In through the outfield

The World Bank ‘Doing Business’

A recent special report in the Economist on entrepreneurship included an article on the World Bank annual Doing Business report.

I have to confess to not having heard of this before. It is a ‘naming and shaming’ report which rates countries for their business-friendliness, by measuring business regulations, property rights and access to credit.

Since the first edition in 2004 it has resulted in more than 1,000 reforms across the 180 countries on the list.

Most of these have been in developing countries, with the top reformers of 2007-8 being Senegal, Burkina Faso and Botswana.

However, the developed nations have not stood still either, with efforts to make it easier to start a new business. In Canada it is now possible to start a business using just one form.

According the the Economist article, Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation, suggests the World Bank may have done more good by compiling the Doing Business lists than a significant part of the enormous funds it has lent over the years.

The Chartered Management Institute ‘does’ the Apprentice

Interesting to see that the Chartered Management Institute has started it’s first official blog specifically to comment on the latest series of the Apprentice on BBC television.

I know the show is very popular so I assume they are using this factor to attract visitors. However, they are right in thinking the show is an ideal opportunity to illustrate how management should be applied to solve problems. This in stark contrast to what happens most of the time on the show. The very first episode The Demise of Anita provided a lead-in to the role of budgeting.

I think there were several management related issues covered in last night’s show, but with the demise of Anita revolving around her budgeting problems that seems a sensible topic to focus on for this weeks Apprentice blog.

A budget is a statement of expected expenditure or income that has been allocated under a set of headings, for a set period of time. Budgets = incomings as well as outgoings

Sadly you feel that this was the element of budgeting that was severely lacking in yesterday’s task.  Anita was very diligently counting up how much was being spent by the girls, but no mention was given to exactly how much they expected to make.  The checklist outlines some steps you should be taking when drawing up your budget (the following is just a sample).

1. Identify the key plans and objectives - In its simplest sense, to make more money than the other team
2. Determine the key or limiting factors - You only have 1 day’s trading so payback period is very important.
3. What is coming in? - What are your revenue forecasts?  Indeed were there any revenue forecasts?  On this count the boys were much better and factored this into their pitch before heading out to meet the mini cab company.
4. What is going out? - This part Anita seemed to have covered.  She knew exactly how much was being spent.
5. Think through the fixed and variable costs - Last night’s task was simplified in this sense as no labour costs or anything were factored in.
6. Collect all the information you need to set this year’s budget - Another failing for the girls (and to be fair the boys too) here, they gathered no information on how much a car wash could fetch, and therefore how many cars they would need to wash to break even when the money was being spent.  Only in the car afterwards did they question the budget spend and how many cars they would need to wash to break even.
7. Ask some important questions - Basic risk analysis is required when setting a budget, what factors could throw your predictions?  Are your assumptions suitably accurate?
Of course the producers engineer the aprentice activities (usually by allowing insufficient planning time) to ensure things go wrong to provide entertainment for the viewers.

One of the things that really annoys me about the show is the misleading impression it creates of business life. For instance teams really need to work together and support each other when things go wrong. A blame culture is not conducive to business success. Even more misleading is the way ‘Srallen’ is able to fire staff on a whim. Even in these recessionary times HR policies rightly give protection to staff, unless they have received previous warnings, or for gross misconduct. The I am being fired website has more details on what happens in the real world.

Professor James Boyle and the fight for Creative Commons

I have already blogged about Professor Boyle’s latest book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. And having heard him interviewed by Laurie Taylor on a recent Thinking Allowed broadcast on Radio 4, I was excited to hear he would be speaking in to staff in the British Library.

He did not disappoint, being erudite, passionate and amusing in his explanation of the rapid (since the 1970’s) and significant (from 28 years to life + 70 years) expansion of copy right restrictions.

One of his most memorable points for me was the deafening silence from the US Copyright Office when asked how he could make his work copyright free. His point being, that the law has been extended to cover all creative works with no regard to the views of the authors who want to allow access.

