Money-makers among us
There's a great bit in Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel where William Kane, son of generations of well-heeled Boston bankers, makes a fortune from trading cards with his school friends. He gets in early, finds his market, and sells up before the bottom falls out. Was this, I ask Bob Goodson, how it was for you? Were you born an entrepreneur?
He looks nonplussed, but then I have brought up my knowledge of the novels of Jeffrey Archer in polite conversation. "It's funny you say that," he acknowledges, "because I did run a sweet shop at school. My cousin brought home all these candy floss-flavoured sweets, and my sister and I got tired of them. So I started a sweet shop." Any another early signs of greatness? "I ran a stationery shop too. We had to stock check every week, so I used to race through my comprehension exercises in about fifteen minutes so I could spend the rest of the hour doing it." All this drive at a time when my greatest concern was the difficult transition into training bras.
So what did Bob do next? Well, at university he founded his own design company, Inspired, he undertook major projects for national companies. Then he struck out with an initiative of his own, an audio yoga CD, Yoga Retreat.. This wasn't some mashed together amateur attempt, but a glossy production written and voiced by Joan Stonehouse, an expert with experience of teaching blind students. The CD received excellent reviews and is now stocked by the UK's two largest yoga retailers.
It's enough to make anyone who skived off Young Enterprise entirely, or had some half-arsed scheme to make potentially fatal candles or flimsy calendars feel extremely ashamed. Do any of the Oxford Entrepreneurs have less intimidating talents?
"As a group, we're incredibly diverse. Our members' interest cover everything from incredibly commercial ideas to social entrepreneurship. One of our Entrepreneurs (Zachary Kaufman, far left) has set up a charity called 'American Friends of the Kigali Public Library' to increase Rwandan literacy rates, and we offer him the same level of support. "What kind of support? Three types, really: guest speakers, workshops and networking events. We have a 'Game Changers' series of speakers, about innovators who have completely changed the way their field operates - for example James Dyson." With copyright law such an important factor in the Entrepreneurs' work, it's no surprise they have Intellectual Property seminars, especially when Bob casually mentions that one Entrepreneur's idea has a global market of $2 billion. I ask if OE would support a student who wanted to work in the grey areas of current legislation, say in 'reverse engineering'. He is emphatic, "Absolutely not. For us, reputation is everything. We couldn't be involved in anything like that."
Instead, the Oxford Entrepreneurs focus on finding gaps in the market, most often by exploiting a situation they have personally encountered. Jenna Phillips is one example (second left) - educated in the States, her time in Rome and Paris opened her eyes to the way that European women treat lingerie. For them, she found, putting on feminine and flirtatious underwear was not regarded as a sop to men, but as "empowering, a celebration of being a woman."
Even more amazing is the series of events that led to the invention of a new type of medical equipment by Kaori Kuribayashi (she of the $2 billion idea). An engineering student, Kaori studied deployable structures in nature as an undergraduate. Whilst visiting an exhibition of Japanese art, she saw an origami fir cone which could be opened and closed, and there she had her Eureka moment. Inspired by both the natural simplicity of the fir cone and the flexibility of origami-style construction, Kaori has designed a completely new type of stent (a device used to hold open blocked sites in the body, like the oesophagus). Traditionally, these had been made of a material which resembled wire netting, and required manual opening and closing. Kaori's stent is collapsable, yet has no holes when deployed. It is also made from shaped metal alloy, which allows it to expand and contract with body heat. The stent is a widely-used piece of equipment, which means this invention is worth much more than its weight in gold.
But, Bob is keen to stress, being an Oxford Entrepreneur isn't all about waking up with a revolutionary innovation which happens to be a gold mine. Many of OE's members are what he calls 'Social Entrepreneurs' investing their time in not-for-profit ventures. Still, their CVs make for awesome (if intimidating) reading. Tom Savage (far left) found time during his first degree to found an award-winning not-for-profit organisation dedicated to coral reed research and conservation. Patience Mususa (centre-right) is currently working on modern but culturally sensitive 'homestead-like' lodges for tourists to Zambia, but has already designed a palace for the King of Barotseland and supervised the construction of an orphanage, school and clinic for the Sisters of Charity.
All these achievements are making me feel distinctly inadequate. Like a true businessman, Bob deploys the charm offensive, "You could have great ideas - tell me something you'd like to do in journalism..." Start a magazine for women that's not about bikini waxing and bad celebrity hairstyles, I venture nervously. "That's great!"he enthuses, "let me tell you an idea I had..." He goes on to elaborate a magazine idea much better than mine, which I'll keep secret until the day it hits the newsstands (as it surely will). "If you do a magazine for women, you could get great writers: Germaine Greer, anyone..." His enthusiasm is infectious, and the can-do attitude is surely what marks out the Oxford Entrepreneurs, not just genetic predisposition or extraordinary intelligence. The best work of OE members seems to happen when they care about a subject, enough to notice what could be done. The difference between them and us is that they don't complain down the pub that the underwear in the shops is crap, or wildly prophescize that someone could make money out of this oxygen bar lark: they take action. They have the courage to take risks, and the confidence to trust they have a new way of looking at the world. Maybe there's an entrepreneur in all of us, buried under layers of apathy.
23rd Oct 2003