Mission possible
Mike Farish discusses what 20 UK companies were recently doing on the US West Coast
The last week of February saw 20 of the UK’s most innovative and promising companies in the field of ‘clean technology’ showing off their expertise and product portfolios on the West Coast of the US. The companies were taking part in the Clean and Cool Mission 2010, a trade mission whose organisers included the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), UK Trade and Investment and Enterprise UK. The mission involved both a number of site visits to US counterparts in California’s Silicon Valley and a mass presence at the annual Cleantech Forum, a major global conference for the whole sector, in San Francisco.
According to David Bott, director of innovation programmes at TSB, the mission exemplifies the approach the organisation now takes towards the support of UK industry. He explains that since 2007 the organisation, though it is entirely in the public sector, has been run by business people and not by civil servants. Bott himself has previously worked for BP, Courtaulds and ICI.
Moreover, the organisation has a substantial amount of financial resource at its disposal to support its activities, which fall into three broad categories. He describes these as:
• Technology - for instance advanced materials and electronics.
• Innovation climate - the fostering of communication and skills development through such means as networking and training.
• The identification of ‘lead’ areas in which UK companies are likely to stand the best chance of success.
In addition, the organisation has also identified three key technology application areas on which it aims to concentrate, respectively low carbon, digital economy and healthcare.
Opportunity
The area of clean technology, which encompasses energy saving and reduction of environmentally harmful emissions, fits this outlook precisely. Hence the decision of the TSB to fund participation by UK companies in this mission. The companies on the mission in fact produce or are developing a wide range of clean technologies including ‘straw bale low impact buildings’ to ‘waterless washing machines’ and ‘hydro- and wave- power energy generating devices’. The sheer variety of their activities reinforces the message that clean technologies represent a commercial opportunity in nearly every area of business operation.
Bott adds that there are also ambitions that the mission will not just benefit individual companies in a direct commercial way, but also help foster links between them that could stimulate a sense of sectoral identity back in the UK. This is important because though the companies involved have got past the start-up stage, they are still generally firmly in the SME (small to medium-sized enterprise) category. Most of them, he observes, have from 20 to 80 employees.
Interestingly, the business focus of the TSB is also reflected on the fact that the mission has attracted support from existing larger commercial players in the sector - in this case Orrick, BP Alternative Energy and Cleantech Group. From their point of view, the growth of a domestic base of companies operating in the field can only be beneficial, since companies operating in isolation in their domestic market tend not to be internationally competitive.
This perspective is confirmed by John Steedman, European lead for venturing with BP Alternative Energy. “The Clean & Cool Mission represents an amazing opportunity for the best of entrepreneurial UK talent to understand for themselves how the US has developed a complete cleantech innovation ecosystem and successfully commercialised ideas,” he says.
As with all such missions the results will take the form both of immediate feedback and, it is hoped, longer term support for the development of the whole sector. The companies going on the mission, says Bott, have been selected in large part because they have shown that they already “know what success looks like.” Ultimately the aim is to make other companies think the same way.
The companies on the mission are:
• AMEE
• Aquamarine Power
• Artemis Intelligent Power Ltd
• Breathing Buildings Ltd (previously E-Stack Ltd)
• Diverse Energy Ltd
• DIY Kyoto
• Evince Technology Ltd
• EVO Electric Ltd
• HydroVenturi Limited
• Integrated Environmental Solutions Ltd
• Intelligent Energy
• Isentropic Limited
• Juice Technology Limited
• Metalysis
• Microsharp Corporation Ltd
• ModCell Limited
• Nexeon Ltd
• Oxford Catalysts Group plc
• PassivSystems Ltd
• Xeros Ltd
Full details of the mission are available at www.cleanandcoolmission.com
Whist in Silicon Valley, you can keep up to date on how the companies are doing, who they’re meeting and what they’re getting out of the experience by following the Clean and Cool Mission blog at www.cleanandcoolmission.com/blog. This will be kept regularly updated with blog posts, video and audio content from the organisers and entrepreneurs.
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