an effort. People betray their level of persistence in many ways and I don’t know how, it’s almost like a neural network after you’ve done it for so long.  But you can kind of sense whether somebody’s going to pull through, for example, with Alastair Lukies of Monitise there’s just something that I felt about him that he was extraordinary and exceptional. And, you know, when he got his first client he secured the first client and he sent me a text message, it was like a Friday night in 2006.  And I remember getting a text message that said, you know, 106 meetings, 76 nights away from my wife, but we have a client today.  And, you know, that’s irrational, that’s obsessive behaviour.  Normal people do not do that, normal people don’t just keep on going. Now, he wasn’t just banging his head against the wall, what he was doing was constantly learning, constantly retargeting, adjusting.  And so the man is extremely smart, which is why Monitise is doing, you know, Monitise will be one of the most important companies ever to have been founded in the United Kingdom.  But it takes an irrational level of persistence.  And I think I’m pretty good at figuring out whether somebody is up for that.

There are many more great videos about entrepreneurial spirit and business success on Inside Finance. Look out for more briefings on the subject.

It is difficult to know the best time to start a business as Charlie Mullins discusses in this TV show.

Entrepreneurship Strategy

We have a situation at the moment where obviously tines are tough out there and money is tight. there is still a lot of youngsters that want to succeed in life, well you know, for me, you know they often ask when is the best time is when you are ready for it. Forget the economy, forget the climate at the moment. If you have a product and you are all ready to go with it, go with it. But it is not an easy ride and probably what I would say to people is I have never met a successful person in business who hasn't worked hard to achieve it. Another great tip is, quitters are not winners and winners are not quitters.

Ian Luck: "What we’re trying to do is actually get something that’s relevant to each and every company.  So there will be a different requirement for each different workforce.  And we try and marry what is available within the marketplace to actually what the company is trying to achieve within its benefits package in the most tax efficient way both for the company and for the employees themselves. Fundamentally it’s about recruitment and retention of the right quality staff.  So nowadays in order to compete within the marketplace you need to be offering a wide range of benefits.  We’re seeing more of those companies look towards flexible benefit arrangements, that’s enabling the employees to choose what’s most appropriate for them rather than being dictated to by the company themselves.  So it still comes back down to fundamentally giving the broadest possible range of benefits to the members, the employees so that they want to come and work for you."

Guy Rigby: "I think it’s a fantastic environment, and I think that, you know, we are now at this time coming out of a, you know, the worst period of trading that we’ve seen probably since the 1930s.  It’s been a disastrous time, very difficult, yet all the innovation that’s coming out around places like tech city, around new funding platforms, alternative funding, you know, the banks are not in an easy position.  So we need these other things to come out.  And there’s huge opportunity.  In addition people have virtual offices, they can set themselves up on computers or laptops for hundreds of pounds as opposed to tens of thousands, which it used to be 10 or 20 years ago.  So the opportunity for entrepreneurs has never been greater.  All you’ve got to do is have a great idea, a great vision as it were and then have the strategy and the business plan to deliver it."

Guy Rigby: "We think that there’s a gap in the market for entrepreneurs these days. You know, we’re the eighth largest accountancy firm in the UK and we feel that all of those above us and indeed around us aren’t giving this community the attention it needs.  We want to be the all round adviser to entrepreneurs, helping them achieve their goals, you know, getting their ball across whichever line they want to get it across. Okay.  So most accountancy firms do audits and tax.  What they don’t really do is get underneath the skin of the business.  What we try to do is to work for the entrepreneur and then the business.  So effectively what we’re trying to do is to help the entrepreneur get his particular ball across the line, whatever that may be.  It might be to grow a 10 million pound turnover business, it might be to pass it on to his family, it might be to sell it, whatever they want, our job is to help them achieve that.  That’s unusual, you know, it goes beyond doing an audit and a tax computation."

Guy Rigby: "First of all we want to be known, so you know, Smith & Williamson is a quiet brand and we’re trying to get it out and dust it off a bit and you know, make sure that people know who we are.  Secondly, we really believe in this entrepreneur community, which is why we’re sponsoring this particular award.  And around us in the accountancy profession, you know there are some other big firms but most of them are focused on doing audits, doing tax and working for larger corporates.  And we find that the opportunity to work for these up and coming firms is very exciting, very interesting, and we think a natural spot for us."

Guy Rigby: "It can be very, very early stage, some of the businesses, you know, are turning over just a few hundreds of thousands, a million or two.  Last year the business that won was turning over probably 20 million.  But that didn’t matter, I mean if we’d favoured something because it was very fast growth.  It’s quite difficult to appoint a National Business Awards winner to someone who’s just started a business because the proof of the pudding isn’t yet there.  But if we can see exponential growth and they’ve been around long enough then they’d certainly be considered."

