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Series 2, Episode 2 - Robert Baldock of Clustre.net the innovation brokers

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In Series 2, Episode #2 we hear from Robert Baldock founder of https://www.clustre.net/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbaldock/

In this episode we cover his journey including:

  • What Innovation means to Robert
  • Being a partner at Accenture
  • The power of networks and relationships
  • Love of Formula 1 

Share in his gifts of wisdom and experience & join us as we seek to discover what makes this inspiring founder tick.

Host:  Biraj Nakarja
Co Hosts: Tijana Momirov & Pedro Guimarães

Note: this episode was first recorded as a webinar in Feb 2021 and converted to a podcast so we could all enjoy it away from our screens.

#neverstoplearning #followyourdreams #tribe

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UNKNOWN:

Music.

SPEAKER_04:

Welcome to Canopy Community's Founder Friday, the podcast series that brings real-life experiences and inspirational stories from founders and innovators across the globe. My name's Biraj Nekarja, and together with my co-hosts Tiana Momrov and Pedro Guimérez, we bring you a diverse group of founders from varying industries who've been kind enough to share with us their journeys and what makes them tick. We really hope you enjoy this episode, and so without further ado, let's dive in and get ready to learn. Welcome everybody to the first episode of the 2021 Founder Friday Canopy podcast series. And we are delighted today to be joined by Robert Baldock, who's the managing director and founder of Cluster, the innovation brokers, who's got some amazing stories and amazing learning for all of us to benefit from. So welcome, Robert. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for

SPEAKER_04:

inviting me. And of course, as always, from the last series, you guys will already be familiar with the amazing Tiana and Pedro who are my co-hosts today. Tiana, Pedro, do you guys want to say hi?

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, thank you, Pedro. I'm looking forward to this new season.

SPEAKER_05:

Fantastic. Hi, Pedro. How are you today? I'm perfect. Fine. Thank you for the invitation and looking forward to another exciting season and this time hosted by you and hopefully we'll be able to help you. And it's a pleasure meeting Robert also.

SPEAKER_04:

Excellent. Excellent. I'm always envious when we have Tiana and Pedro on the call because I always see this amazing sun shining from Tiana's window in sunny Brazil. And then Pedro is also in sunny Portugal. And I'm stuck in Berkshire here where it's grey and not quite raining but still it's not quite Brazil or Portugal but here we go so Robert thank you so much for joining us today before we get going I just wanted to make a bit of a disclaimer that we are all working from home at the moment and so if you do hear any we're in the middle of homeschooling so if you hear any screaming or crying in the background that's probably my wife I was going to say because she's trying to deal with my six year old but we're real people and We all have stuff going on. So apologies if there are any background noise. But without further ado, let's get going. So Robert, welcome to the Founder Friday podcast series. This is all about sharing amazing experiences from founders across the globe. And I know that you have an amazing story, an amazing journey up to the point of founding and managing directing Cluster. So why don't you give us a bit of an overview of Robert and tell us a bit more about yourself.

SPEAKER_00:

So innovation is my passion. From a very early age I've always looked at things it seems differently from anyone else and one of the things that marks up innovators from like the rest of people is that we tend to wear different glasses, we tend to look at things differently and so Right from an early age, if an idea was put to me, I would always be looking for a different way of doing something. In my genes are a couple of things. One is a passion for finding an innovative way through something, and a passion for knowledge, and perhaps the overuse of one word in particular, which is why.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I probably make a lot of people sick and tired from time to time because I'm never satisfied with any answer. And I keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And that's one of the characteristics you've got to have, I think, to be successful in any business, not just an innovation business. You've got to challenge things and not be prepared to go for the standard, straightforward approach. Look for something that's novel and innovative. Now, that said, when I graduated from university, I joined a huge company. now known as Accenture. And I rose through the ranks in that company and I was there for 23 years and I was a senior partner there. And Accenture, in the time I was there, was basically automating the back office. You can't be very innovative when you're automating a back office. So I did my apprenticeship, I did my time, but I basically started to agitate the leadership and said, really, we should be looking at the front office. That's where you can make a difference. Okay, so you're automating the back office, you're cutting costs, you're streamlining the internal processes, but what about the interface with the customer? And so I set up what was very unique in those days, an innovation team within a mighty company that was focused on selling huge multi-billion pound projects over a 10-year period. And I started to do some pretty fun things. And this company that I used to work with, Accenture, is huge. It's like 400,000 people now. I think they've grown to have the largest advertising agency in the world now because they've just been acquiring anybody and everybody. And they are trying to be a supermarket to the needs of every single large corporate. Everything you could possibly need or want is within our means to deliver to you. And would you believe it that I started to sort of think differently in the last 10 years or so. I became more and more convinced that if a large corporate is going to do something impactful and quickly, the last people they should turn to is another large corporate.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That they really ought to start to look to work with some of these more nimble niche firms that were out there who were able to, speedboats versus cruise liners. That's my analogy. A cruise liner or a tanker takes a mile to stop. A speedboat can turn on a sixpence, as we used to say here in England. And so I went, I guess you could call me a sort of gamekeeper turned poacher. I went from selling what Accenture could do, which was anything for large corporates, to basically saying the opposite, which is you don't want to work with Accenture and IBM and all those big companies. You really want to start to work with some of these smaller niche companies.

