Ian Ritchie on Entrepreneurship

Ian Ritchie, CBE FREng FRSE FBCS CEng, is a serial entrepreneur whose work in the technology industry alone has helped influence how we live and work today as a society, including his pioneering work with the software company he founded, Office Workstations Limited (OWL). Ian has helped build Edinburgh and Scotland as a center for innovative high-growth technology companies where he has been instrumental in developing over 50 startups and served on the boards of Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Funding Council, and co-chair of the Scottish Science Advisory Board.

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Transcript

Roy Sharples: 0:06

Hello, I'm Roy Sharples, welcome to the unknown origins podcast. Why are you listening to this podcast? Are you seeking inspiration? an industry expert, looking for insights, or growing your career? I created the unknown origins podcast to provide access to insights and content from creators worldwide with inspirational conversations and storytelling, about art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, fashion, film, music, and pop culture. changemakers are people of action, who are always future oriented. They are the dreamers, makers and doers. The people who start things, move the world forward and inspire others to do it. In Ritchie is a serial entrepreneur, whose work in the technology industry alone has helped influence how we live and work today as a society, including his pioneering work with a software company he founded office workstations limited. Ian has helped build Edinburgh and Scotland as a center for innovative high growth technology companies where he has been instrumental in developing over 50 startups and served on the boards of Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Funding Council and co chair of the Scottish Science Advisory Board. Hello, and welcome in. So what inspired and attracted you to be an entrepreneur in the first place?

Ian Ritchie: 1:45

That was almost quite entrepreneurial, where where as a kid, I played with my imaginary company that had little trucks and vans and things in your head, my logo on them and stuff. And at school, I was very entrepreneurial, I was very much involved. And we did some local high school. But I was very much involved. I was president of local political society as a school magazine, no, these sort of things you know. So I was a kind of person who did things. And a university I spent most of my time at university and this shouldn't Television Society, making TV programs that nobody watched, but it was it was just a way of putting your energy into something creative, and so forth. And and so when I started my career, I did Computer Science University and I joined ICL, the computer company. I, I didn't know I was any use to be honest at the beginning, but I got promoted pretty much every year to a more senior job. But so I was doing something right. And so I began to build confidence that I could use to do things. And so when the time came, it was a good opportunity to start an entrepreneurial career at that point, I'd got to the stage in Ico, Ico had three, well, three or four research development plants, Brighton or West garden in Manchester, kids Grove in Staffordshire, and donkeys near Edinburgh. And I was an adoptive client. And I've done all I've done several jobs. And my final job at donkeys was, I was managing half the half the place. And I knew my next job was not going to be in donkeys, I was going to have to move to because Grove or suffered or reitnouer someday and I didn't want to do that. So that was the point where I left ICL, and joined. What I got funding for an entrepreneurial career,

Roy Sharples: 3:44

You are clearly a polymath in that you are an oracle of insight about many different fields and knowledge basis that you intelligently apply in your core field. What's been your creative process, in terms of how do you make the invisible visible by dreaming up ideas, dropping them into concepts and then bringing them to actualization?

