Industries which create mass employment are key to UK’s future

Whilst there is endless debate as to whether this or that fiscal or regulatory measure will best serve the nations purpose, one thing is becoming clear:

Either the UK government encourages the investment in, and the development of industries which create mass employment, or we will have a ‘pensioned society’ living near poverty.

The UK has declined in my humble readings because of disinvestment by overseas takeovers, a lack of capital investment in the hinterland by the City of London and the banks, (The banks asking for Director’s guarantees has undermined the Joint-Stock Limited Liability concept), competition (not trade) from the economies-of-scale and geography of Central Europe in the EU, a simplistic one-size-fits-all approach to education, a misguided focus on unproductive social expenditure, a bloated civil service, immigrants keeping British workers out of jobs and destructive worker attitudes to change and pay, especially in the 1970′s and 1980′s.

Putting these things right is already underway in many ways by this Coalition government, it is true.

But the BIS department must encourage industries which employ large numbers of people.

Analytically, what is needed is a Pareto Curve showing what economist’s might call “The Marginal Propensity to Employ”. This Marginal propensity is essentially the number of people employed by an incremental unit of expenditure, Pound or Wage, per individual industry. That is, how many people a each ‘bit more expenditure’ would employ for each industry in turn. This is then shown relatively on a Non-Pareto Curve, an “80-20″ graph, to identify the top 20% of industries which employ 80% of the highest number of people for a given amount.

The aim is to identify the top 20% of industries which provide the most jobs, per buck.

Thus existing and new industries could be projected as to the most effective use of Keynsian Counter-Cyclical Capital Expenditure, and identify which industries need infrastructure spending and capital investment. The expenditure should be ‘Fibre-optics and mortar’ rather than purely fiscal manouvres on Balance Sheets, as I understand that to have been the classic 1930′s Keynsian model of expenditure, such as Dams and Freeways.

Humbly put, this analysis and solution might just be enough to provide a pointer to the regeneration of  mass-employing industries.

To refine the solution, the Top 20 industries need to be overlayed by an Non-Pareto Curve of those of them which have the largest and/or most profitable potential markets, and thus the commensurate Top-Industry-by-market Keynsian expenditure priorities are set.

Thatcherism is relevant today; was and should be environmentally-friendly

I saw the film “Iron Lady” yesterday afternoon, and was taken by its documentary-style and uncannily believable protrayal of Baroness Thatcher by Miss Streep.

I remember the period as a student, the despair at the queues at graduate jobs fairs, the lack of opportunity for we new graduates evidenced by the rejection letters which papered the walls of our dwellings, but also the feeling of endeavour and progress once a ‘proper’ graduate placement had been found. I remember the student unrest, left wing agitation and intimidation of we conservative students, and picket lines. The rubbish piled in the street as a result of needless strikes.

I also remember the feeling of pride in our armed forces in the Falklands, and the dismay when Mrs Thatcher was toppled from power by disloyal pro-EU rivals, something the film shows very well.

Three things are relevant today from those years – one is the emphasis on endeavour for the individual, secondly the emphasis on commerce, and thirdly the call to Duty towards Nature in Baroness Thatcher’s speech on climate change in 1990.

Refocusing on these parameters will be an excellent guide for conduct in the future.

 

 

Satisficing strategies and the lack of profits

As a business graduate of some years ago now, we were taught that corporations often adopted a strategy for planning called “Satisficing”. This was simply descirbed as the goal of ‘good enough’ rewards, not maximum.

To some extent this seems an intuitive way forward for SME’s who lack the time and resources to research all profit-chasing options fully. I understand that some might see this as abdication of rational economic behaviour, but it is referred to as ‘Bounded Rationality’.

Whilst the foregone profit might be seen as inefficiency, it may also be seen as a cost for SME’s to trade profitably at all. It seems to me that there are step changes in production processes which may be technologically driven and which lead to less that most efficient behaviour. You cannot buy half a laptop computer. This might lead to sub-optimal profits.

The issue is not so much that maximization has been foregone, but that of profitability itself in the current climate. The High Street traders are trading their ground rent against that of the online retailers in low-rent warehouses and lo-cost mail delivery systems where the profit on goods is otherwise equal (trader discounts notwithstanding). Profitability may be marginal, and as such survival is the strategy, not profit-chasing.

The first goal of the organization is to survive.

Satisficing may be a strategy for coping with that goal. Do that which is legal and that which you feel able, comfortable and motivates you.

A change of paradigm for the UK- package & sell Intellectual Property

Instead of defending IP products through IP Laws such as patent and copyright as though we were always going to build them if only the banks would back us, perhaps the time has come to change our approach?

Instead of packaging our IP in a defensive manner, and approaching the far east as though they were going to purloin it, perhaps we should package it in a size and shape which is sale-able on the global market. To the Chinese.

All ideas are saleable to some reasonable extent, and the new key player, the broker, could package our Western thoughts in a portfolio of price-classified packages which the East could buy. This could create all sorts of derivative markets which only the City understand.

The key is to view ideas as saleable commodities, not state secrets.