SPEAKER_04:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

And they said, yeah, okay, we buy that, but there are so many around there. Who the hell do we engage with? Yeah. And I went away and started to think about that. And over the course of a few meals and a few drinks with a few friends, I started to develop a concept. And to those people old enough on this conversation to know this, we became like an elite dating agency. And I don't mean match.com or Tinder. I mean, I know Pedro well enough to know what sort of person I should be putting Pedro to because I know the other person well. If I put them together, there's a good chance they're going to get on and whatever. So we thought if... If we can persuade enough large corporates that they should work with some of these smaller companies, if we can bridge the gap between them not knowing somebody and them not knowing who they can trust and them not knowing whether those small companies can actually help these big companies, because there's another analogy I use here, oil and water. Small companies and big companies don't mix that easily unless they've been at it for a while. Maybe we could have a useful role in life. And so we conceived Cluster as a broker, a broker in the sense that you broker meetings between, on one hand, large corporates that have complex problems or tremendous opportunities they want to pursue, and smaller niche companies that have a tremendous in-depth capability but don't know people in these large corporates and don't know how to interact with them

SPEAKER_02:

in

SPEAKER_00:

order to frame a solution and then to deliver it quickly. So we broke a meeting between what we call innovation seekers and innovation suppliers.

SPEAKER_04:

Amazing. And so you mentioned there about the supermarket analogy and these large corporates in particular being able to deliver almost anything to anyone. What's the biggest challenge then to be able to get them convinced that actually... you shouldn't be doing this yourself internally and that there are other organisations, as you say, much smaller, more nimble, maybe sort of start up or scale up in terms of their journey and that we should maybe be considering some of these organisations rather than the defaults of, well, but we can just do that ourself.

SPEAKER_00:

Trust. Say you're in a dinner party and you're bemoaning the fact you can't find a good plumber.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And one of the other people that I did the party said, but I've been using Joe. And Joe has done a marvellous job. What are you going to do, Parrish?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

you're going to get Joe's telephone number, right? Absolutely, yeah. So one thing working for Accenture taught me was develop and maintain relationships.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

My son saw my phone once. He saw that I had 5,000 telephone numbers on it. He said, that's an awful lot of restaurants and pubs and bars, dad. And I said, no, those are business contacts.

SPEAKER_02:

He

SPEAKER_00:

said, how did you manage to amass 4,000, 5,000 telephone numbers? I said, over time and by continuously extending my network and maintaining contact with those people. So throughout my career, and I've been mentored by so many great people in my time, I was encouraged to develop and maintain relationships and build trust. And so all I had to do was use what I'd done so far to convince the CIO, the CFO, the CEO of a large corporate that I could help them solve their problem because I knew well enough the capabilities of the firm that are in our ecosystem, know that they were not going to let you down. But as a backstop, We do due diligence on the firms that make up our ecosystem. And if they have not helped at least three corporates all the way to success, we won't represent them and introduce them to people we know.

SPEAKER_04:

And it comes back to the trust piece there, isn't

SPEAKER_00:

it? And that's how we build on that trust. And we speak to those three large corporates that they give us as names. And if we don't get 10 out of 10... Each of those three, we won't represent them. We won't introduce them to our clients. So there's a set of mechanisms that we've put in place that will make sure that we're not going to let our clients down. And we have only one success measure, which is 100% success. Right. We cannot accept anything less than 100%. Otherwise, we're not going to be asked to solve a problem again. Of course. A problem does a bad job once. it could be the last time they do a bad job, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. And you're definitely not going to refer or call that plumber back again, I guess. So no, that's fantastic. Tiana, Pedro, please feel free to jump in if you have any questions or anything you guys would like to ask.

SPEAKER_01:

I would actually like to follow up, Robert, now that you mentioned the value of the connections and we really value the connections within Canopy as well. How did the networking work back then before the LinkedIn and before speed networking over Zoom, et cetera? So when you actively want to network What was the way to do it?

SPEAKER_00:

So I carry a blood transfusion card. It says my blood group is cappuccino. And you met people in cafes. Yeah. You met them in the canteen in your building. And of course, I've not been able to do any of that. You know, it's since March 23rd, day to first lockdown in the UK. But I'm still maintaining... all the time I put into it, all the cups of coffee I drank. Plus I calendar myself to reach out to every single person I know every so often and just check in. And part of being successful is to basically do a number of important things on a very routine basis. And one of those is check in and ask.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's a great point because many people complain that the network they make on the networking events never converts. And I guess this is exactly what many people do wrong. They never check in, they never maintain, so it remains just a contact.

SPEAKER_00:

And don't make every contact, can you give me some business? I was earlier today, I was saying to Bryce, I've done seven video calls already today, right? With clients. And one of them I hadn't spoken to for a while. He's the CMO of a huge corporation. And they've just finished an acquisition. It went live on Monday. We didn't talk about business in the half an hour. We talked about COVID and the challenges of COVID. But then I said, let's book one for a few weeks from now where we can talk business. He said, yeah, great. So you have to know when to talk business and when to basically just be developing and maintaining relationships.

SPEAKER_04:

I think also sort of that philosophy of people by people and being active in their mind. So don't just reach out to someone when you need something, as you say, reach out and say- You don't know why you're calling them. Exactly, yeah, so- How are you doing? And, you know, how's your family? And, you know, what's been happening? How have you been coping during COVID? It's a simple sort of courteous check-in, as you say. I think I love the word check-in there because it's not a business meeting. It's just checking in to say, hi, how you doing?

SPEAKER_00:

By the way, you know, we talk about B2B. There is no B2B. It's B2P. Every contact is human to human.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

It just so happens I work with one company and you work with another.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I love that. Pedro, have you got anything to add?

SPEAKER_05:

Yes. First, just to congratulate Robert. I love your business and it sounds marvelous. And you have a great career. And as to buying to humans, that's something I tend to never forget because fiscal numbers don't buy things, only people do. And it's great when you have a good relationship because it goes with us, even if you change jobs, which is nice. But my question was prior to that on your screening process. You have to find companies that are successfully 10 out of 10, at least for three times on large corporations, which ends up being like a hard place to be for smaller companies or very recent companies, because actually you are putting in contact, I would say, in some established companies with large companies. Do you see that as a threat or as part of the business?