Ian Ritchie: 4:08

Well, I was always, I mean, the reason I did computer science in the first place is I was always fascinated with computers. And this was the mid 60s, late 60s. And of course, you didn't have a computer, there was no person Computer Services. But it was an exciting concept. And I thought if I do computer science, my own call was an early computer pioneer, though he lived in London. And I thought, you know, this computing stuff is is going to take over the world. It's going to be massive. If I if I do computing, I'll have a career. There's no question about it and I'll be able to do crazy exciting stuff. And really from the very beginning I was really quite interested in personal computing. I wasn't really interested particularly in mainframes, I was really interested in computers that were in front of you and they didn't really exist when I when I started work ICL, but over the next few years They did begin to appear. Yeah, I remember one time there was a new chief executive appointed ICL. And he came to give us a pep talk. And he addressed the troops and the office and I put my hand up and said, uh, here Dixon's have started selling the Commodore PET. And people are buying this to do their admin and their accounting and stuff like that. So that we're going to get involved in this sort of entry level programming. And he looked down his nose at me, and he said, I said, it doesn't make toys. So that was that was when he told the very next day, I had to go down to Wisconsin and Manchester where they were making the biggest computer I see I'd ever made between 966 PS and Manchester then unify. And we were doing an environment for that. And while I was there, I was there for the the the update meeting. I said to one of the guys what's out there and the cupboard and sort of small room in there was a little typewriter looking thing. And it says, oh, that's an apple two, we're using it to run the project. And I'm thinking, okay, these are the guys who are making the biggest computer ICOs ever made. And they're using an Apple two, with VisiCalc to run the budget and the program, so forth. And that was a bit of an eye opener. The managing director of IC o thought they were toys, but the guys making the computers didn't. And so actually, subsequent to that, ICL got into partnership with three rivers computers in Pittsburgh for to call market, we were really the global marketing for machine, they'd made the printers in the elderly graphics workstation, called the Pairc P R. Q. And it was a spinoff of Carnegie Mellon University. And it was an advanced graphics workstation. So it was it was networked. High definition screen, 300 dots per inch screen, which was almost unheard of in those days. It was monochrome, unfortunately, but they had a pointing device, initially a little pen thing, but they quickly adopted the most until we developed with them. The environment that we needed, we put a Unix on it, and we developed some languages for it, and so forth. And we had a computer system that was really, it was very, it was a personal computer, I mean, only one person could drive at a time. And it was used by the UK, academic research community, they bought them and those reasons to do academic research. But that computer environment of the windows and the mice, and then the networking and so forth. That was the saying we I mean, we could all clearly see that what's the future computing was. And so having that experience, from what 8180 to one, two to three, of heading up that mission development, and working with the Carnegie Mellon people and the people in Pittsburgh, that gave me a lot of insight into one that kind of computing, to how to do a startup computer company, because that was a startup company. And I had never really come across our companies before. You know, you don't really I just didn't think about it. But obviously in debts, there was venture capital, and there was startup companies. And there were companies breaking through and doing interesting things. And I thought this is cool. We could we could maybe we could do this. Now started talking to a couple of venture capitalists. And one of them said, Well, you know that what sessions? I said, Yeah, we're running a research project. Oh, that's very interesting. As all as venture capitalists, I spotted the fight the war stations where we're big time. And so we got this really indication of they would be willing to fund us. In fact, they didn't. But we did get funded. And we decided to call a company office workstations, because the workstation at that point was a scientific machine. But they were going to become into the office. So the office, the workstation was going to be an office machine. And it would be the personal computer the future. So we call those office workstations limited or for short. And it coincides exactly with that. I went to remember going to a meeting at Microsoft in just off Lake Washington. You might know the building is a three storey building off the study, I need to seal the one anyway. I know exactly what you want. You know the building. I was visiting somebody there and he took me into a roommate. He unlocked it it was a locked room and showed me a Macintosh, which they've been working on to develop software for it. And the next year that machine came out and so we knew it was coming. When the Macintosh came out, we thought this is it. This is the office workstation. Yeah This is what we knew we were gonna have to work for work on. And so we had decided that documentation was a big issue here, because on IBM PCs with fixed font, text, and so forth, and no, no layout, no fines, no graphics, documents don't look like documents. But with a graphics workstation documents do look like documents and document systems would be one of the big knockout applications. So we decided to build a very sophisticated massive documentation system that would build big manuals for engineering projects, they wanted a lot of document load manuals all cross referenced, and with figures and things in them, and so forth, we decided to build that. And I, first thing I did the very first month, June NIKEiD, before I got on the plane, and I went to the States and look, tried a few companies and discovered that there were two or three companies already doing this. And they were pretty well funded. And they were going to, I think they were going to win. And we would find it very difficult to compete with them. At the same time, I'd visited a few places in the UK and come across our particular project, the University of Canterbury in Kent, Professor Peter Boehner developed what he called dynamic documentation. And it was documents that you would click on, and they would do things that would expand our contract, or they would pop up notes or whatever. And we were really intrigued with this, we thought, Well, I see these machines, instead of actually making them produce documents, why don't they just deliver documents on the screen. And if you can find a really good way of navigating through these documents, so would be really cool. So we licensed AI technology. And we, the guy, as I said, Professor Broman, called the guide, we just use the name guide, and we launched the product. First of all, we had an a sort of prototype form in the 85. And I showed it to a few people, including an executive at Microsoft, who sort of took me aside and said, I've got a good idea. Why don't I leave Microsoft to join you? And say, I'm your sales marketer here and Seattle, or Bellevue? So hams but and I said, Well, okay, sounds interesting. And as it happens, one of our venture capitalists was in California that that weekend, we went to see him and he thought it was a good idea. And so went ahead with that. And so we set a pro sales and marketing office in Seattle. And all our engineering was in Edinburgh, and we built the company on that basis. And we launched gate as the world's first commercial hypertext product in August 86. On the Apple Mac, and you remember the original Apple make was quite underpowered. Yeah. But it was, I mean, it was very functional. And you could I mean, it had quite a small screen, it was 72 