He talked about my current favourite ‘book’ on copyright issues, produced by his colleagues at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. It is actually a comic called Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW? and is freely available.

He asked how many in the audience would have predicted that the open and non-hierarchical approach underlying the Wikipedia project would have resulted in a resource as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica, but twenty times the size, and updated in real-time.

Finally he explained the role of the Creative Commons movement in making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

Update to our first Free Live Webcast - Mothers of Invention

After a few minor technical hitches I managed to watch the webcast of our Mothers of Invention Inspiring Entrepreneurs event last night.

Although the image was small and a bit grainy the sound was excellent and it almost felt like being there, particularly during the question and answer session.

Highlights for me were Liz Jackson the founder of Great Guns Marketing who had left school with just one GCSE, but through the help her first boss who became her mentor and an unofficial apprenticeship, has become a leader in her field.

Her top tips were:

• Don’t be a nearly man or women. Make every single day count. Pull your finger out and get on with it.
• Don’t believe in luck - Her definition of luck is where hard work meets opportunity.
• And a quote from Henry Ford I had not heard before. “If you think you can, or you think you can’t; you are absolutely right“

It was also fascinating to hear how difficult it was for Gurinder Chadha the director of Bend it Like Beckham to get funding for the film, even with a previous success under her belt.

Our first Free Live Webcast - Mothers of Invention

I am proud of the way my colleagues in the British Library have adopted and experimented with Web 2.0 and social media in the past three years.

We have activities in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin, a free e-course on intellectual property, a good old fashioned monthly e-newsletter and of course our two blogs on business and intellectual property.

Our next venture is into the world of live webcasting starting on Tuesday 10 March 2009 at 6.30pm (UK time) with Mothers of Invention.

Not only will you be able to watch our Inspiring Entrepreneurs event online at website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/, but also put questions to our panel of experts.

	Gurinder Chadha OBE is one of Britain’s most successful film directors, best known for Bend it Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice and, most recently, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Born in Kenya, she began her career at the BBC before making a huge impact with Bhaji on the Beach in 1993.
	Liz Jackson MBE started her telemarketing business Great Guns at the age of 25, with few educational qualifications and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. In the first year of her business, she lost her eyesight, yet has gone on to build a £3m-turnover business with eight offices across the UK.
	Laura Tenison conceived her children’s clothes business in 1993 after a severe car accident in France; the woman in the hospital bed beside her complained about the standard of mail-order kids’ clothes. Today JoJo Maman Bebe is an award-winning multi million-pound retailer with stores across the UK.
	Dee Wright’s business The Hairforce is an innovative nit and lice removal service.  After just three sessions with one of Dee’s “lice assassins” both the nits and the lice are gone, and children are treated like VIPs in a massage chair; the whole experience is fuss-free. Dee supports female staff by providing a job which they can fit around school hours.

The British Library is bringing together four trailblazing British women for an evening of inspiration in celebration of International Women’s Month. If you can’t make the event, you can still join in the debate by watching our live webcast.

In partnership with HSBC, the world’s local bank.

Our speakers:
Gurinder Chadha OBE, director of Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice
Liz Jackson MBE, founder of telemarketing business Great Guns
Laura Tenison MBE, who runs award-winning mother and baby brand JoJo Maman Bebe
Dee Wright, the brains behind The Hairforce, an innovative nit and lice removal service

How to watch:
How: Visit the website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/
Date: Tuesday 10 March 2009
Time: 18.30 - 20.00 (GMT)

Don’t worry if you can’t make this time; you’ll be able to view the webcast after the event.

The EasyClean Squeeze Roller Cleaner

I spent a few hours this weekend painting part of my kitchen. Historically I have had a love hate relationship with decorating using a roller.

The system is an incredibly quick and efficient way of getting paint onto a flat surface, whether it be a wall or ceiling. I certainly don’t recommend using anything else for a ceiling, having had paint dripped in my eye whilst using a brush in the past.