SPEAKER_00:

So we don't work with startups per se. because they won't necessarily have a product. They won't necessarily have had the experience of mixing oil and water. And therefore we tend to work with more established companies, but some of our companies that are in our ecosystem are like 30 people. There's another one that's 1500, right? But that 1500 person firm just does one thing and they do it exceptionally well across the globe. So we've got a fairly unique business. It's an old fashioned business. You know, we're not Tinder.com. We're not even Match.com. We're sort of, you know, the person-to-person dating agency. So, yeah, I mean, people always have options. But we tend, we're old-fashioned. We believe in the good old trust and who you know and what you know. But it also helps enormously that the people on my team have seen a lot and done a lot in their time. Literally, you can't become a member of Cluster unless you've got gray hair.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And you might think that's not very diverse, but there's experience that goes with that. And so we're deploying some hard-learned experience to make sure that we're matching people with the right people.

SPEAKER_04:

And from an industry perspective, do you cover various different industries and therefore that experience that you obtain within the cluster, it literally spans across numbers of different industries and areas?

SPEAKER_00:

We... We span the entire industrial range. Right. And the companies we represent, we require them to be industry neutral.

SPEAKER_04:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And there are several reasons for this, one of which is if they're industry neutral, we can take them to many, many places. But also, we think people become rather sort of short-sighted in this whole process of embracing. You've got terms like fintech and regtech. I liken that to looking down a telescope. You look down a telescope, your field of vision at the end is not very far and wide. You'll miss things happening either side of you. And one of the things about innovation is there are things that are going on in one part of the world or one industry that could be applied to yours. Absolutely. I'll give you a great example of this. There was a company that ran an innovation challenge recently, and they were making these sort of crisps that sat one on top of the other. I won't use a brand name. in a container, right? And they were trying to figure out what ways they were taking the oil off the crisps so they weren't greasy. And they ran an open innovation challenge, and a violinist won the competition. She suggested using sound waves to knock off the oil. Now, they had been thinking in terms of, you know, tissues and temperatures and shaking, They would never come across this idea if they just focused on the traditional suppliers to that industry.

SPEAKER_04:

That is innovation in

SPEAKER_00:

a nutshell. It's applying. And some innovations are so simple. You don't have to come up with a complex solution to solve a complex problem.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You just have to be prepared to look far and wide.

SPEAKER_04:

And how... What sort of... What sort of recommendations and guidance would you give to maybe people out there that have got some great ideas, but they just don't know what to do with them? Given you've got years of extensive experience, both in the corporate world, but also as an entrepreneur yourself, how does one even get started if they've got an idea that they want to take forward?

SPEAKER_00:

I've got a list of what I call Robert's Ten Commandments

SPEAKER_04:

here. Okay, fantastic. Nicely set up there.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. We didn't even discuss this. I know. That's brilliant. If you like, I can take you through

SPEAKER_04:

them. Please do. Please do. I think that'd be really interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

The first message I deliver to people is focus on someone's key problem or opportunity.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Human beings will thank you for getting rid of frustration more than they will for bringing something that's going to delight them. Take away pain, you give pleasure. Solve a problem, you give a solution. Embrace an opportunity, you give advantage. So try to find something that is causing pain, frustration to lots of people. The more people suffering the pain, the bigger the opportunity. Yeah. The fewer that are suffering it, the more limited the opportunity.

SPEAKER_04:

Love that.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's the first piece of advice. The second piece of advice is develop your solution in conjunction with the people who have the problem. Too many people try to conceive the solution away from the intended recipient.

UNKNOWN:

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't just do a prototype and then show it to your customer group or potential customer group. Involve them. Get them involved. Developing. Humans can't tell you what they want, but they can tell you whether it's what they want.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

So I can't tell you, by the way, I don't know whether this is just a British thing or whether it's pride or just, I don't know, but the number of large corporates that still develop solutions without involving their customers is a total amazement to me.

SPEAKER_04:

It is mind-boggling, actually, isn't it, given that there's so much experience out there now and so much is based on that end-user experience in particular. I think I saw a stat recently where within... a number of seconds people make a decision on whether they're going to continue to use that app on their phone or not, for example. If that very first interaction or very first experience with, especially in the digital world, if it doesn't suit or doesn't work or sit right with that person, that's it, right? You've lost them.

SPEAKER_00:

When I was at Accenture, I was notorious. If I received a draft report, if I did not like the first page, I did not read the second page.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You've got to start. It's a bit like estate agents, realtors will tell you, if the walk to your front door is ugly, you've lost the sale already.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, it doesn't matter what's inside, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Accenture used to pay the highest amount of money to their receptionists. Right. Any company in any industry. Yeah. Because that was your first point. Yeah, it

SPEAKER_04:

makes so much sense. Makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_00:

You've got to really focus, to your point, on the very start of the experience. Human beings have very little patience.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Very low patience.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. If I may follow up on that, Robert, because I work with startup founders and one of the struggles I always have is how to make them launch their products sooner because they always want to keep adding more and more features. They want to make it better. And I realize that usually it's because they're emotionally somehow attached to their product idea. And they always feel that it's not ready yet to be like fully shining in front of the others. And it's always this struggle between us at I would like to hear your experience. How do you deal with that? And what would you think is the main reason why the businesses keep delaying this launch to the potential users?

