From Tom Hunter to James Dyson, British business tycoons are opening their minds to the next generation of entrepreneurs as mentoring programmes flourish. And both sides gain from the exchange, as Bill Magee discovers
One of the UK's richest businessmen-and certainly the wealthiest in Scotland-is a keen believer in mentoring. Sir Tom Hunter, reputed to have a fortune of £780m according to The Sunday Times Rich List, heavily supports entrepreneurial businesses in his native Scotland. In 2000, in recognition of a £5m donation, Strathclyde University renamed the Strathclyde Entrepreneurship Initiative as the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. There, he and the team emphasise the value of mentoring.
"There is one crucial benefit of having a mentor," says Hunter. "We have a saying in our businesses: 'only ever make new mistakes'. An exceptional mentor can not only prevent mistakes being made, but hopefully build confidence, enable new thinking and move an entrepreneur on in their development."
In his attempts to encourage entrepreneurial practice, Hunter is also backing Scottish businesses through West Coast Capital, a £200m "mentor capitalist" fund set up in early 2001 to invest in high- growth businesses in the property, retail, leisure and technology sectors across the UK.
Mentoring on this scale has strategic benefits for many businesses-but it also works for the individual. As Hunter explains: "Being at the top of any organisation, no matter what size, can be lonely-a mentor can be that crucial, critical friend in times of need."
For Tony Bradshaw, a director of technology transfer at DTI-backed outfit bioProcess UK, mentoring provides "a safe environment, a vehicle to discuss successes and failures". It allows him to bypass internal company policy constraints that often get in the way of such frank exchanges.
Shared business experiences "are worth their weight in gold", says Mary Campbell, chartered accountant and founder of corporate finance boutique, Blas, which handles UK-wide start-ups and buyouts up to £300m. She also holds non-executive posts with Dunfermline Building Society, Highlands & Islands Enterprise and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland where she can pass on her valuable knowledge, and also pick some up in return.
Mentoring is defined as a relationship where an individual gives his or her time to support and encourage another. Hunter's words of business wisdom are not only communicated to the students at Strathclyde; he is also understood to have informally helped luxury lingerie manufacturer Michelle Mone as she developed her business. She, in turn, has helped students at Glasgow's Caledonian University.
As well as being good for business, there is something of the "feel-good factor" about mentoring. Jim Spowart-founder of Standard Life Bank, Intelligent Finance and, most recently, STV and the Virgin Radio-backed peopleschampion.com market intelligence website-devotes up to three days a week helping budding businessmen and women. "As a country we're only as good as our next round of entrepreneurs," he claims.
Meanwhile, John Cavill, a non-executive with Newcastle-based e-learning company Creative Careers and a member of Merlin Mentors, which forms part of the Finance South-East initiative, claims that mentoring is fundamental to building successful team dynamics in an organisation-especially in early-stage technology companies.
A former Unilever executive, Cavill went on to form his own high-growth enterprise with a £50m turnover employing 200 people-which he then sold. He is a strong advocate of mentoring and is a member of the entrepreneurship sub-committee at London-based Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (WCIT), in tandem with his Merlin Mentors work. "Mentoring is becoming more mainstream," he says. "There is real value to be had as the process is formalised. What we're trying to do at the WCIT is support the activity of enterprises in the IT industry. Our members represent a rich pool of talent and business coaching and it is really playing off."
Cavill says he finds the work enormously fulfilling. He is also finding time to do a doctorate at Henley Management College, devising a methodology for evaluating the connection between team dynamics, high-calibre team ethos and business success.
He claims that it's wrong to lump all entrepreneurs into one category. "In reality, there are various types," he says, listing, as examples, early start-ups, lifestyle, family businesses and growth enterprises. "In their different ways, they all need a helping hand at stages in their development," he adds.
Bradshaw points out that for new leaders and entrepreneurs to develop "you need to find an avenue beyond the company boundary". For example, many small or start-up bioscience outfits don't have broad senior management teams to feed from. Also, unlike larger firms, where mistakes can be absorbed as a "learning experience", small companies can't afford to be as forgiving. Mentoring is crucial from the start.
Through the BioIndustry Association (BIA), where Bradshaw is industry development director, he helps nurture talent and groom the next generation of bioscience leaders. It is about seeding the development of new networks that are key to the industry's future. "It's a sector with a tradition of co-operation and community and we're able to exploit this by developing talent across companies," he says.
In the past, Mary Campbell worked as mentor with Lothian and Edinburgh Enterprise, and one of her protégés was Marcia Campbell (no relation), who went on to became company secretary of recently-demutualised Standard Life. She, in turn, has taken her skills to the governing body of Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University College. At the Blas offices in Edinburgh, Mary Campbell nurtures young graduates more than one of whom has their own business up and running. She cites veteran corporate lawyer Andrew Cubie, who helped draw up the blueprint for Scottish devolution, as her mentor.
Spowart believes in grabbing budding business leaders when they're starting out. Through the Young Scot network he mentors how to take calculated risks in business. "Even before that, it's important to instill in them how to get their finances in order before they set off with that ingenious business idea," he says.
Another strong advocate of business mentoring programmes is the Prince's Trust, which matched up Zelda Wong, whose ambition was to design and create jewellery, with Clive Gerrard a retail veteran of 30 years. Based in the Black Country, Wong received a £2,000 loan and a £500 grant, partly financed by the UK Steel Enterprise, the Corus Group regeneration subsidiary, through its partnership with the trust. Speaking of the help she's received, Wong says: "Clive's been great at giving me advice and helping me with any problems I have." While Gerrard says: "She's worked so hard to set up her business... while my mentoring has given me focus-it is worthwhile."