Dots Per Inch was on the back away. But still, you can put a nicely our system was ideal for it, because you could meet it a lot more easy to navigate through documents, by this idea of clicking on buttons and stuff. One thing that Professor learned hadn't put in was a hypertext, like, funnily enough, he was a computer. purists who believed that go twos were harmful, and hypertext links and go to effectively and he hadn't put that in. But as we built, as we developed our version of the product, we discovered very quickly, we had to put hypertext, yes. And you can go, you can go from document a document. And so we put that in. And so the product we launched in August 87, was the world's first hypertext product, made quite a splash. You know, we got reviewed and Mike Walden PC models and we go on those days, this is an HD 87. January 87, The New York Times had just to have a weekly supplement called Science times on Tuesday, and the other one column and that supplement called Passion computer. And so there was in those days, by then there was only one column a week, and the New York Times devoted to personal computing. And in January 87, the guy wrote up this hypertext stuff, and said, how exciting it was, and so forth. And don't mention us and said, I mean, this is it. This is such a great topic that I'm going to come back to it again next week. So we had two weeks in a row of covered the New York Times. And it was a great time to be through breaking through and bringing something to market that nobody's seen before. But everybody agreed was was the future in some kind or other. So that was was quite, you know, quite a good, a good time to be. And then an extra seven. We came across a little bit of a problem Apple computer had decided I got wind of it roundabout February 87. Some of the apple people I knew, said to me, you got to watch out for something coming down the pipe that could be a problem for you. And anyway, we eventually found out. And it was a product that Apple Bill Ackerson, an apple developed called Wild Card. And it was a kind of application development kit. Anyway, that couldn't for copyright reasons, use the word wild card. And instead, the lifetime decoding HyperCard. And you could kind of use it to build hypertext systems, but they're all fixed cards. However, you could use it for a few digested documents into little cards, you can use it for delivering what could be described as hypertext. And they, the marketing people Apple decided to go full scale, almost hypertexts theme and the the launch that was a 12 page pillar supplement and the Wall Street Journal. And it went on to Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart and all these hypertext pioneers, Ted Nelson everything. And it talks about this as hypertext and they made a huge splash for it, and they gave it away for free. So it came free with every new machine and you were encouraged to copy it and give it to friends. And if you went to an Apple store, you could take a disk alone and have it copied onto the disk and give you for free. So it was effectively free. And that was a big problem for us because our product was the Macintosh Hypertech for and suddenly we found that we couldn't sell it. They wanted their product when hyper tapered. Fortunately, we had already developed a version for IBM PC, Microsoft Windows had just come out. I remember windows 1.04. It was buggy as hell. It was just I mean, you know, anyway, we we put it, we decided that I mean 95% of the market for personal computers was IBM format. So we had to do that. So we started after we launched the Macintosh version, we started building the Windows version. And remember, there was one problem we had, you know, the lead developer was just banging his head against the wall, it was just awful. Eventually, we solved it by making sure that you could have any fun to you wait too long. Because the font management and the windows 1.04 was just impossible. And just didn't work. Anyway, we've got a product out in about June maintained to seven and HyperCard came out in August nature to seven. And so that was a big problem for us in a way and that we could no longer sell our Macintosh product. However, Apple was making such a noise about this whole hypertext stuff that if anybody wanted to use hypertext, and they didn't have an apple, but they had an IBM PC or clone, now it's 95% of the market, they kind of had to use us. So it turned out to be a real bonus, it was basically a marketing tool for us. And eventually we settled we had a dispute with Apple over, they had access to some software of ours that they shouldn't have access to and that we settled. And we signed the agreement between us, which allowed us if we had wanted to clone HyperCard on the IBM environment, I'm sure they did that deliberately because they thought that'd be a good thing for somebody to do. But we didn't do that we weren't really interested in doing that. So that was the and then from then on, we continued to build mostly on the IBM Windows platform. We I did embedded video, we are the scripting languages and stuff. To build a very, very large, we had to build a very large project. kind of oddly for the Dallas Theological Seminary. They wanted us to build the comprehensive theological research tool. And we had to think 16 different Bibles, plus Greek and Hebrew, plus lots of reference books are all interlinked and cross reference and stuff, you could scroll up a Bible and you could have Greek on one side and the King James, and then on the right click on one and the the equivalent one would pop up on the right. And you could put any of these two Bibles together are all interlinked or to build that, I mean, this was cutting edge stuff. This was way way advanced compared to anything else on the market. We had to develop our markup language, which we called HTML hypertext markup language. And, and that was what drove her work after that. And then, as I say, we managed to do things like put scripting languages in so you could drive devices or you could drive a video source and you could embed the video and the documents and so forth. I mean, in those days, multimedia mean, you know, extra boards, and big video displayer and all that sort of rubbish. I mean, all of that today is on your phone. But in those days, it was all extra care everywhere. And then we would, you know, that system was used quite a lot in education, sometimes in publishing the first the first environment of CNET was on our platform. educational stuff, we did some games, information of various kinds, and there was some even some interactive media done, in fact, we were commissioned to do the, the environment for Philips launched a product called CDI, which was a multimedia CD type device, a sort of the early console, really. And they commissioned us to the environment for that. We did a massive project with Hewlett Packard for for Ford Motor Company called service bay diagnostic system. And we put all of their service manuals on our computer screen. Hewlett Packard built the big devices that run on wheels underneath and stuff, and you hold on to the car, you plugged it in, got some diagnostics, and you got the manuals up. We did all of that. And that was quite sophisticated as well, because the there was a CD ROM that kind of the basic manual, but we could update that manual anytime using downloaded files. So updates came in regularly and stuff. So we were we were really, you know, taking on big time. All of that could be networked. I mean, documents can be anywhere on the network, but the network's when very powerful. So I mean, one client we had was our legal company, and they had offices in Bristol in London. And if you came across on button and you clicked on it and the document you wanted him to be in the other location, you could literally go away make a cup of tea before it came in because networks, commercial networks, there's times where, you know, 100 1200 baud or something. The difference that occurs, Tim Berners, Lee had to see the internet, which was a lot faster. But that was really restricted only to the public sector, defense workers, researchers and so forth.