SPEAKER_00:

So humans over-engineer everything. Take your smartphone. I think I read a study that said you use 18% of the functionality of that.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Think about your car, all right? and all the functions on your touchscreen. So we've just got into the habit, in my mind, of over-engineering things. But look at what COVID has forced us to do. We got very little notice in the UK that we had to basically close offices and work from home. So suddenly we had to move our workforces from established workplaces to a home. And everyone's got different levels of bandwidth and mobile phone signal and distractions. London has a big issue, which is flat shares. All these people trying to do their company work with other people trying to do their company work in a single kitchen. So that basically said we have to throw something together. And I'm hoping that several things will survive beyond COVID, one of which is the 80-20 rule. You do not need 100%. for something to be successful. And, you know, you'd be familiar with the whole notion of an MVP. You'd be amazed on, so long as you can show regular updates, what people will accept in the first instance. And we represent the firm that did the COVID app in the UK, the second most downloaded app in the UK after Zoom.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? And they worked out the other day it has saved 600,000 people from getting COVID. because it basically works out whether you're in close proximity to someone that's tested positive. They did that in six weeks. Six weeks. But what they put in place was a design that allowed them to keep adding new features incrementally. And if you're developing an app, make sure that you don't develop the app in such a way that the features have to be diverged in a certain order. And that you can't layer them on without having a knock-on effect. So you have to look very carefully at isolating your components and making them, we call it, give each of those components an on-off switch. So if you're talking about apps, there are very specific things you need to learn about how to be able to go out with something that's not perfect, but will start you off. And then you just keep folding in new releases.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, testing and learning, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Testing, learn, develop. Develop on the go. The bank company, by the way, developed a global mobile banking app for HSBC. So HSBC is in every country in the world, more or less. So it's one app, so it has to be available 24-7. They liken maintaining that app to turning off an engine of a plane in flight. You can't have the plane

SPEAKER_02:

in the

SPEAKER_00:

sky, but you've got to be able to do it. So this is the nature of some of the firms we represent. They really know... the ins and outs of developing things incrementally.

SPEAKER_05:

Amazing. Robert, the story you just shared with us is pretty common on real startups. Probably more common in startups that are founded by serial entrepreneurs, people that have had exits before. Doesn't your screening process of you have to succeed first with three large corporations cut off this huge amount of talent and experience that is being cut off just because the new company is not old enough to showcase that, to pass your screening process?

SPEAKER_00:

Of course. You know, from time to time I wonder if we had... if we should have passed on a company that did not meet our requirements. But what I can't afford to do is have just one of them let one of my clients down. If they're good enough, they will survive anyway. They shouldn't depend on us. We augment their efforts to generate business. We are not their 100% sales engine. We're there to give them opportunities with large corporations, with someone who's got a C in their job title. which will hopefully lead to a bigger, faster conversation.

SPEAKER_04:

I guess in some ways there's almost like if they have off their own back already generated three successful case studies, then there's already proof in the pudding there that they know what they're doing. They're good at their particular niche or whatever it may be. And then on top of that, you're adding another layer of screening, which just gives you even more certainty there as well, I guess.

SPEAKER_00:

So, Baraj, before we started this officially, I was telling you I had a joke about Stuart.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, go ahead. I

SPEAKER_01:

need to hear

SPEAKER_05:

this.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm going to take notes. For the benefit of our listeners, Stuart Noakes is the co-founder of Canopy and a very good friend of Robert's. And he's not on this podcast today, which is why we're more than

SPEAKER_00:

happy to hear stories about him. I think he might have got a notification now.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm really looking forward to hearing

SPEAKER_00:

this one. What I haven't said yet is that the firms we represent, they've got to basically be solving today's hot problems. It's got to be something that's keeping people awake because otherwise I'm not going to get any time with the people if it's not a big problem. Most of the companies we represent have come to us through recommendation. Only rarely do we go out and survey the world and literally work it down to, we need to have this company on our books. Anyway, someone said to me one day, I know exactly who it was, you've got to meet this company run by this guy called Stuart. They do testing. And I went, boring. How the hell can I get anyone that I know on the client side interested in meeting someone that does testing? And then they said, but they do crowd testing. Then he had me. And that's the start of a beautiful relationship with Stuart.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, absolutely. And it's brilliant, right? Because actually that kind of takes it full circle to what were you saying in terms of listening to the end user. Because the benefit of crowds testing or any crowd type of organization is you are involving the end user. Actually, when I was in the corporate world, we... through Stuart, funny enough, implemented crowd testing into our business. And you've got real users with real mobile phones that are some on Wi-Fi, some on 3G, some on 4G. Asia, Europe. All over the world. Yeah, absolutely. Africa. And you cannot get any better real user feedback than something like that. So that's really

SPEAKER_00:

interesting to hear. I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for that word crowd testing. Crowd testing,

SPEAKER_04:

absolutely. I wouldn't

SPEAKER_00:

be

SPEAKER_04:

on this call right now. Absolutely. And sometimes maybe it's just that one phrase or one term in particular that hooks you, right? Absolutely. So I'm really keen to... Go ahead, Deirdre, sorry.

SPEAKER_05:

Robert. Your relationship with your clients ends up on introducing these companies that you represent, or you actually help them out to interact. Let me just add this tag. Sometimes large corporations are not ready to interact with very innovative companies to be as kind as I can. So does your service also include this training on relationships or you just match the guys like Tinder and you move to another customer?

SPEAKER_00:

You ask a very important question. One of the skills I got taught at Accenture was helping my clients, A, formulate the problem, Because sometimes they actually have formulated the problem incorrectly. And B, sometimes telling them what they didn't want to hear. I once turned down a client that wanted to throw money at a project because I didn't think the project made sense. And I got a clip around the ear from my partner when I did that. But when the client said, what are you doing that for? He's just giving me the best bit of advice anyone can give me, which is it doesn't make sense to do this. So he gave us another project elsewhere. Einstein once said, if I had 60 minutes to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes understanding it and developing it. Getting the right problem is the biggest challenge before you go to solution mode. And too many people will say, right, I understand, I'm off. And so we do a lot of work in helping our clients. We consult with our clients and we basically try to help them shape the problem and try to determine whether they're thinking of the right path.

