Why?
CVs are like soundbites. Often without context, they are unrepresentative of all but the simplest of careers. Plus they barely touch on the most important aspect of selecting someone for a job - who they are as a person.
This section shows my journey to get to where I now am.
The Man In The White Suit
The making of an innovator
The black & white movie, one of the Ealing Comedy series was screened on television when I was still single digits old. It is about someone who is driven, someone who is convinced that they can make the world a better place through science and engineering. I believe watching it was one of the pivotal moments that set me off on my career.
If you understand the minds of innovators and entrepreneurs, this snippet of information will tell you more about me than all my roles and education combined. You wouldn't get this on a CV and you would understand much less about what I can do for your company as a result.
The Music Lesson
From coasting to achieving
I was never pushed by my family. At 11 I was simply given a choice - do you want to go to the local school or sit an exam to see if you can get into the great one miles away? I thought "Why not?" and got in. My school had about 100 pupils per year across three classes. In my first couple of years in exams, I would be about 23rd in my class - about 70th in the year. One music lesson our teacher got annoyed at the naughty boys talking at the back of the class and had a little rant. He told us that at the end of the second year, the exams we did would put us into streams that would set the path for the rest of our lives. Did we want to achieve things in life? If so, we had better work hard now and lay the right foundations. In those exams I came 7th in the year and continued in that way ever since. Dear music teacher whose name I now forget, thank you ever so much for what you did.
Destroyer turns Inventor
The path from piles of spare parts to creating things
For someone who says they cannot be labelled, I have put a lot of labels on myself over the years.
When in single digits, I was allowed by my family (for which I will be eternally grateful) to pull things apart (gramophones, immersion heater time switches, tape players, mechanical alarm clocks etc.) and to experiment with hand tools and then power tools.
This phase flowed into the start of creating and mending things to the great relief of my family who had fewer possessions by the day until then. Woodworking, decorating, electronics, brick laying, home renovations, battery powered go-carts, everything became something that could be improved, refined, automated, simplified.
Inventor is a label that stuck for a long time, until I realised that there were no job titles matching it. All of science and engineering was my playground and their boundaries immaterial.
Inventor turns Innovator
The path from creating things to solving problems
Finishing off my doctorate in hard physics, my attention turned to looking for a job. One role I went for they wanted a PhD physicist to check the dielectric breakdown strength of insulation for electrical cables. Yikes! That was a job - to turn the voltage up with a knob until it went pop and write down the voltage it happened at....then to do it again and again.
So I was incredibly lucky to discover technology and product development consultancies where you get paid well to play and solve problems for some of the biggest companies in the world - to invent, create, develop and refine their future products.
It was here I discovered two things. One was that the hardest problems in projects were often not the technologies and inventions needed, but the people - whether co-workers or the clients and that more work needed to be done creating and strengthening relationships compared to the time spent developing the technology. The other was that it was as thrilling to evangelise and enthuse in a selling meeting and get the prospective client excited about a project as it was to actually solve that project technically - quite a revelation for someone who had considered themselves before that to be a bench-scientist.
Innovator turns Entrepreneur
(otherwise known as someone interested in all the roles within a company and how they work together to get the best out of all the employees and offer the best to the customer)
Following a stint in university technology transfer and reading "The Beermat Entrepreneur" by Mike Southon and Chris West, I finally discovered that the label to describe the very odd mix of skills and interests I had was perfectly encapsulated by the tag, entrepreneur.
Of course I could have used that label when I was 16 and making a business out of mending the (Walkman) tape players of fellow students, while simultaneously saddening their parents by building bespoke 100-200W audio amplifiers to plug them into.
I have since started up companies out of Imperial College and Cambridge University, helped hundreds of other startups along their path and directed the same learnings to help large companies in a similar way.
So what am I now?
Pin a title on a donkey?
Well it is not catchy, but I call myself a "Complex Problem Solver". Whether the issue is one of technology, people, business or innovation, I love getting to grips with it, mashing it around until some possible solutions present themselves and then refining the best solution. (See below for more of an explanation of this.)
I help companies to create and sell new things customers want. I often start by developing a real understanding of the customer, finding a need and translating that into a plan before then working with teams to innovate, develop, make and deliver. Encompassing numerous traditional job titles enables me to efficiently and accurately inspire a clear vision and direction internally while delighting customers with the result.
Recently I have spent much of my time on the earlier stages, which are generally the most challenging, and tend to focus on high-tech-product and technology companies.
I uncover products and services customers want sufficiently that they are happy to pay for them and then deliver it to them, overcoming all the hurdles along the way.