Roy Sharples: 22:21

You were laying the foundations for how we now live and work, which has become the equivalent of electricity and our everyday lives, and that it is omnipresent. And we take it for granted. We made it practical. I mean, to be fair, Doug Engelbart did the heavy lifting. I don't actually know much about going to a bar. Doug Engelbart run this way he was in. He was a leader scientist in the Stanford Research Institute in the 60s. And he was funded by DARPA with a lot of money to build a machine that was a personal information machine. And he built the he invented the world's first most cargo wood. And he built the world's first hypertext system, which he demonstrated in a big demonstration in December 1968. In San Francisco, called the mother of all demos, hands down, he broke through I mean, he did he did all the early stuff. But of course, his computer cost 10 or 20 million or something. Whereas we waited until the Apple Mac came along. And it was a mere $2,000 off your 1980s for, you know, money $2,000 at the floor, it was a tidy sum, but it was still a computer, obviously. And but that was practical. So we did. We did the practical delivery, and real, real stuff. And yeah, we were the forerunners really. And HyperCard did quite a lot of following. And our systems had as well. And then I could go on to the Tim Berners Lee, I speak to this because I we were showing that there was a technical conference in Versailles near Paris, the world, the European first hypertext conference, under the auspices of the ACM, and we showed our guide system on there, and I bumped into this chap who said, Oh, are you Ian Ritchie? And I said, Yes, he said, let's go and get a beer. And so he introduced himself and his name was Tim Berners, Lee. And Tim told me about the work he'd been doing at SEM. And he'd been interested for years in this idea of interactive documents and navigation documents and so forth, and he built some hypertext stuff. And he kind of developed it to and what he was trying to do was give the physicists and sound and the physicists around the world who was access to a whole collection of documents that could easily be navigated, so you can click on About go from document to document. And so he developed this system package at that time, this was November 1990, was literally on one computer, his next computer in his office, that was the whole world wide web. Yeah. And he called it the World Wide Web. And he said, he called the World Wide Web because the world would use it to deliver all its documentation in the future. And I find that a little bit difficult to believe. But anyway, heads one wide web at that time was text only. And when you came across a button that was kind of put in bold, and then after there'll be a bracket and a number, and then to fire that button, you will press the number on the keyboard, now that fire button, so that was how you navigate from document to document. But clearly, he really wanted a proper interface. I mean, he was aware of HyperCard, and so forth, and his senior product, and he thought that was what we did busy cycling what he needed. So he wanted us to route closer for his world wide web. And there was a few problems with that. One is that the internet of which the way so on wasn't available commercially. It could only be used by people in defense, or government or scientific researchers, academic researchers and stuff. That wasn't there was no, you know, no connection between the CompuServe and AOL. So this world and the internet at that time, and that came, that came round, 93, random and 93, the Internet was opened up and commercial users were allowed to interact with it, and then begin to support it. So I don't know if you remember much of this, but between 93 and 9697, airelles, CompuServe. And Microsoft, as I say, started a project called Ms net, which may be a name. Anyway, all of their design. All of these got pretty much abandoned in favor of the internet, because any network is only as good as the number of people using it. There was a lot of people on the internet already. So try to compete with them as and you wanted to be able to address emails to anybody. So that the Internet came by live about 9394. But not in 1990, when when Tim was talking to me, no, we could have built a browser, we had built special versions of our software for all sorts of people. For Hewlett Packard for Bell Atlantic for data Gen we did one for so we could have done it. And we could have done it, maybe about $50,000, something like that. But he had no money. The one wide web wasn't an official project at CERN. CERN was a Science Research Center, not Computer Science Research Center. And he kept getting told, and they didn't really want to encourage college or much. And so it was a skunkworks project. I mean, he didn't, he wasn't, it wasn't doing it illegally. I mean, these bots knew he was doing it, but he wasn't given any budget. And so he had no money to buy a browser. So obviously, we couldn't do a browser unless we were paid to do