This year I made a commitment to attend as many of the events as possible, to really experience Business Week. It was a pleasure to feel a real sense of collective purpose and to participate in a week-long celebration of enterprise, innovation and achievement by the business community on both banks of the Humber.
The week was billed as the world’s biggest festival of business. Just think about that for a moment: Here in the Humber we have the most extensive celebration of business anywhere on the planet! Reason for celebration in itself.
Here are my top 10 “big picture” observations and reflections on Humber Business Week 2012. I hope they help to focus thoughts, prompt debate and inspire action.
1. The power of ambassadors
The week began with a bang with the Hull and East Yorkshire Bondholders Breakfast - an event that reinforced the power of ambassadors for our region.
Bondholders Thomas Martin of Arco, Carolyn Burgess, of the World Trade Centre, Hull and Humber, and Paul Nixon, of the Hallmark Hotel at North Ferriby, all talked passionately about how they promote the region as part and parcel of doing business. They support the Bondholders’ work to promote pride and prosperity in the region and the Bondholders help them to tell a powerful, coherent and consistent story about what it means to do business here.
They and others now have new tools to help them to tell that story - a book and video, both launched at the Bondholders Breakfast, which summarise our unique economic strengths and potential. The story is summarised by “green growth, blue horizons” and it’s a banner we should all unite under, as it is just as relevant to the south bank as to Hull and East Yorkshire. If you haven’t seen the inspirational video, you can view it here.
The Bondholder Breakfast also highlighted the vital importance of engaging positively with important influencers, particularly in the media. The keynote speaker was Hugh Pym, the BBC’s Chief Economics Correspondent, who began his career in journalism in Hull at Viking Radio. He came briefed on the progress made by the region in recent years and its exciting potential; he spent a full day meeting key organisations and individuals; and he left hugely impressed by the business community and its efforts to drive the region forward.
Our region has forged an important connection with one of the most influential journalists in the country. I know the Bondholders plan to follow up on this, so that our story remains front of mind for Hugh and his colleagues. Having someone like him fully informed about the region and well disposed to it is simply invaluable.
2. The Humber is our economic entity
Hopefully, the turf wars of the past are just that - a thing of the past. Business Week reinforced that the economic entity is the Humber - the politicians and business community on both sides of the estuary simply have to recognise that fact and work together to maximise the potential for investment, jobs and prosperity, for the benefit of all.
The “Team Humber” message was a recurring theme of Business Week. Lord Haskins hammered it home at the Celebration Dinner at the University of Hull. He knows better than most ministers and potential investors see just one region, not four local authority areas, and the establishment of the Humber LEP is key to achieving that clarity of proposition. YIBC host Paul Sewell also stressed the need for businesses on both banks to speak with one voice.
3. Renewables is our economic opportunity
Business Week also underlined that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for huge investment and job creation by establishing the Humber as a world-leading centre for renewable energy.
The region’s business community frequently talks up our renewables potential and we would, wouldn’t we. But others agree. Hugh Pym hailed it as the region’s “green growth strategy”, while Roy Evans, Director of Coastal and Rural Portfolio, for the Crown Estate, which owns the territorial waters on behalf of the State, told the Green City conference during Business Week that “the Humber has a clear geographical advantage to be the Aberdeen of the renewable energy future”.
That geographical advantage was a key factor in persuading Siemens to select the north bank as the location for its UK wind turbine manufacturing facility while, on the south bank, the giant Able Marine Energy Park will offer state-of-the-art facilities for turbine manufacture, assembly and installation.
Clearly, offshore wind will be a massive industry, for many, many years to come, bringing with it tens of thousands of jobs, and the Humber can be its UK home. The political and business communities simply have to move heaven and earth to seize this opportunity. It will transform the fortunes of the region, its businesses and the people who live here.
But, of course, it’s about more than offshore wind. Hugh Pym came away impressed by the Neptune tidal energy installation feeding power to The Deep, while Vivergo Fuels has made a £300m investment in a biofuels facility at Saltend. Spencer Group’s £100m-plus Energy Works development will offer a renewable energy solution to the region’s waste challenges. Green energy opportunities are all around us.
4. The home of great businesses, doing great business
Spend any significant time at Business Week events and you are struck by one impression above all others - how many great businesses we have here.
Most people know about the long-established family businesses that continue to grow and prosper, such as safety wear company Arco, William Jackson Food Group, and the Sewell Group, whose activities range from construction to retail. But who knew the story of food producer Cranswick Plc, which has seen amazing growth in turnover from £64m in 1990 to £800m in 2012?
The same goes for the Spencer Group, funded in Anlaby in 1989 with a £10,000 bank loan. The company recently returned to Hull, making the city the headquarters of a world-class specialist engineering business with a UK-wide workforce of more than 400.
We have so many great businesses in the Humber and, despite the fragile economic climate, they are doing great business.
5. A hotspot of enterprise and innovation
This region has an extraordinarily strong base of successful entrepreneurial businesses and the entrepreneurs at the head of those companies are passionate about helping others to follow the same path.
Many of them have come together in the For Entrepreneurs Only (FEO) group, which played a part in several Business Week events. Those events gave start-ups and small businesses the opportunity to learn from the experiences of such admired entrepreneurs as Jonathan Elvidge, founder of the Gadget Shop and now RED5.