SPEAKER_04:

That's amazing. And it's so true as well that it's not just a simple, here's A, meet B, and then kind of leave it there, right? There is another layer of interaction that you play in that relationship there.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, the second part of the question, I think, was having made the first meeting, do we go in and hope that they drive off into the sunset together? No.

UNKNOWN:

No.

SPEAKER_00:

because some people can't drive and some people don't know how to behave. And so we sort of metaphorically get into a helicopter and we fly overhead and we watch the two parties. And from time to time, I have to drop down in my helicopter, roll up my sleeves and talk to the ladies in the scale-up saying, you are talking gibberish. You're throwing acronyms at this person. You're giving them gibberish. Too much detail. And so, yeah, there's a fair amount of help that we

SPEAKER_04:

offer. Fantastic. And you're right. I think technology moves so quickly as well that these new startups are so into that level of detail and kind of the new things that maybe some of these larger organizations haven't yet been exposed to or understand. And it's trying to, it's a different set of terminologies and vocabulary almost that's used and almost a translator. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Promoting solutions rather than fixing problems.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Robert, if I may follow up on that, I'm really interested in these dynamics between startups and corporations. So I would like to know how it used to be back then at the beginning of your career, early days of Accenture. Did it start as like... start a fish organization that they incorporated, or they knew from the beginning they want the corporate setup. How did they look at the startups at that time? How it is right now in comparison to that? And finally, how do you think the future of this dynamics will go?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you know, these gray hairs are not because of genetic problems. I'm old, right? And so when I worked for Accenture, there was no word called startup, right? There was no concept. Of course, there were SMEs. You know, we're talking now chalk and cheese. You know, the UK, I think the UK has the second highest number of unicorns after, it's got the highest number of unicorns in the whole of Europe. And I think after American China, it's like number three. I would never have dreamed or dreamt of that becoming a possibility. The British have been very good at inventing things, lousy, at commercializing them. You know, I can't, I'm sort of one of these sort of inventor mad people. I can't tell you how many things have been invented by Brits, but they made no money from them. The World Wide Web was invented by a Brit. He's not the richest man in the world, that's Elon Musk, right? And so in the UK, we've had a phenomenal development, and of course, across other countries as well, of startups. So there's been a lot more willingness to embrace these companies. And when I started working, it was not even something considered. In my day, basically there was a saying, you never got fired by hiring IBM. My old company, Accenture, has now got a bigger market valuation than IBM.

SPEAKER_05:

Wow. IBM does not sell the same things as they used to sell those

SPEAKER_00:

days. That's right.

SPEAKER_05:

They sold all those businesses.

SPEAKER_00:

I didn't make anything in those days. So in my day, we didn't have startups. Really, it was not a serious option. Now, the problem that we're trying to solve is there are so many, which ones do you engage with?

SPEAKER_04:

And that's where you add your value, isn't

SPEAKER_00:

it? That's where we add our value. Now, to your earlier point, Pedro, we're bound to miss out on some. Absolutely bound to. But it's not keeping us awake at night because we have enough companies in our portfolio. And all the time people are approaching us asking us to represent them. And it's actually not very likely we will if they're approaching us, unless they've been recommended by someone we know and trust. So we're in this trusted world.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic. I'd like to go back to the 10 points, Robert, actually. So we got to number one. Two

SPEAKER_00:

out of 10. How much time have we got left?

SPEAKER_04:

We've got a bit more time. So solving the problems of people, as you mentioned, don't go straight to the solutions, but understand the problem, what's causing people pain and frustration. And then you mentioned about listening to the customers and the end users.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, involving, listen.

SPEAKER_04:

Involving that.

SPEAKER_00:

Solution design.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

My third was, and this has got to be, almost like the thing that is going to be sounding in your brain every single minute of the day, distinctive and unique, distinctive and unique, distinctive and unique. I have a little test when someone's doing a pitch to me, I put my hand over the logo of their PowerPoint and I say, which company is this? I'm astonished and amazed to this day that people don't spend enough time thinking about and proving that they're distinctive, unique and valuable. There are so many people out there. You need to find a way of standing out. And by the way, I talked about having some great mentors in life. I'll tell you about an amazing bit of advice I got once, which I've been following ever since. I used to do the conference circuit. You'd be on a table. It was the morning. You all had to be on the table at the start. Remember those things called physical meetings? You had to be on the table at the same time as everyone else because you couldn't be upping and going.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And for some reason, maybe I annoyed somebody. I'd be like the last speaker and maybe the one before lunch or the one before the end of the day. Anyone that's done this will know that those are the graveyard shifts. And because the organizers were lazy, they didn't pre-review the decks of the prior speakers to make sure that it was like not duplicating. And there was a number of occasions where it would come to me and it was like no point standing up. because they'd gone through my stuff. So I was just like, beating my chest about this with one of my partner colleagues. He said, it's easy. You have to go in with such a contrarian position, even stupid, that no one could possibly have said the same thing as you. It doesn't have to be right. It just has to be different. And I have been that way all my life since. I've tried to go in on a different angle because then you'll get noted rather than forgotten.

SPEAKER_04:

And I assume you're referring to two elements there. One, your actual kind of solution to the problem, but two, also how you get their attention, how you present yourself as well. I really relate to that. And I, for one... I always used to not want to go to conferences and things like that in a traditional kind of suit, shirt and tie, because actually you're just going to blend in with everybody else. And, you know, the company that I was representing, we were representing technology and why, you know, the people within our business, the culture within our business was not suit and tie. It was more relaxed, it was more casual. And so it always felt a little bit fake going to conferences dressed in a certain way when that's not who we are and that's not how we represent ourselves. And that's just a small example, but I think you're absolutely right. Standing out from the crowd and how can you stand out from the crowd?