it, or there was a commercial market, there was no commercial market. So we didn't. And so in 1993, I went to the ACM hypertext conference, which in that year was in Seattle. And there was a kitchen table set up and a computer on it. And Marc Andreessen was demonstrating the Mosaic browser for the one way web. And I mean, instant I saw this, I thought, yep, that's, that's going to be the winner. That's going to do it really is going to do it. And from then on, I mean, and we knew that battery, I'd sold my company. But then the main thing was that really, as soon as I saw the internet was being commercially available, and then as soon as I saw them as a poser, I did realize that that was going to be the future, it was going to knock off all that. And then I did a stupid Well, I didn't do something that I should have done and not doing it was stupid, which is I knew this was going to be big. And I had the unique position of being able to call on a bunch of people who had worked for me, oh, who really knew this technology, so very well. We could have built a web technology company, easily in 94. Yeah, but before, we wouldn't even need any funding, because we would have done it ourselves. I mean, it wouldn't have been expensive to to do it. And we could have built on the cry of authoring tool. About 9697 Adobe, Microsoft knows you're buying these tools from developers for $60 million. And we could have been one of those. I wasn't smart enough. And also I made a personal decision. Might as I said, my wife had a fairly high profile job and I decided I would start doing the school run and Not not a rush and do another company. And so I still was in that frame of mind, unfortunately. So that's why I missed out on really. But anyway, as I said, we sold the company, we sold the company in late 1989, December 89. So effectively in 1892, Panasonic, Panasonic came knocking on the door. And they were interested in buying a stake in the company, we said no, if you're going to be for somebody like Panasonic, that'll be an exit for us. So either you buy it all or you don't invest. And so they decided to buy us and, and we spent about a year and a half negotiating now, because the Japanese don't work quickly in these matters. And we sold the company to Panasonic in 1990. So by the time I'd met Tim Berners Lee, I wasn't my company anymore, it was Panasonic's. And I can see you know, me having a discussion with my masters in Osaka. We're going to do this, this closer for this system that's not taught commercial. And we're going to give it away for free and I can see them going really, really sad. Though the way the world works. I had I had visions for Panasonic showed an interest that they were going to use our technology to build a new type of device. And my picture of my when my head was when you go to Korea was stationed in Japan, there's piles of Manga comics, yeah. And then people buy the Manga comics and sit in the long commutes and read them. And I thought we could make a little device. And easiest comparison would be a Kindle. But in those days, the Gameboy was available. Again, we had a little battery powered black and white screen and stuff. So you know these races when I read the question, and I thought we could build a device that maybe delivered Manga comics, initially, but then we grow over time into being a Kindle. I don't know when the Kindle came out, but it wasn't for another 15 years or something. Panasonic could have owned that market, they really could have. If they had had the wit or or risk taking ability, they would never really pioneered Panasonic. What they did use us for was they were in a consortium with Sony and Philips to develop the DVD platform. The DVD, Sony and Panasonic can't, and Philips eyes, they own all different and all had the event the video cassette wars and had lost VCR, VHS one Betamax was done when a sofa, so they weren't going to go do that again. And so they agreed between them that we're going to do one standard for DVD. And so that was a common architecture. And when it came to the software architecture for DVD, Panasonic was able to stick his hand up and say, Oh, we've got this load in Scotland if you do this. And so that's what we did. So we did the environment for the DVD. So a second DVD disc and a DVD player, Mike comes up with scenes and trailers and stuff, all that software was asked. We also did some setup balls work and stuff as well. But I was quite disappointed to have to say that Panasonic didn't have the wit or foresight to build a breakthrough. Yeah, machine like a Kindle that could have been, you know quite something anyway. They didn't. Yeah, that's frustrating. And the deadly sin of when organizations become big, they get complacent, get drunk on their own Kool Aid, and drowned and their habits and rituals, where they can't see the wood from the trees and ultimately start making ego based decisions. And before they know it, the future kisses them goodbye. What are the key skills needed in to survive and thrive as an entrepreneur?