Mr Elvidge talked about the power of marrying innovative ideas with action, describing how he founded the Gadget Shop empire when, while stuck in traffic, he made a phone call in response to a roadside advert for retail space in the soon-to-open Princes Quay shopping centre. At the same event, Sarah Longthorn, of Dragons Den winners Wedge Welly, talked about how to persuade angel investors to fund new enterprises - vital when bank funding is so scarce. What priceless advice for anyone considering starting a new business or running a fledgling venture.
FEO has now launched a Start-up Academy, offering invaluable advice and mentoring for budding entrepreneurs, thereby helping to launch and establish more wealth and employment creators.
The spirit of enterprise and innovation extends beyond the business community. Business Week delegates heard about Hull College’s new Studio School, one of the first in the UK, which focuses on producing young people ready for the world of work. It is already over-subscribed, ahead of opening its doors to the first students in September. The Studio School is truly ground-breaking - students will be regarded as employees; their teachers as coaches. Business practices and dress codes will apply. It’s a welcome move to “end the obsession with academic achievement”, referred to by Lord Haskins at the University of Hull dinner.
6. The challenge of technology and the data tsunami
We experience it all the time - the relentless, ever-hastening pace of technological change. It's a challenge for every business, the full scale of which was set out by KC Chief Executive Kevin Walsh in his presentation at YIBC.
He talked about the “tsunami of data” that has been unleashed by rapidly-growing usage of smartphones and tablets and multiple devices in “super-connected” homes.
His point was that this had huge implications for how we all work and do business. It also means businesses can no longer leave issues around connectivity and communications with their IT teams - the issues are too business critical for that. But are the senior executives in many businesses technologically literate enough to find the right ways forward? Food for thought indeed.
7. The Green City - a vision we must all embrace
Beyond all the potential offered by green energy industries, there is an even bigger opportunity - to make the investments in renewables a catalyst to create a community with sustainability at its heart.
To its credit, Hull City Council has identified this opportunity and is working with partners, including key businesses, on the Green City initiative. It has lofty ambitions - to make Hull the UK’s greenest city. That means it would be not just the UK capital of renewable energy, but also a leader in green learning and skills, low-carbon living and sustainable infrastructure.
It’s a long-term ambition, but it begins now, and the call went out for businesses to play their full part. Many already are. Charlie Spencer of the Spencer Group talked about how the company has implemented a wide range of green measures and said sustainability was at the heart of the business because it’s both the right thing to do and good for the bottom line.
Green City Chairman Councillor Martin Mancey paraphrased John F Kennedy in his appeal to businesses - “it’s not what your city can do for you, it’s what you can do for your city” - and it’s a message that deserves to be heeded. A city and region that is prosperous from green industries and puts a premium on sustainability in every aspect of local life is a powerful proposition to investors and visitors. It would also be a place in which people would share an immense feeling of local pride.
Cllr Mancey and others made the point that this was a long-term vision, delivering a better, greener future for generations ahead. It was a message reinforced by others - Mr Spencer called on businesses to seize the opportunity from renewable energy and the Green City vision to give the city’s young people the future they deserve.
It’s a future those young people are clearly beginning to embrace. Another Business Week event, the Green Jobs Experience, at the Sewell Group Skills Academy, saw more than 100 students from Hull and East Riding schools learn about a wide range of renewables career opportunities in a practical environment. Their enthusiasm was obvious to everyone present. A year ago the Skills Academy was just an idea. Now more than 500 young people have experienced it.
8. Cherish our sense of belonging
Local pride was also a key theme explored by Mary Portas, the “Queen of Shops”, who talked at YIBC about her vision of the high street of the future.
Ms Portas lamented the impact of out-of-town superstores on the retail heart of towns and cities, but said there was no point in trying to turn the clock back. Instead she talked about diverse uses for town and city centres, driven by the local community, and restoring a sense of local belonging. City centres should be places for community activities, learning and doing business, not just shopping, she said. She also urged a long-overdue re-evaluation of dated rules and restrictions on opening hours, parking and change of use of premises.
All of this is so relevant to towns and cities across the Humber but, unlike many other localities, here we have an advantage - we have never lost the sense of belonging. Community identity and spirit still burns strong. That sense of local community can be powerful indeed if it can be harnessed to help to remodel our city and town centres so that they are relevant and vibrant, now and in the future.
9. Let’s focus on the positives
Amid the overwhelmingly upbeat mood, there were reminders of the perilous economic situation which hangs like a black cloud over every business.
Michael Portillo placed that in stark relief at YIBC with his assessment of the Eurozone crisis and his conclusion that the Euro is on the “road to disintegration”, with serious negative consequences for the UK economy.
But all of that is beyond the ability of the business community to influence. Instead, we should focus on the positives. Lord Haskins talked about confidence being the vital missing ingredient in the economy, but said there was “a tangible sense of confidence in the Humber political and business community”.
Similarly, Brigg and Goole MP Andrew Percy, speaking at the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce lunch, said there was plenty to be positive about - reeling off renewables, the Humber LEP and enterprise zones, the slashing of the Humber Bridge tolls, and the go-ahead for improvements to resolve the bottleneck at Castle Street in Hull.
10. Business Week proves great things are possible - even without a budget
And, finally, Business Week itself is a reason for optimism and belief that this region can achieve truly great things. Incredibly, the week is brought together by a team of volunteers, without a single penny of public funding.
Businesses and business networks across the region help to make it happen - committing their time, resources and expertise to support the staging of events of the highest quality.
Congratulations to the steering group, chaired by Kath Lavery, for bringing together a magnificent programme. They have done the Humber, the region’s business community and all the participating businesses proud. Roll on Business Week 2013!