I have done this for companies of all sizes. From the tech side, from the sales side, from the board. With small teams, with large teams of teams and with individuals. Turning round failing companies, growing successful companies, finding adjacent, tangential or entirely new markets for existing and new offerings. Leading, managing, innovating, coaching and mentoring to get to the win-win scenario of having a happy team within the company and a delighted customer.I hope you enjoyed this journey and that now my CV makes sense and is suitably impressive.
Experience
... across a truly wide range of fields, sectors and markets...
Electronics
Sensors
Internet of Things (IoT)
Lithium Battery Technology
Precision Clocks
Electronic Pens
Automatic Cooktops
Laser Printers
VSCELs
Metrology
Anisotropic-Magnetoresistance
Instrumentation
Audio
Wearable computing
Ultra low cost, very large area electronic billboard
Raspberry Pi
Arduino / ESP8266 microcontrollers
Optics
Display Technologies
Liquid Crystal Display
Lasers
Imaging
Machine Vision
Sensing
Laser Marking
Electronic Lenses
Bank Note Validation
Line Scanners
Automotive Windscreens
Solar Photovoltaic
Low cost, high accuracy thermometer
Mechanics
Automation
Robotics
Inspection Rigs
Pumps
Testing
1 handed mint pack
Dynamo Saddle
Micro Casting
Inkjet
Gas Turbine Engines
Automotive
Micron scale novel hole profile laser drilling
National Instruments data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision
Med-tech
Pressure Ulcer Prevention
DVT Prevention
Diagnostics
Wellness
Aerosols Generators
Inhalers
Therapeutic Devices
Diabetic monitoring
Fertility monitoring
Controlled Release Coatings
Digital
Big Data
Genetic Algorithms
Neural Networks
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Complex Problem Solving
Customer Profiling
LabView (G)
Basic
Visual Basic
Fortran 77
Fortran 90
Python
C
C++
HTML
Javascript
Printing-tech
Industrial Digital Drop-on-Demand
Disc-Pump
Industrial Wide Format Laser Printer
Electrostatic
Piezo
Consumer
Packaging Printing
Sweet Dispensers
Power Tools
Laundry Equipment
Kitchen Equipment
White goods
"Invisible" 2D barcodes
Recruitment tech / HR-tech
ATS
Boolean search
Current ATS Limitations
Effects of the boolean decades in the workplace
Advanced, hybrid, AI - person solution to sourcing and recruitment.
Management
Leadership
Teams
Founder
Board
Strategic - Management
Innovation - Management
Technology - Management
Consultant
Vision
Roadmap
Director
P&L
Coach / Mentor
Innovation
Lean Innovation
Business
Entrepreneurship
Startups
Early Stage
Intrapreneurship
Customer Discovery
Team Theory
Guest Speaker
Training Courses
Intellectual Property (IP)
Creation
Patent Protection
Defensive / Offensive Strategy
Valuation
Commercialisation
Technology Transfer
Legal Agreements
Licenses
Web/Apps
SaaS
A-B Testing
Lean Innovation
Education Software
WordPress
Customer / Product Management
Innovation
Lean
Customer-Development
Opportunity Analysis
Market Analysis
Unarticulated- Unmet-Needs
Segment Creation
New Business- Development
User experience
Marketing
Sales
Project Management
Agile
APM
Programme- Management
Research & Development
New Product Development
New Product Introduction
Innovation - Management
Contract negotiations
Activities and interests
Do anything other than solve complex business problems?
Jack of all trades ....and master of one
In breadth of knowledge and experience comes strength, flexibility, adaptability, competence, empathy and above all else, the ability to solve complex problems by approaching them holistically from many angles simultaneously, rather than being restricted by narrow experience.
Vertical specialists are crucial in business, but business crucially needs broad generalists to succeed.
I've been called an innovator, an entrepreneur, a leader, a manager, scientist, engineer. However there is a common thread running through all these labels.
I am a "Complex Problem Solver" or "Adaptive Expert"
Whether the issue is one of technology, people, business or innovation, I love getting to grips with it, mashing it around until solutions present themselves and then refining to the best solution.
I am as happy running high-tech development teams creating the latest technologies as I am doing deep learning about what the customers would actually pay money for and feeding that into the corporate development strategy.
How Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon describes people like me:
"talented experts with a beginner's mind and a long-term orientation"
Quoted in an article on solving US healthcare problems: Inc.com, BusinessInsider.com, Businesswire.com
Another name for an expert generalist - a polymath or adaptive expert..
&
According to recent 2018 article, rather than being something to be avoided, the most successful business people, entrepreneurs and scientists have all been polymaths.
Quiz: What shape am I?
Read this interesting Linkedin article by Esin Akay and email me your thoughts!
Hint: I am not I or T shaped.
The key to business success is in the overlap between functions
Alternatively from the customer perspective, the experience is everything
A scan through this bio will show all ten of the "skills that are growing in need" are fully covered.