Unknown: 34:05

Right? Well, you've got as it's getting more difficult all the time. By the way, it's getting more difficult because in my DNA it is, you know, Microsoft was in one three sort of building, you know, awfully. Nowadays, Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world. Apple is the biggest company in the world. The top five companies in the world are all digital economy companies, and they are stinking rich. And they can afford to put you out of business by just clicking a finger and putting a few million. And so that's what they do. So it's, it's even trickier than it used to be. But okay, what you've got to do is you've got to have a piece of technology, if it's a technology startup as well point and trust me, you're going to do something that's different. But the big guys are really not interested in that yet, but they will do when it becomes big So I mean, right now, there are companies all over the place doing stuff in virtual reality, augmented reality, and Internet of Things. And these companies are doing it small scale, because there really isn't, well, there isn't an augmented reality market out there yet. But there will be one in about three years time, you know, you know, HoloLens or Apple, glass, I think the call area and, and obviously, Facebook has actually called the name, you know, after the Google's got there, as well. So they're all working on it. And suddenly, there will be a bit like when we were doing apps for Cliff graphics workstations, and as soon as the Macintosh arrived, there will suddenly be platforms on which you can do dramatic new things. So that's one avenue, look at that, see, if you can, what kind of way of doing something really different. That works really well. But is to there's no market today, but there will be a few years time and start working on that and make a breakthrough and, and you will almost certainly be acquired. And then the game is trying to be acquired at the right time. Because only one or two companies will survive in any one sector. And, and also judging when the right time to sell, you know, who was it wanted to buy my Facebook for a billion dollars and Zuckerberg tumbling down. Now he obviously had now. But he was right, obviously, and Russia's faith and getting that timing right is so difficult, as well. But you've got to and you're all it's difficult to imagine a startup company going all the way to being an off site listed business, there it is. You're most likely to be boring, especially when you've got the five biggest companies in the world are all set on piles of money. Yeah, and they want to make sure that if you've got an idea that's of interest to them, that they can either buy it and use it or buy and stuff out. And then don't care either way. Which way is so here, even here in Edinburgh, I mean, I know three what four or five companies have been bought, in the last few years by Facebook, Google Apple, you never get told you never get told to buy stupid. Yeah, so absolutely secret. I mean, you know, I, I know, a board later on one of these companies, I know the chairman of the company, and they won't tell me. So you know, they they just don't, you know, you never find these things out. But I mean, one of these companies was a company called tuba years based on research, so Andrews University, and they had audio technology that allowed you to place the audio anywhere around your head was just a mic was just a pair of headphones. Now, this is a new technology. I mean, I was chairman of a company about 20 years ago did this, but they had the right time. And Facebook bought it from their VR project. And the guys who did it went to work for Facebook for a few years to come by Scotland because they you place but that's what's happening. So what you've got to do is be part of the food chain, you've got to do something dramatically different, an area that is going to be big, but isn't big yet. And then you've got to make sure you're visible. And that you can be, you know, these guys knew you're there. And at some point, they'll approach you and say, Okay, we'd like to buy your company and then as a matter of Australia, of course if you can get one on one particular purchaser that's even better because you can get the price up. But by and large that's that's the way it works.

Ian Ritchie: 38:50

So I I've been involved in about 50 startups in Scotland the last 30 years, mostly in Scotland. And they all do something different. That's unique. I mean, one of my common ones is Kratos Curtis CKR or TLS look at the website. Kratos does audio technology founded by a Greek lad who came to Edinburgh to do MSc in audio technology during his MSC did a project where he termed the human voice into different sorts of voices. So you can mix a human voice with see a lion or a tiger or a robot or whatever. And you can make all these voices in real time so you can speak into a microphone and it comes out sound like we did Giselle but we turned them into ourpolicy Jungle Book character anyway the the big cat we did we process it ourselves voice into that. So that was an end before it before the New Age sold it to also Hollywood applications. And the Avengers Age of Ultron was an alien. Most of the voices are done by us. So he, as we know, developing that company into doing they've gone on to do, I think called the former, which takes any sound of fate and allows you to trigger it anyway, we've done weaponize, which covers the whole range of weapons. So we had all the guns and cannons and things are specially recorded and processed. And you can do all that you don't have to do it, you don't have to record them again, you can just if you've got a fully editing film, you decide on the effects. And so yeah, we've we've got all the we've got car noises, vehicle noises, you know, we're doing all that. And we're actually in the process. Now we're building a whole fully desk that you would use as a personal computer that can do all your post processing audio. For for anything, really, and we concentrate where we're currently concentrated on the big movies, and the big computer games. But ultimately, we'll be moving into consumer markets as well. So you can live in your little tick tock with a bit of you know, audio effects are something

Roy Sharples: 41:13

That's an exciting breakthrough. That combined with some of the other themes you mentioned, where there is an increasing convergence of many technologies, like virtual reality and augmented reality and video, where people function within the digital universe, where the lines between physical and virtual life are blurred, and that the edges are no longer the boundaries.