However, the advantages of the roller based approach come crashing down when it comes to cleaning up at the end of the job. In theory you can dismantle the roller and just rinse it under a cold tap. In practice you get paint all over yourself and spend tens of minutes desperately trying to get the roller clean of paint. Eventually you give up and leave it somewhere warm to dry. The next day you discover the roller is rock hard from residual paint and has to be thrown away. Sometimes you can’t even keep the roller usable between coats of paint.

But now thanks to an incredibly simple invention I can clean and re-use my rollers to my hearts content. I need to thank Ed Adamson (the inventor) and the Harris paint brush company for making roller painting an almost completely pain-free experience. Apart of course from those times when one leans against a still wet wall.

Although I am straying into my colleague Steve Van Dulken’s territory here with his Patent Search Blog, I couldn’t resist looking up the patent application for the invention on esp@cnet (the European Patent Office) and found WO2008077469 (A1) A ROLLER SLEEVE CLEANER.

However I also came across lots of other weird and wonderful variations, some of which I have included below.

Improve your IP awareness with the British Library and the IPO

Thanks to the good folks at the Intellectual Property Office and my colleagues at the British Library you have a choice of routes to improve your IP awareness.

We have two courses covering the Basics of Intellectual Property Protection and Searching IP databases.

The Intellectual Property Office have introduced an IP Healthcheck which consists of four questionnaires covering Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Copyright.

You can choose which of the four questionnaires in the IP Healthcheck you want to complete by clicking ‘Go to the first question’. If you’re not sure whether a questionnaire is relevant to you, click ‘Is this for me’.

Once you have answered all the questions, you will see a summary of our recommended Action Points, based on what you have told us. You can click ‘Why/how’ for an explanation of each Action Point, and how you can put it into practice. Your summary also contains links to further useful information and resources.

You can download the full Confidential Report as a .pdf, or ask us to email it to you.

Every Confidential Report is automatically stored in Your Report Library. You can return and view it as often as you like.

You cannot change your answers once you have completed an IP Healthcheck questionnaire, but you can retake it as many times as you like, to see what the Confidential Report says if you give different answers. We recommend that you keep a note of the answers you gave for each Confidential Report.

If you cannot complete a health check questionnaire, it will still be saved in Your Report Library, marked as ‘Uncompleted’. You can revisit it later, and complete it.

India moves to patent yoga poses

On first inspection this would be filed under ‘Friday fun’, although it was drawn to my attention by an email from a customer who wanted the official British Library view on the Daily Telegraph story.

Needles to say, we don’t have a view, but I have to say I was amazed to to discover that yoga positions could be protected:

“Copyrights over yoga postures and trademarks on yoga tools have become rampant in the West. Till now, we have traced 130 yoga-related patents in the US. We hope to finish putting on record at least 1500 yoga postures by the end of 2009,” said Dr V.P Gupta, of the CSIR, who created the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.

And even more surprised to hear how the Indian government has reacted:

So far a team of yoga gurus from nine schools have worked with government officials and 200 scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to scan 35 ancient texts including the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Bhagwad Gita, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to register each native pose.

The topic even has its own Wikipedia page entitled Yoga Piracy.

Success Story of the Month: Heather Gorringe at Wiggly Wigglers

As the Business & IP Centre continues to go from strength to strength we have begun to celebrate our success stories; those entrepreneurs who we have helped to launch or grow their business.

This month’s success is Heather Gorringe who founded Wiggly Wigglers in 1990, and now has a turnover of £2.5m, selling composters, plants, tools, worms, and much more.

Heather benefited from an advice session with Dame Anita Roddick, through our Ask an Expert programme. She also used our market research to investigate her industry and find her niche.

Digitising the British Library one page at a time

Lynne Brindley the British Library Chief Executive has been campaigning hard for the cause mass digitisation of content in order to facilitate access for all and preservation - Dame Lynne Brindley challenges Government on Digital Britain

However scanning books to turn them into digital ‘assets’ is not as easy as might be thought. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the part of the library where the work is currently in progress, and was impressed by both the scale and complexity of the challenge.

Recently I came across a YouTube video from German TV which gives a revealing insight into the project.