SPEAKER_00:

By the way, if a time machine ever appears in front of me,

SPEAKER_04:

I'm

SPEAKER_00:

going to go back in history and find out the person that invented the tie. I can wear one for 23 years, five days a week. I want to kill that person.

SPEAKER_05:

Robert, if I may, I'm going to join your cause because tie is one of those incredible things in mankind because tie, by definition, has no usage. other than showing off. And by definition, males do not show off. So the guy that actually created and made it acceptable to use is a weird personality in the history of the planet. So if you find him, please call me. I'd love to meet him.

SPEAKER_00:

By the way, I'm also the founder of the Anti-Golf Society. I know this may not come with great pleasure to Portuguese people because of your love of golf. But all my colleagues... love golf and they use it to develop in business relationships. Again, I had to be different. I decided to be anti-golf.

SPEAKER_04:

Anti-golf. I love it. I love it. Fantastic. So that distinctive and unique is, I really resonate with that.

SPEAKER_00:

One of my favorite little pictures I use in a lot of PowerPoint decks is a whole bunch of sheep. There's one black one.

SPEAKER_04:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Now the black sheep has a particular meaning, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

But it stands out.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

So stand out. But whatever it takes, stand up.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And actually, you mentioned there about the use of PowerPoint. Actually, even through that, right, maybe don't use PowerPoint, use something else, right? There's other ways that you can present that. And I think that's really valuable insight for a lot of the Canopy community who are potentially, you know, doing pitch work. Don't

SPEAKER_03:

get me going on PowerPoint.

SPEAKER_04:

No, but just in terms of being that unique and distinctive and standing out, that's really valuable.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll give people a good tip. If they want to do PowerPoint, learn about the McKinsey technique for PowerPointing.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Their PowerPoints tell a story.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

If you read the top line of every slide, it's a story. It's a continuation of the story. And underneath the top line is the support for that line.

SPEAKER_04:

For that line.

SPEAKER_00:

So basically tell a story.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

storytelling. Basically put up so many words on the slide that people have to read them. And you're reading them as well. I mean, there's all sorts of do's and don'ts on PowerPoint.

SPEAKER_04:

Of course. So once you've stood out from the crowd, you're distinctive, you're unique, and you've added a different level of value, what's number four in the process?

SPEAKER_00:

Elevator pitch.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

As well as drinking coffee. Build this picture of me, right? I'm drinking coffee. I'm going in and out of elevators. Lifts. Yeah. You've got 15 seconds. Cluster helps large corporates solve their most complex problems or embrace their biggest opportunities quickly and with certainty by introducing to companies that have solved those problems time and time again.

SPEAKER_02:

That's it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's this, I don't know if you've heard of the so what test. If you're never quite sure when you've got it right, keep saying so what until there's no point saying so what because you've got it.

SPEAKER_02:

Because you get it, yeah. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00:

My point number five is never stand still. Finesse. Morph. You know, the world is changing all around us. Adjust. Reposition. Right now, we're talking about hybrid working. That brings new opportunities and new challenges. Securing homeworking. Collaboration. So one of the firms in our portfolio are innovation consultants. Now, historically, you'd think the only way you can innovate is by having everyone in the same room. Guess what? COVID stopped that from happening. So for that company not to go out of business, they had to work out how to innovate where everyone was in a different location. They ended up bidding for and winning a project they would never have won pre-COVID, helping one of the largest makers of confectionery products design new products. They would never bid for this work. They would never have won it because they didn't have a physical presence in the cities where this company had major people deployed.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So adjust, finesse. Morph, never stand still.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, because the world isn't standing still around you, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Then in terms of marketing collaterals, the number six is if you're going to invest in one thing, and obviously if you're a pure startup, this is difficult, case studies. Nothing sells better than a case study that says problem, solution, benefits with the name company on top of it. Forget about a website that basically sings and dance and just entertains. That may be fun, but it's not going to sell your work. Case studies. Actually, I've already done number seven, so what? Number eight, I've mentioned already, which is why. Just keep asking why. Why do you want this? Why should we do this? We did a project for Bloomberg. And Bloomberg were trying to figure out what should be in the next release of something. And for those people who worked in the software industry, you will know how imprecise a process that is. What didn't we put in it last year? What are our competitors doing that we've got to match? What are our users asking for? How much time we got left? How much money we got left? That is the scientific process that every software product company goes through to determine what goes in the next release. Oh, and what works. So our company sat down with Bloomberg and said, there's a different way you should approach this. And they said, what's that? They said, what is the business outcome you're trying to achieve by putting more functionality into this product? Well, we'd like to increase our renewal rate.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, what is it at the moment? What would you like it to be and what would be the incremental value of taking it from value A to value B? Okay, so let's look at these things you're thinking about putting in the product. Which of those will contribute to an increase in the renewal rate? Outcome-based inputs.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Focus on the business goal you want to achieve and work back from that. Don't work forward, work back. I've been on some very impactful training courses in my entire life, one of which is to do with the seven principles of highly effective leaders by the Covey Institute. And the number one thing they teach you is start with the end in mind. And when I went through this course, they give the essence of the course and they give you a bit of homework for your first night. And your homework is you have to write your epitaph for your tombstone.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Because that's the end, right? That's the end, yeah. Ready to serve this life, death and taxes. And taxes might kill you as well. So I didn't sleep or wink that night because I take these things seriously.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I went in the room in the morning with this much written.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then it suddenly came to me. And what I wrote on that piece of paper has shaped my life forever. I never had to say, I wish.