Ian Ritchie: 41:39

Yeah, exactly. And there's no need to do anything like this. I mean, there are companies doing. I mean, there's a company that held about a day that's doing a lot of things with music instruments, and you can make them you can divine, the same music instrument from scratch, and drive it from your computer. But this is, you know, this is a general Audio Effect type business, and nobody else is doing anything like this. So, wow, we will eventually get bought, it'd be it'll be Dolby, or someday, you know, somebody who's in that kind of game will they will come out in the end, that there'll be some real value. And that's what you've got to do, you've got to start something and you've got to build it up, you've got to create a market. One thing about this company is a has got customers. So I mean, we can find on their website, you can see all the all the logos of all the movies. And, yes, that's the kind of thing you got to do. I mean, another one, my company is a woman, there's a company called shot scope. And they make a wearable watch, that guy takes on your golf scores, you play golf, detects what club you're holding. And it basically takes on your score, you don't have to mark up your cart. When you get back to the club room, you plug it into your computer, and it Marcia counted up for you. But also, if you want it to, I can give you advice. So it can tell you that in this particular situation with a particular distance in this bunker, you should be using a three iron. Because people who didn't win them get the right shot, whatever that type of stuff, you know, you can also use it to do league tables with your mates. So you can play competitively with a bunch of your mates where all their golf games are recorded and put into one league table. And you can mark you know, you can observe them. And so there's all sorts of things they can do. So it's a interesting piece of work. It's it's a Scottish company, but we're making some inroads in the states now. But the plan at the moment is to raise 5 million. Now in the process of raising 5 million in order to really do a proper marketing campaign. He says, as that come they will get bored, they'll get bought by Garmin or some of the or are tailor made or one of these businesses

Roy Sharples: 44:01

Without a doubt. As you reflect back on your career to date, Ian, what are your lessons learned in terms of the pitfalls to avoid? And the keys to success that you can share with existing but also aspiring entrepreneurs?

Unknown: 44:15

Yeah. Well, you've got to have lots of energy and lots of determination. I mean, I was I started in my 30s. I think your 30s is probably your best time. If you're younger than that. You don't have the experience yet. If you're older than that, you don't have the stamina. I used to. I used to come home from work, see the kids off to bed and then go back into work and work until the early hours. I couldn't do that today. I couldn't do that. So you've got to have and you've got to you've got to have as funny you're going to have mixed feelings are things you've got to have the determination of what you're doing is the best thing in the world. And then you've also simultaneously got to know that there's competitors out there who want to kill you, and have no illusions about who your competitors want to kill you. So, that's the thing that is difficult to teach people, they don't really understand the real world of computing, you know. I mean, people, bizarrely think Apple, so suddenly company, Apple is the most ruthless company on the planet. Well, almost as ruthless as Microsoft.

Roy Sharples: 45:38

But you're, you're spot on, I mean, going back to some of those points you were seeing earlier than where you, when industry starts to turn, when you make an industry and then it starts to mature, then it becomes monopolized by three to five players, not three to five players, then get into this whole monopolistic kind of behavior, where it's anything that's a threat, I kill it, right. And it's, it's so wrong, it's ethically, so wrong. And, and, and then it's but it's nice when you get these companies that buy the startups that you mentioned, and they embrace them. But when they acquire them, they kill them. That's just it's ethically wrong

Unknown: 46:13

happens all the time, all the time. And I see I think we're going to start seeing maybe some action on this. The new secretary for competition is a CMA in the series. She's an academic, relatively younger 30, I think, who's been doing papers for years on how competition law is no longer and tighter at what the claim is. So it's not about value for money anymore. It's about allowing competition to develop and real breakthroughs to happen. So there's nothing nothing's going to happen there. The British government has recently instituted a new thing where you've got to register any potential technology company. And in a way that makes them aware that technology is being kicked out of the country. I think they've their eyes are really on the Chinese for the Chinese in buttoning up technology. And I think they're going to be blocking Chinese acquisitions in future. But who knows, they might even start moving on to the Googles of the world as well. Yeah, possibility. So that, you know, that may happen, or may happen. I think things are changing. I think I don't think they're gonna get away with quite the five biggest companies in the world. You've got to allow some hope for fresh, fresh.

Roy Sharples: 47:38

Exactly. So tilting forward, Ian, what's your vision for the future of entrepreneurship and the role of creativity?