Getting Started on Cambridge Sciences G7 Android 2.3 Gingerbread applications

I thought there might be some who were both new to Tablets & Android like me, so here’s how I started up:

1) Charging up
It is recommended in the manual that you charge the tablet from the mains using the charger and lead provided for eight hours before first use. This I have done. It does take some sweating not to use it earlier.

2) Firing Up eight hours later
held on switch on side in for 3 seconds. splash screen then main screen appear. slide the padlock up the screen and it takes you to the home screen
3) Getting Menu
pressing the bigger button on the side brings up the menu

4) Setting Wi-fi
A chap on the Amazon.co.uk website reviewing this product said that the Internet Code requested is in fact the Wifi Key you need to login to the network. Many thanks for the tip.

5) Available Apps
Click on the grid/matrix of dots on the right of the screen in the middle and access apps from there.

6) Installing Apps
Installing apps is easy. Either pre-installed or downloadable from Marketplace are GMAIL, Google Translate, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, .

7) Setting Security
click settings, then location and security, and then choose password type and key in. remember password or PIN.

Batch production using printers – an optimistic press for the future?

Amidst the ‘doom n gloom’ of recent reports from the financial, jobs and manufacturing sectors, there is a technology which I am beginning to feel may lead the UK out of a depressing post-industrial trough, and into a bright future of manufacturing-lead employment.

This technology, when integrated with others, as described briefly below, may allow the UK to engage in pro-sumerism as Alvin Tofler described in the 1980′s book, “The Third Wave” on a growth oriented satisfaction of changing consumer desires, which when added to recycling allows a sustainable growth economy. Phew!

Basically this technology is the layer-upon-layer batch build technology of which “RepRap” is an example. Envisage a production cycle in which iPod enabled consumers browse apps which give prefabricated 3D designs of products for one- or few-off production for selection, and once ebay-type negotiating apps decide the price, or prices are given using Paypal shops, the consumer then hits the print button from anywhere in the world and the product is printed off at the local specialist printing shop, saving on shipping. The value-added is in the product design, not the manufacture, and a ‘knowledge economy’ is born, in which the UK with a fully functioning education system can compete.

Note that this doesn’t require any one technology, but a sequence of currently happening technologies and lifestyles to integrate.

If seamless integration seems a little way ahead, Cottage industries can start-up with the printer technology and deliver products around the globe using the postal systems.

Design in this milieu is going to be the key to product development.

Form-and-function are going to be subject to very rapid evolution.

Employment comes with post-modern marketing and sales roles, clean-tech despatch, and product construction as a kit.

It is the selective application of technologies which are appropriate not just gee-whiz which are going to lead to expanding markets and employment in the post-modern economies like the UK. And it it is this prospect which offers me a glimmer for an optimistic future around the corner.

PS: Since I wrote this piece an event has been announced that supports and enhances my optimism. A company from Canada called Kor EcoLogic has just launched a printed concept car called “Urbee”, as reported in the Daily Mail [click here].

Consumer “Needs” analysis – another key to growth

I have at times mentioned, or alluded to at least, in this blog that I believe the key to UK economic success is not boosted consumer spending, nor an expansion of government jobs, but is a combination of focused capital investment, of a Keynesian type in infrastructure projects, such as “HS1″ and “CrossRail”, plus Superfast Broadband, and a focus of some resources on SME Product development.

I’d quickly like to elucidate on this last point:

1. In order to design and build products, one must surely start by analysing the “Needs”
2. Having determined the “Needs” one designs innovative, but perhaps simple solutions to the “Need”. It is perhaps arguable that IPad® components are not leading edge of the leading edge, but merely leading edge technology, brilliantly engineered to address a new “Need”.
3. One produces a prototype of the product and proceed through the Product-Development Lifecycle to bring the product to market.

It is in 1) above that the UK Government can help most effectively, by utilizing Foreign Office staff, as has been suggested by them, to help SME’s conduct

Consumer “Needs” analysis.

The “Consumer” in this case are overseas business and individuals. We need accurate data on those products that the Chinese, India, Indonesian and Brazilian both “Need” & “Aspire” to. But not just a tired old re-run of those products we have experienced and discarded, but genuine brainstorming of new products for their conditions, like “ruggedized” suspension kits for cars, inexpensively tailor made by using the latest layered-printing manufacturing methods, and shipped via Royal Mail.

We need better product-market intelligence quickly at the SME. Modern internet communications and video conferencing make expensive trade missions a less viable option. We need locally based video conferences with business and community leaders to not just initiate but regularly maintain market contact. Webinars and such.

One caveat is that it may be that the strange new products require innovation that we in the West haven’t spec’d yet. I expect as long as UK export restrictions are observed, that is business evolution in action. This evolution however may cause a little resistance via culture shock, and the laggards should be persuaded otherwise.

In effect we must reverse the Chinese-Western historical model and mimic the Chinese exporters of Chinaware and inlaid furniture in the 17th & 18th Centuries. They found out what aristocratic European customers wanted, and supplied quality goods.

We must act in a similar fashion.

Market-oriented culture needed in Business Support from Government

Having dealt with well-meaning and affable public employees whose role it is to ‘support’ small and start-up businesses, I am beginning to realize what travails them so and makes them relatively ineffectual.