Guy Rigby: "You get a total variation of businesses.  I mean one of my favourites last year that we put forward for inclusion in the top 10 was a company called Rock Choir, which if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a marvellous social business effectively where people go off every week and sing together.  And it’s for profit, so it’s a very, very social thing.  I mean I have to say my wife goes and she comes back in such a fantastic mood, I wish she could go every night to be honest.  But no, it’s a really, really fantastic evening. And they’ve built a real business around this.  So this is a community thing, it happens in lots of different cities around the UK, well not even cities, towns, villages etc.  And I believe that they actually culminate with sort of concerts at the O2 and things like that. So everyone getting together, have a great singsong.  And they do rock music, you know, ELO, stuff like that, really good.  So Rock Choir was a business, we had a big hosting company like, you know, companies like ... I’m not going to name names in that area, but they’re ... we had a couple of bathroom companies that were basically selling online.  So technology platforms with Facebook pages, suddenly turning over 20 million a year, amazing how these things are springing up.  So a lot of sort of businesses that are becoming technology enabled and using the internet to grow, and leaving effectively, leaving those whole high street players behind.  We’ve seen it happen haven’t we?"

Laurence Bard: "Well, actually the government wants to play a certain game.  It wants the UK to be competitive.  It knows that companies can set up intellectual property owning companies in tax havens, so what does it do?  It says, “You don’t need to do that, you just need to own your patents within a UK company and we will give you a lower rate of tax, and that low rate of tax is 10% instead of the normal 20%.”  If you own patents which you can exploit in your business from a UK registered company, which is going to pay UK tax or is paying UK tax, then there’s a 10% tax rate on offer. And it’s a method of calculating the profits attributable to or in some way linked to patents that you own in your company and you carve out an element of your profits and you say, “That’s not taxed at 20 something percent, that’s taxed at 10%.”  And it’s a very generously carved relief because the example that’s given is that if you have a Land Rover and there’s a patent on the wing mirror, the whole Land Rover, because you sell a Land Rover as a unit, because there’s a patent on a wing mirror the whole thing qualifies.  Of course on a Land Rover there’ll be lots of other things that are patented.  But that’s the extreme example, you sell a product, a bit of it’s patented, you’re in the Patent Box for the full price of your Land Rover.  I think there are going to be a lot of companies taking advantage of it.  And I think the government is also hoping that a lot of companies that would otherwise locate themselves in the Netherlands or Portugal or the Cayman Islands will say, “Ideally I would like to be in the UK anyway, let’s stick with the UK, it’s got a good tax rate, or let’s even come to the UK, which we hadn’t thought of before”, because it’s a competitive world."

Laurence Bard: "The principle cost is your in-house employees, the costs of their salaries, bonuses, national insurance, pensions.  If you subcontract R&D out to another company that would qualify, there’s a sort of profit margin taken off it.  But designed to get to their underlying staffing costs, the cost of software bought for R&D, the cost of raw materials consumed in the process, for example you might build a prototype and need, spend money on raw materials and have to scrap the prototype at the end of it. Those are the principle costs.  The sort of things that don’t qualify for example would be rent and rates, hardware that gets capitalised in your accounts as a capital cost.  So the big thing is the staffing cost tends to be in most companies."

Laurence Bard: "There’s a lot of ignorance.  There are a lot of start-up companies that know very little about tax in the first place.  Originally people heard the expression R&D, and they thought of men in white coats with test tubes in their hands.  They certainly didn’t think of software developers for example, it never even occurred to them, or their bags or advertising could have R&D in them.  And as I say, so I think that was a preconception, but there are always, it’s inevitable, there are always new companies coming through who have an idea but they don’t know too much about tax or accounts for that matter.  And they need to meet someone who tells them what the deal is."

Laurence Bard: "If someone has an idea and it involves some sort of scientific or technological development, the question is are they able to develop it simply or does it actually involve questions such as I don’t know whether I’m going to get there? Or I don’t know how I’m going to get there, either of those and if those are in a technological or scientific field then the answer is likely to be there is R&D.  And it doesn’t matter if somebody else has done it, if it’s not public knowledge, if let’s say you know, Google have developed a wonderful search engine and you want to build a search engine to compete with them, but they’re not going to tell you how to do it, you might just as well be doing R&D, even if you end up with something that is maybe even in theory at a Google’s product.  So it’s to do with technological or scientific uncertainty and it’s in the view of somebody who is competent professional working in the field, that’s one of the definitions.  So if you’re the Chief Technical Officer of a company and you say, “This is technologically uncertain”, then it is technologically uncertain.  But you might want guidance as to what that means as well.  But that’s as far as the definitions go.  We have a document that’s five or six pages long which defines what is R&D, but those are the key points in it."

Laurence Bard: "The obvious examples might be pharmaceuticals, men in white coats and test tubes.  Another obvious example would be automotive, you know, Jaguar, Land Rover developing weird and wonderful extra ways that engines run.  And then less obviously you have all sorts of ... I mean banking you might think doesn’t do anything innovative, but banks spend a huge amount on software and the use of the internet and it has to be secure and it has to work."

Business is no longer linear and you have to adapt your thinking to suit. Julie Meyer explains further in this TV show.

Business strategy models - Networks

If you are still, in any way shape or form thinking linear or hierarchical, you need to update your thinking to a network orientation. That's much more important than just the Facebook as a phenomena or LinkedIn as a phenomena. Everything has moved to a world of interdependency and multiple dependencies in that.

This business leadership video features Jo Malone, Founder of Jo Malone & JO LOVES.

Business leadership video for success

The formula for success is hardwork, courage and tenacity. She says entrepreneurs should create a team that feels like a family and would love to do business on a hand shake again. There is a value in building real relationships in business. If you found this business leadership video interesting why not watch more TV shows on Inside Finance?