SPEAKER_04:

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

And so start with the end in mind and work backwards.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, it really gives you a focus, doesn't it? It gives you a focus. Like, what do I want to be known for? And that feeling of no regrets, right? And if you can understand what that is, then you essentially live the rest of your life with that in mind, I guess. So it makes so much sense, of course. So outcome-based input, you mentioned.

SPEAKER_00:

Outcome-based

SPEAKER_04:

input, yeah. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

fantastic. Number nine is now. Do it now. Yeah. Don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today. Think that the world is going to end tomorrow, that you can't delay things. We're in a fast-moving world right now. Who knows what it's going to be like going forward? No one can possibly predict what life and business is going to be like. We can formulate some views, but we're entering a hugely uncertain period because we've never been through a crisis like this. It's not a one-off injection that's going to cure. We're going to have to have this every year.

SPEAKER_04:

And I guess to the point that I think, Etiana, you made that a lot of startups in particular may want to over-engineer things initially before deploying for the first time. It's almost like you can then miss the boat, right? It's like someone else has already done it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And then that test and learn, as you say, right? Get something out there and then iterate and then iterate and then iterate. But if you wait to have a fully fledged app with all singing or dancing functions, you probably missed the boat and someone else has done that before you. The

SPEAKER_00:

same company that developed the COVID app and the retail banking app for HSBC has a concept of a walking skeleton.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

It basically makes sure that signals go from the fingers to the brain to the toes. But it's all bone, there's no skin.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because if you can prove that the messages get through, then you start layering on the skin and start adding hair colour and whatever. So that's how they do it. They develop a walking skeleton first and then they layer on

SPEAKER_04:

functionality. Everything else, yeah. It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. When you put it in that term, it makes so much sense. But yet so many people get it wrong and they still don't kind of work with that theory in mind.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And again, the last one I've mentioned already, which is develop and maintain trusted relationships.

SPEAKER_04:

Relationships, yeah. It's all about relationships.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm going to give you also a couple of freebies. Please do. In my day, if you wanted to get the attention of a chief executive, you sent them a fax. Tiana, you won't know what a fax is. You're too young. There is a modern day equivalent of a fax. Conversation? You're partly there. I mean, do you know what these are designed for? Making phone calls. What do we use this very rarely for? Making phone calls. But actually, that's not the answer. The answer is to do something. So, you know, even before COVID, inboxes, right, are just flooded. You send an email to someone you're trying to do business with, Unless there's something in it or unless the filter doesn't push you into junk or unless they've got time on their hands, they ain't going to read it. Guess what they do read? LinkedIn messages. Because they get a notification. That's like receiving a fax. You've got a piece of paper here. It's addressed to you, Pedro. So if you want to get in touch with a prospect or a customer, send them a LinkedIn message. Don't bother emailing them.

SPEAKER_05:

If I may, text messages work exactly like the same. For one reason, it's something you cannot disable on your cell phone. You always receive text messages.

SPEAKER_00:

Unless you block them on WhatsApp, Pedro.

SPEAKER_01:

You can. I disable so many things.

SPEAKER_05:

No, no, no. The question is because of WhatsApp itself, the effectiveness of text messages, plain old text messages, actually work because we receive a lot less. You have to

SPEAKER_00:

find a way to... I used to write operating systems. It's called a supervised interrupt code. You have to basically jump in to catch their attention. In the good old days, It was a fax and now it's a LinkedIn message or a phone call.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah. But I guess, again, coming back to the community and the audience that are listening as well, it's a really valuable piece of information and guidance there, I think, because there may be organisations that you're trying to get in contact with, but you'll have no idea apart from the name of the person or, you know, you're not going to have their telephone number to text them, for example. But you can always friend them on LinkedIn and you can always send a message on LinkedIn, for example.

SPEAKER_00:

What I've also found out, by the way, is if you have an interesting job title or company

SPEAKER_04:

name,

SPEAKER_00:

and you're lazy and you just ask someone to connect with your LinkedIn, they will. I have quadrupled my LinkedIn contacts just by basically saying, connect with me.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, just

SPEAKER_00:

ask. It doesn't work the other way around, by the way. Although I was delighted to accept Tijana's invitation to connect earlier. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04:

And

SPEAKER_00:

if Pedro sends me one too, I'll do that as well.

SPEAKER_05:

With no message. Just with no message.

SPEAKER_00:

No message. I'm lazy. But I've got, you know, the innovation. What's an innovation broker?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And I think that's really interesting. I tell a lot of my coaching clients, actually, So I help a lot of people understand what their talents and their strengths are. And then one of the exercises I get to do with my clients is to create their new title, but create their new title based on the talents and strengths that they've just discovered about themselves so that you're no longer a product manager. You're something else that's actually telling them who you are from a strengths and a talents perspective. And it's brilliant because you see them light up in terms of, oh, wow, that sounds really cool and interesting. And as you say, if it's unusual, then people will be interested to find out more.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the best job titles I gave us recently was CCO, Chief Curiosity Officer.

SPEAKER_04:

Lovely. Lovely. I've got a contact of mine. He's a general manager for a chocolate company called Tony's Chocolony. I don't know if you've ever come across it and it's fantastic. The culture is amazing, but they all have unique titles and his title is chief chocolate officer or Lord Tony the third or something like that. It's like, they all have a very unique title and it's, it's brilliant because again, it just, gets you interested and wants to find out more. So I completely agree. And that goes straight back to your number three, which is about being different as well. If you introduce yourself with a different title,

SPEAKER_00:

you stand out from the crowd. I'll link something else I said earlier. I'm reminded of the time, I think it was Estee Lauder, there was a new chief executive came in and she basically had all the team in the room and she said to them, so what business were you in? And this is all making perfumes. He said, no, you're so wrong. We're in the dream business. So you need to basically raise your sights. Products can be commoditized. Products are bought on price. And sometimes on packaging, again, I'm old enough to remember where people used to buy a bottle of water because of its color and shape and size. The water was irrelevant. We were buying something different. So raise your sights above a product. Look at what aim or ambition or mission or frustration you're trying to address.