Ian Ritchie: 47:48

It's a tricky one. Because I mean, I was building my business in the 80s, when the custom computer was arriving. And there was so much scope, to do new things. They're not done before, which is a great, I wonderful opportunity that we grasped. Now in the 90s. It was the internet that was throwing up all these opportunities. In the early 2000s, it was mobile technology, there was allowing you to build new apps. I mean, one of the companies I co founded with a company games from mobile phones, founded in 1999, just as mobile phones were beginning to be capable of doing games. We sold that business in 2000 $600 million. In the late time, more recent times, it's been Internet of Things, I think there's a lot of work there to be done with just, you know, sprinkling computing, sensing devices all over the place, and processing them intelligent ways. Or Big Data is another one that's really big at the moment, which is know that you can hold masses and masses of data, you can start to extract real intelligence from those. And that's an area that's very powerful. And he I suppose, or another way is know that you can do it big time. I mean, I was involved in AI project nearly it is. But it was it was it was total stuff compared to what you can do today. Coming forward, the next the future, I think, augmented reality is undoubtedly going to be going to be massive. There's no real reason why your phone needs to be I mean, your phone is not a phone anymore. Your phones your personal information, right. And your phone doesn't even need to be in your pocket. It can be anywhere. Octopus, ultimately it might be shrunken to the just a leg of the glasses you're wearing. And on your glasses, you will be able to superimpose anything you want and access any information you want. You know so just sitting on a train, you can watch a movie, not by doing anything other than a call on your, on your glasses and moving on your front your eyes, if you're lost, or you don't want to know where the nearest petrol station is, and the little loo, or the nearest branch of John Lewis, you just ask no, I'll show you. I'll take you there. So that's that's going to be you know, I mean, people using the Apple Watch as a way of monetizing information I said, but that's, I think as, as only a stepping stone along the way, I think you'll have all the information that's currently on your smartphone, but you won't need to have your smartphone there or be in front of you. And it should be either avoid stripping or easily easily navigatable. Anyway, one way or another, there's a lot of work to be done on on haptics and, and making stuff more accessible. You know, we've still got, and, bizarrely the computer most, which is both a wonderful invention and a terrible event. You know, it's kind of it's still artificial. I mean, you know, it solves so many problems. But really, the answer is, I when I saw the iPad launched, I immediately that's, that's, that's it, I mean, that's the answer. information at your fingertips literally influence your fingertips. And that's what you will do. Further, you can manage to do your fingertips and your eye glasses. You'll have to have to project or something, and you'll have to point and click your buttons. I don't I will do that. But that's going to be the future. There's no question about that. I wouldn't like to speculate beyond that, to be honest. I mean, if you were being negative, then the world is getting more dangerous all the time. You know, and technology has contributed to that. But don't ever read my book, Dave Eggers book, the circle. It was been tumbling to enemy that the Chinese are doing it today. They're basically using the measuring everybody, and they're giving you marks. And if you don't behave properly, you find you can't nicely buy a train ticket. Because they've decided you're not worthy of it, and so forth. So that's beginning to happen. Drones are beginning to be tricky. Missed, frankly, that there hasn't been a terrorist incident using drones by No. Flying dusty weapon or a bomb and yeah, Location Code of people helping and set off. And then there's a whole thing about cyber, cyber terrorism. We're all weird at the moment, we've just been warned in Britain, to make sure your, your firewalls, Lola, so forth, because the Russians are beginning to start to annoy the Ukrainians. And they did that before. And they expanded and brought down a lot of the health system in Britain. Last time, they're, you know, they're trying just bring it up something in Ukraine, but failure to share, you know, all over the place. So that's not good, either. The whole social media stuff, were really a beggars belief that Facebook can easily and quickly detect and remove a female nipple, but leave a male nipple in a picture of the post. That's what they do. And yeah, people giving advice to kids of how to kill themselves is left up. You know, it's, it just beggars belief that they can do whatever they could do, and then get away with just awful stuff. And so there's a lot to be done to for the future. You have to hope that people, you know, think things are good in a good way. But unfortunately, anyway, my good dream is my augmented reality glasses. I'll leave you with that one perfect for your creatives. Yes, absolutely perfect. Your creatives, you can do a theater production, where there's one person in the stage, but it looks like that in the middle of a huge audience of things with no real fights and all sorts of absolutely remotely create amazing stuff in that environment. So that's something to look forward to big time

Roy Sharples: 54:22

Creative leaders have confidence in their ideas, and never give up on bringing them to fruition. It means leading Without Frontiers by seeing around the corners, and fearlessly navigating into the future, to move society forward and improve people's lives. But just how soon is the future? One thing for sure is, the future is unwritten and anything is possible. Do you want to learn more about how to create by frontiers by unleashing your creative power? Then consider getting CREATIVITY WITHOUT FRONTIERS. How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future. It's available in print, digital and audio on all relevant book platforms. You have been listening to the Unknown Origins podcast. Please follow subscribe, rate and review us. For more information go to unknownorigins.com Thank you for listening.