Abstract

This session looks at how the vision needs to meet with reality. The entrepreneur needs to be true and wedded to their beliefs and vision for the business venture, but also, to be open to learning and taking feedback. It is important to be flexible with business models in the early days. This session demonstrates the importance of entrepreneurial self-awareness for learning and reflection purposes as well as the need for personal direction, drive, persuasion and persistence. Participants will learn about strategy and developing business models to achieve the vision. It will look at the influence of early customers and sales and the role of mentors, company directors, etc. in shaping business models.

The guest speaker is Dr Mike Lynch OBE , founder of Autonomy and Invoke capital. Dr Lynch has long been regarded as a visionary figure within the technology world, described by the Financial Times as “the doyen of European software” and by the Sunday Times as “Britain’s Bill Gates”. He advises the Prime Minister on matters of science policy through the Council on Science and Technology. Dr Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996, the UK’s largest and fastest-growing software company, with a market capitalisation of $11bn, and was its CEO for fifteen years. In addition to Autonomy, Dr Lynch has founded or advised a number of companies ranging from Neurodynamics to Blinkx. He has invested in a number of start-ups, most recently Featurespace, and has also advised venture capital and private equity groups such as Apax Partners and the Carlyle Group. Alongside his entrepreneurial career, Dr Lynch has a number of board seats and advisory roles. He is a non-executive director of the BBC , the British Library, and Cambridge Enterprise. He is a council member of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Foundation for Science and Technology, of which he is also a trustee. He is a member of the advisory board of Tech City’s Investment Committee. He is an advisor to the Prince’s Trust technology group and a founding investor of Bridges Venturing, which is a sustainable growth investment firm. During his career, Dr Lynch has received many awards and accolades. In September 2012 he was inducted into the Digital Hall of Fame, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, Warren East and Stephen Fry. In 2011 he received the Outstanding Contribution award in the UKIT Industry awards and was named Most Influential Person in UK IT by Computer Weekly.

Please note this session will take place at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

Interested in attending? Please register at http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprisetuesday/register.html

Registration is from 18:00. The lecture starts at 18:30 followed by networking from 20:00.

Enterprise Tuesday is a series of FREE evening lectures and networking sessions managed and delivered by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL), based at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.

The Centre Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL) is celebrating ten years of spreading the spirit of enterprise.