SPEAKER_04:

Fantastic, fantastic. Robert, that's been really, really helpful. And I think, you know, anybody that, no matter what stage of their business that they are in, no matter what role or responsibilities they have, everyone can learn something from those 10 steps, I think. You know, that can elevate you as an individual, that can elevate you as a business as well. So thank you so much for that. I think that's hugely, hugely valuable to everybody that's listening. Just the last sort of five minutes or so, I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into you as a person. So we've understood now, obviously, your journey from the 30 plus years in Accenture into founding Cluster and the success that you've had there. I'm really intrigued. I don't know about Tijana and Pedro. I'm really intrigued by the motor racing helmets that you have behind you there on screen. Tell us a little bit more about that, please.

SPEAKER_00:

I've got a very special one there. And if Tijana doesn't recognize this or maybe even Pedro, I'll be very amazed.

SPEAKER_05:

Let's have a look. The top, the yellow one, Petronas. Wow, look at that. It's eight of the sinners, right?

SPEAKER_00:

And it's signed to me by his sister.

SPEAKER_05:

Wow. That's amazing. Look at it, it's fantastic. How did you have that? Yeah, and you're going to make your Brazilian friends crazy about this.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Racing is in my blood. I love racing. I feel the need for speed. When I was at Accenture, I managed to persuade them to sponsor a Formula One team.

SPEAKER_05:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

And that sponsorship lasted 14 years. It was with the Williams team.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes. My team, thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

And I worked with them very closely, and I was on the starting grid of any race I went to.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

And now, though, I have to basically be like anyone else. I have to join a queue and take whatever space I can get. But in those days, I was very privileged. So my passions have been motorsport, motor racing. I rode a motorbike up and down the Himalayas. I rode one across South Africa through jungles. Yeah, I just like two and four wheels. And let's just say I'm not crazy about the fact we're moving to a world where neither the car or the motorbike makes noise.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, the electric era. Unless

SPEAKER_00:

they can make the noise sort of artificially, I will feel very frustrated.

SPEAKER_04:

Of course. And I guess your journey in motorsports and certainly with the sponsorship of the Williams team, you've probably got another podcast episode with some amazing stories. And Little Birdie did tell me something about a story that you had with a one Ringo Starr. And I'd love to find out a little bit more about that as well, please.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a much younger me with a... British Formula One world champion called Damon Hill.

SPEAKER_05:

Damon Hill, yes, amazing. Son of another champion. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Son of another champion. So actually this story goes back to the Portuguese Grand Prix many, many, many years ago. And I was with the Williams team and before the start of the race, one of the guys came up to me and said, how did you get here? Where are you going afterwards? I said, well, I hired a car and I'm going back to the airport. you know, and flying home. I said, well, would you mind giving one of our guests a lift to the airport afterwards? Yeah, sure. Anyway, race was over. Williams run it. Estoril circuit. And I love that part of the world. And company in the race, they said, right, we'll just go and get him for you. It's him over there and he's got his son with him. And I walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and George Harrison turned around. I had to drive George Harrison

SPEAKER_03:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

From Estoril to the airport. Awesome. He wouldn't let me talk to him about the Beatles. All he wanted to do was talk about Formula One. Formula

SPEAKER_04:

One. I have driven George Harrison. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04:

That's

SPEAKER_00:

fantastic. I also got to spend time with Paul McCartney as well.

SPEAKER_04:

Amazing. Not many people that we're going to have on this podcast will be able to say that. So I think what an amazing way to finish off this podcast. Robert, thank you so much. Pedro, Tiana, do you guys have any final comments or questions you'd like to ask Robert?

SPEAKER_01:

I would just like to thank Robert for sharing all of this. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05:

The same here. And one tip for a startup that is on this progress and aiming to be one day on your list is One tip for them, please.

SPEAKER_00:

Solve a big problem in a very innovative way that's going to deliver immediate value to somebody.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you so much. Amazing. What a great way to finish the podcast. Thank

SPEAKER_00:

you so much. I wouldn't be here if other people hadn't shared with me their lessons, their tips. You know, we are here because of the help we receive from everybody.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree. It's a really nice way to think about that.

SPEAKER_04:

Brilliant. Robert, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate the words of wisdom and the knowledge that you've been able to share. And I'm pretty sure that so many of our listeners are going to benefit so much from those 10 points in particular. What's the best way, Robert, for people to find you and find out more about you?

SPEAKER_00:

So basically going to LinkedIn and just put into the message, saw you on Founders Friday.

SPEAKER_04:

Founders Friday. Fantastic. There you go, guys. Spoken by a true expert. LinkedIn is the best way to get hold of influential people. And Robert is certainly in that category. Send him a LinkedIn message if you're interested in connecting with him. And Robert, thank you once again. Really appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_00:

My

SPEAKER_04:

pleasure. Nice to meet you all. Thank

SPEAKER_01:

you. Cheers, guys. Have a great weekend.

SPEAKER_05:

Have a great weekend.

SPEAKER_04:

If you'd like to join the tribe or have any recommendations for amazing founders or innovators for future episodes, please visit our website at www.canopy.org. So all that's left to say is a huge thank you from me for listening in and obrigado yet de breve from Tiana and Pedro. We really look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

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Stewart Noakes

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