It is to do with their organizational structure and focus. They are primarily on the inside of an organization looking out. That is, they fill a slot in public organizations rather than fill a slot in market needs. They look at things from their perspective, not from the markets they serve.

They have their objectives, targets and missions, not ‘ours’. They do not identify with product-markets, but with their own organizations. They do so cheerfully, and doubtless meet their organizations targets. But they are not necessarily being very effective in meeting the needs of their espoused clients, anecdotal though the evidence is.

I recently had a very good meeting with two such employees, and we exchanged good business information. For the first time the atmosphere was active, expressive and dynamic. I really felt things were going places. And now they and their referral contacts are on summer vacation. The whole effort has stalled while global markets swirl around us. If they go on holiday then they should organize effective and informed cover. But they need a commercial perspective, not an employee one. Being a start-up entrepreneur is a different mindset to 9-5.

They listened helpfully and attentively to the business case and market description I offered. It said to me they are interested and motivated. But the follow up was purely bureaucratic. My thanks for their help, but a different approach is needed more swiftly.

This culture difference needs addressing by having more informal dialogues and by fewer brochures and more emails. Fewer matched funds for redundant capital expenditure and more focused access at low-cost for hi-level IP advice. And by having a dynamic organizational structure with more local focus, less “Structural” funding and approaches. A little less “This is what we will have here” and a bit more “Let’s see what we’ve got here?”.

Less Research, more Development of products & use of Applied Science is needed.

I am pulling together the thoughts of a few blogs passim here.

The issue for the UK in the next six to nine months is for our country to sell more products abroad. These may well be financial instruments or financial packages, but in fact we need the appliance of a bit of science.

What we do not need at the present is blue sky, green field research that costs the Earth, occupies a few offices on a campus and employs a couple of postgraduates. We need the Universities to apply what they have been taught, in the manner of the old Polytechnics, to employ large numbers of people.

This may mean accepting “screwdriver” manufacturing as the true legacy of component-ized design, and also accepting that not all productive processes need an “R2D2″ to complete them.

But the real brake on product development has manifested itself to me in the ambiguity and legal complexity surrounding the use of equations and algorithms from a textbook. It is seemingly impossible to get a straight answer on whether it is legal to program an equation from a book into a software product, which is holding back software product development. Copyright Law may yet strangle our ability to move forward. Why buy and learn textbooks if you are unable to develop from them? Does a maths equation belong to the original mathematician or the book publisher? Whose permission should one seek?

This is of particular interest in the environmental conservation sciences where a large number of the ideas and methods have come in the last 70 years, within copyright. Can one use the method described in a scientific paper in a software product for commercial gain? If not, how is commerce to advance? Will we be at the mercy economically to those who eschew the Copyright conventions?

I am sure this Copyright issue is solvable. But it is the issue of applied science which will seal our UK economic fate.

Less kicking for touch, more scrimmaging is required. Less Research, more Development.

Does East London TechCity present “Unfair competition” to rural UK ISPs?

Part of being in commerce in modern times is one needs to take a portfolio appproach to startegic planning and issues even as an SME (Small & Medium-sized Enterprise).
One of the facets of the portfolio approach is the one marked “Political lobbying”, and the issue of today for my enterprise is potential “Unfair competition” from London’s Tech City Hub, billed as the UK’s answer to “Silicon Valley” under EU Competition Law.

I am not always a fan of the EU, to be fair, but we are in at the moment and so need to abide by their rules. And their rules state, according to Wikipedia:

“Four main policy areas include:
Cartels, or control of collusion and other anti-competitive practices that effects the EU (or, since 1994, the European Economic Area). This is covered under Articles 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

Monopolies, or preventing the abuse of firms’ dominant market positions. This is governed by Article 102 TFEU. This article also gives rise to the Commission’s authority under the next area,

Mergers, control of proposed mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures involving companies that have a certain, defined amount of turnover in the EU/EEA. This is governed by the Council Regulation 139/2004 EC (the Merger Regulation).[1]

State aid, control of direct and indirect aid given by Member States of the European Union to companies. Covered under Article 107 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union…”

My issue with Tech City is the amount of favouritism and government & other attention given to this “Hub” without a sine qua non to rural ISPs. Do they represent a cartel, or are they “colluding” in an anti-competitive manner?

Wikipedia again provides a public domain insight into what the East London TechCity are receiving by way of help and funding:

” McKinsey & Company has agreed to provide advice on the creation of the hub and help to start-up companies based in the area.[5] Qualcomm has agreed to provide intellectual property advice to start-up companies based in the hub.[5] Silicon Valley Bank has agreed to establish a UK-based bank to provide financing for technology and life science companies based in the hub.[5] Vodafone has committed to bring its Vodafone Ventures investment fund to the hub…”

Is this advice and funding available to rural South Eastern UK ISP’s on an equal basis?

If so, how do we avail ourselves of it? We have certainly not been offered any such high level advice or funding by existing government agencies.

Still, in the words of the wartime poster,

“Keep calm, and carry on”.