Backed by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL), it aims to inspire meaningful projects in areas as diverse as education, health, finance, community and the environment.

Held at the Cambridge Judge Institute, the first Idea Transform weekend (20-22 April 2012) is aimed at people with ideas and those with business, marketing and technical skills from Cambridge and beyond.

• Brings together individuals with innovative ideas with the skills and support needed to help meaningful projects take their crucial first steps
• Hands-on, experienced mentors and inspiring keynote speakers will provide the perfect environment to develop ideas and learn new skills
• Projects judged to show most promise will benefit from ongoing mentoring and support

Click here for more information and to buy your ticket.

You cannot ignore this or scrimp on it. Regard this as an investment because finding out about the market before you commit expensive people is worth it.

Check out:

• What is the market like? Are there social, economic and political reasons why you should look elsewhere?
• Is there going to be a demand? Is the market big enough?
• What is the competition like? Are there others in the market with better, cheaper or more expensive products?
• What about restrictions on trade? Any duties, quotas or taxes? Other barriers?
• How will you sell? Do you need an agent, partner or joint venture?
• Are there any standards or safety issues to address?

Competition:

Strange but true! It’s unlikely that you will have a unique position

• Sometimes a variation on your product or service can exist in the market
• Sometimes a different local solution may be adopted over your ‘technically’ better solution

What to export:

Given all that we have already said, choose the product or service that you have to change the least. There are some advantages of exporting without changing the product or services:

• Advantage of economies of scale
• Little or no costs associated with product development or change
• No special technologies required, hence, reduced support costs
• Fewer promotion and marketing costs

Why do you have to change?

You need to be aware of local conditions so check:

• Legislation or standards to be met
• Cultural issues that could impact on your business
• Taxes, tariffs or fees. Do they apply and if so how will you pay them?
• Climate – beware of fluctuating temperatures, humidity and extremes of hot or cold

Dreaming of You

I previously blogged about the rotten experience I had with O2 and the Coldplay gig at The O2.  I was really not a Coldplay fan but this was really to be a treat for my wife who is. You will know of my multiple problems with the O2 Priority service. This isn’t meant to be an update but more an illustration of how to turn disgruntled customers around.

Us against the World

I am a proud member of Cambridge Wireless and attend many of their industry events. (It is worth giving them a plug here in case you don’t know the organisation. Based in Cambridge, CW have international members from Microsoft and Google at one end; operators like Orange and O2 Telefonica; handset manufactures such as HTC and RIM; app companies, e.g. Handy Elephant, Jasper Apps, and Mindings; and consultancies like Alliantus at the opposite extreme. In short it has members across the mobile phone landscape and we exchange information, discuss industry issues and collaborate to get things done).

A Rush of Blood to the Head

At one of the events Neil Fletcher (Head of Group Devices Platforms, 02 Telefonica Group) was a speaker and started to talk to about the success of the Priority ticketing service (sadly this was about three days after the Coldplay fiasco and something inside required me to comment). Neil and I discussed the issues after the event and as promised I provided him with the information about my experience.

Fix you

Clearly Neil is a person who likes things to be correct and from my understanding through regular contact via email, telephone and face to face, he has taken my comments on board, This has included getting the system tested by ensuring that those responsible ‘walk through the process’.

Everything’s not lost

I’m told that they have learned lots and have modified the system to iron out the problems. Time will tell but I trust Neil enough to have renewed my mobile phone contract with O2 and invited O2 to participate in the high profile event that I manage.

A Message

So what are the lessons learned:

• Test your system under load
• Walk through the process and check it at every stage
• Ensure that what you tell your people matches the reality
• Trust your ‘expert users’ and get them close as they can provide you with information that you can’t get so quickly yourself.
• Respond rapidly to customer problems and keep them in the loop
• Take responsibility and once you have done so follow through and fix the issue
• Identify your own Neil Fletchers and clone them

God put a smile on your face

And in the end two of the tickets for the gig came our way and at face value. We had a fantastic night out with access to specially organised parking and to the O2 lounge. Chris Martin and the boys were on great form and I got to appreciate a great live band. O2 of course got two new fans too.

Viva la Vida.

What Apple does is design computers and lead the digital music revolution, through savvy integration of the supply chain, with its iPods and iTunes online store. It made the mobile phone more useful with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and the iPad is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices after years of the tablet being just a promise or a prop on Star Trek. Steve Jobs can be credited with reinventing the company in the face of industry competition.