A "business buddy" scheme has just been launched by the Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to motivate each other and share tips on how to succeed. Buddy steering group member Liza Moran also helps run a local networking club called Elevator in Glasgow. She views such business coaching initiatives as vital. She echoes Hunter's point that people often start a business on their own.
"You can only speak to your friends and family so much about work. So having access to another pair of ears is a good thing. It doesn't have to be serious advice-just chatting about things can be enough to make all the difference."
Getting great ideas to circulate
Having a mentor had a dramatic effect on James Dyson. It's fair to say that without the help of his first boss the world may have had to rely on vacuum bags for a bit longer. Dyson, in turn, has taken mentoring to new heights. Interview by Jessie Hewitson
I was very lucky that the first person I worked for was Jeremy Fry," says James Dyson. "I made high-speed landing crafts for his company, Rotork, based in Bath. Luckily for me he was an engineer and a manufacturing entrepreneur, and definitely a mentor to me. He was key to my success at Dyson: I came from a family of schoolteachers-we knew nothing about business. He taught me what was possible and what wasn't."
Now Dyson is repaying the favour by setting up the Dyson School for Design Innovation, in Bath, which will see its first intake of 900 engineers-to-be in September 2008. "I am trying to encourage people to become engineers," he explains. "It's why I'm investing £12.5m; to get 16- and 17-year-olds excited about engineering."
Apart from giving something back to his industry, another reason behind the founding of the school is Dyson's fear for the future of engineering and manufacturing in this country. He does not believe the government is doing enough to mentor young people in this direction. Even if we can't compete with the low labour costs of China and India, he argues, it does not mean we have to give up on manufacturing in the UK. "In order to compete we need to come up with the ideas. We need more creative products, otherwise our trade deficit will get worse and engineering will disappear altogether. We have 24,000 engineers in the UK. China produces 350,000 and India produces 450,000. Soon things will be invented and made in China and India."
Technology and intellectual property are the two things the UK has to offer, but Dyson believes a new generation needs to be brought up to speed on these assets and build on them. "If we lose them we are in trouble," he says.
For his part, Dyson ploughs 15 per cent of his turnover into research and development, with a third of his UK staff working in this area. "It's an absolutely vital part of our business," he says. And the latest Dyson innovation, the Airblade-a hand dryer claimed to be twice as fast as its sluggish counterparts-is evidence of that.
"We had been developing a motor for our Japanese vacuum cleaner when we realised it was good at getting water off hands," explains Dyson. That discovery led to the development of the high-pressure Airblade, which uses room-temperature air but can blow water off in 10 seconds. It is currently being trialled at the Bristol Royal Infirmary where it is expected to help cut the spread of superbugs such as MRSA.
As for the Japanese vacuum cleaner-two years after launch, the miniaturised DC12 has given Dyson a 12 per cent market share, beating off competition from Sharp, Sanyo and Mitsubishi. Both projects, argues Dyson, are proof that, with good ideas, UK manufacturing can take on the world's best. But he won't be relying on the government to act as an ideas mentor to the nation's youth-the Dyson School for Design Innovation, he believes, will make a better fist of that.
Stage flight
Rolex's Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative puts up-and-coming artists under the wing of more experienced counterparts. In 2006, Selina Cartmell, the artistic director of Siren Productions, was paired with Tony award-winning stage and screen director and set designer Julie Taymor. Interviews by Joanna Higgins
As the winner of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé initiative this year, Selina Cartmell, art director at Siren Productions, was matched with Tony award-winning director Julie Taymor. Following an initial anxious meeting-"it was a bit of a blind date scenario... I brought flowers", recalls Cartmell (above right)-mentor and protégé were reunited in LA, where Taymor was working on an original opera, Grendel.
It was an enormous undertaking and Cartmell knew it was a privilege to have unfettered access. "The opportunity to see an original opera being produced was mind boggling," she says. "It's rare to see the start-to-finish process, and not be the person in charge. It opened my eyes to a way of working that was so big and epic."
For Taymor, who works across stage and screen and whose CV includes the original Broadway production of The Lion King and recent biopic Frida, there was nothing vague about the way this "open door" relationship would work. "I was in the thick of doing an opera and my focus was on my work," she says. "But [Selina] was able to watch and was in on [the development of] the piece. She had access to my thoughts."
That access isn't wasted on Cartmell. "It felt more important to take advantage of Julie's knowledge, than speak to her about technical issues. It's about a dialogue." Both women decided against a structured approach to the programme and it has settled into a friendship where a mutual respect for each other's work is apparent-which Taymor believes is essential to mentoring. "We are not alike, but we appreciate the same things and I think she's very talented," she says. "But the best thing is, I really like her."
Taymor's since been to Dublin to see Cartmell's stage production of the Danish Dogme film Festen and will see the more tangible results of her mentoring when, in the 2008/09 season, Cartmell hopes to stage her first opera. The project, she acknowledges, is a direct result of seeing Taymor at work. "Working on that scale opened my eyes to what's possible."
Another lesson her mentor's imparted is to avoid being categorised in one medium. Taymor works in film, opera and plays and this has encouraged Cartmell to support different art forms and keep experimenting.
There's also a less tangible benefit: "Directors can be isolated so it's comforting that even Julie Taymor has ups and downs-that the difficulties and challenges we face are just human," says Cartmell.