I am sure he was charismatic, motivational, far-sighted and all of those things that people who really know him say of him. However, for me his key understanding was that technology companies need brands and the more ‘cult’ the brand the more loyalty and hence the more sales there are. He has touched my life not because he was some kind of saint but because he understood that although good technology sells, good-looking technology sells better. He knew that we all want to own aspirational and inspirational things and we will pay more for them, providing they deliver what we want. He made technology cool and changed people’s perceptions, and I thank him for that.

What do you do when you have an idea and have made a prototype, how do you get the money to take your idea to the next stage?  You can read the answers here…

Here’s the top ten reasons:

• It is more than just a competition it is a programme.
• At the competition pitching day, you get the chance to present to leading venture capitalists, angels and industry investors. Representatives from Angels, VCs, Vodafone Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Innovacom, and leading players such as Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Broadcom, Orange and ARM will be among those lining up to pick the winners and provide expert advice or investment.
• You can try out your idea to a group of potential investors in a safe environment. So if you haven’t pitched before you won’t get roasted. This is not dragon’s den.
• You get feedback on your pitching if you win or lose.
• Did I mention that there are free business and consultancy services?
• You get to learn stuff from people who have done it and succeeded (and also people who have done it and failed).
• Last year’s winners got a chance to pitch again to over 300 people at the Future Wireless International Conference (FWIC).
• We brokered nearly 500 business meetings with International visitors during last year’s FWIC and expect to do the same for entrants this year.
• You get Press, Social Media and face-to-face exposure free.
• Discovering Start-Ups rewards the winners with cash prizes. (Five prizes of £2000).
• You get bragging rights and a trophy to show you won (if you win).
• Cambridge Wireless’ CEO, Soraya Jones, shares our passion for helping start-ups and her team connect the entrants with the wider technology community at every opportunity.
• You get to network at a nice event with a nice dinner, nice people and at a nice Cambridge College.

Do you qualify?

• The competition is free to enter for companies in the East of England or Cambridge Wireless members nationally (So worth joining).

More information

For more information or to enter, please visit Cambridge Wireless.

You can also follow @cambwireless on Twitter for all the latest on Discovering Start-Ups 2011.

Now in its 4th year, UK attendees are invited to enter the UKTI’s prestigious Business Innovation Awards, the competition that showcases the very best of UK innovation.

UKTI are looking for applications that demonstrate ability to develop innovations or processes that substantially improve the commercial performance or prospects of your organisation. There are three categories to choose from, Enabling Creativity, Digital Connected World and Energy Environment.

To submit your entry, you must be either attending as a delegate or exhibiting at the event. Click here for more information.

P.S. Submit your entry by Friday 23 September, to be in the chance to win one of the three Awards at TechWorld!

TechWorld is on 16-17 November at Excel, London

The key thing is that value added services have to deliver what they promise, if the bed doesn’t get turned down then you feel let down.  If the chocolate isn’t there you think the service is bad.

Take for example 02’s Privilege Service which amongst other things offers advance concert tickets.  Well it does if it works and you can get on. Otherwise like me you spend an hour while the servers can’t cope with the demand, your account gets locked and you realise that there is no value.  Even worse you can’t use your account to buy tickets released to the general public. You have it pushed in your face how poor both Ticketmaster and O2 are at customer service (no numbers even if you are told to contact support) and go from valuing your service provider to being really really cross because you can’t even get anyone to fix the problem.

Is this difficult stuff to manage? Well not really if you think about your customers. If you promote a band like Coldplay any idiot knows that there is going to be huge demand so you increase your capacity so ‘customers’ can actually buy the tickets. If you tell people to “talk to support about your locked account’, you had better provide the url or email or telephone number in the same message in order that they can do so. Your support team needs to know the right number to ring and not merely pass on the wrong one, and also the blame.

Making it easy for people is the true ‘value added’ and that doesn’t mean turning down the sheets but delivering on your promise.

Spam ruins our lives but it is so easy to be a target of a spammer and get email spam just from putting a real email address on your website or not being able to opt out from mailings. I’m not going to whine but ask these questions? What advantage does a recruitment agency think they get by emailing me from a harvested list about engineering staff when we are a business consultancy?

It shows that they have done little to research the companies that they contact and that the candidates and I are not of any value to them. More importantly does this recruitment agency, “a different kind of recruitment agency”, think that I am going to use one that continues to send me emails when I have to make four attempts to be taken off their email list? I now just mark them down as spam.

I guess as a business practice this must work or they wouldn’t do it but how it does work is a mystery to me. Scatter gun rather than targeting? You wouldn’t be spreading my CV this way.