The problem

During ‘last mile’ journeys, vaccines can be exposed to temperatures that are too high or too low, meaning they arrive damaged.

The World Health Organization estimates that between two to three million children die each year from vaccine-preventable disease. In 2018, 20 million children still lacked basic vaccinations. Current vaccine carriers last for hours whereas ‘last-mile’ journeys can take up to seven days. The wastage can be up to 85%, which increases when journeys exceed the current vaccine carrier’s capacity. 

The solution

Ideabatic’s solutions target the last-mile cold-chain issues with SMILE, a smart last-mile vaccine cooling system. It helps to preserve vaccines so that they remain effective in the last few miles of delivery and arrive safely.

Vaccines are often transported by foot, bike, canoe or donkey. ‘Last-mile’ journeys can last up to seven days with little infrastructure or electricity available to help preserve vaccines. SMILE has a last-mile capacity of three to five days without external power and can carry vaccines for over 500 people. Using the technology requires minimal training, supporting its aim to reduce vaccine wastage to below 5%.

The technology keeps vaccines within the right temperature range without an external power source. It uses a self-closing door that minimises human error and heat damage, and an extraction system that ensures that remaining vaccines are not exposed to excess heat when others are removed.

Kitty Liao has over ten years’ experience in multi-disciplinary system design and low-temperature research and development. She is leading Ideabatic as it conducts field trials in Africa and prepares for launch in 2020. The startup works with field experts and the Centre for Global Equality, and welcomes collaboration to accelerate the launch of SMILE. 

Traction

• 2019: Awarded the Expo 2020 Dubai Scale-up Grant from Expo Live, Expo 2020 Dubai.
• 2019: Awarded IP Audit Award from UK Intellectual Property.
• 2018: Awarded the Expo 2020 Dubai Innovation Impact Grant from Expo Live, Expo 2020 Dubai.
• 2017: Awarded the MassChallenge UK, Viiv Healthcare Startup Award.
• 2016: Awarded the First Prize in the Next Generation Healthcare Innovation Challenge from the Institute of Global Health.
• 2016: Awarded an IP award from Imperial Innovations.

Kitty Liao was awarded a 2018 Enterprise Fellowship to support her work in refining the technology, trialling its use and bringing it to market.

The problem

Large scale farming operations have well established methods for converting farm waste into renewable fuel and natural fertiliser. Small farms need access to scaled-down, efficient waste management solutions to make sustainable processes more widespread.

The solution

EcoNomad delivers small scale technology for sustainable resource management and agricultural waste reduction. Its sustainable, affordable technologies enable waste recycling and management, empowering smallholding farms and rural communities to be more self-sufficient.

EcoNomad’s range of solutions include a biogas and nutrient recovery system, known as the BioNomad™, that can be used on small farms to turn agricultural waste into biofuels for heating and an enriched liquid fertiliser. The technology was tested and demonstrated to add value during a four-year trial at a farm in London.

Another solution is EcoNomad’s patented technology for low-cost solar water pumping and pasteurisation, which works using passive thermal principles, without the need for electricity or moving parts.

Dr Ilan Adler identified a need for scaled down technologies during work in Mexico that resulted in him setting up a non-governmental organisation and co-founding a social enterprise to promote eco-technologies in rural communities. This inspired later research in the UK that led to the development of EcoNomad.

Following the success of its pilot, EcoNomad has further trials planned in the UK and Mexico, aiming to bring its first products to market in 2019.

Traction

• 2019: London Business School Launchpad programme awarded to spin-out.
• 2019: European Regional Development Fund grant awarded in collaboration with University College London (UCL) and Rothamsted Research (agricultural institution in the UK) for full-scale prototype testing.
• 2018: Support and mentoring provided by UCL Innovation and Enterprise. 
• 2018: Santander Research Catalyst Award granted for early-stage solar technology testing in collaboration with Centre for Scientific Research of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
• 2017: Biogas prototypes in Surrey Docks Farm awarded the UCL Provost’s Public Engagement Award.

Dr Adler was awarded a 2018 Enterprise Fellowship to support him in making sustainable solutions for agricultural resource and waste management more widely available to smallholdings in the UK and Europe.

The fourth industrial revolution is changing every element of enterprise. Companies that innovate throughout the value chain, such as Tesla or Dollar Shave Club, are achieving breakthrough growth, 

While sales and marketing, product development, service and support and back office functions have seen significant digitisation and investment, manufacturing has been left behind. Often not integrated to the wider enterprise and with significant investments in legacy equipment, manufacturing has historically been a very hard environment in which to scale change. There is now a huge opportunity to drive digitisation and innovation in the supply chain to gain a competitive edge. 

George is founder of Make-Sense, which is building on five years of industrial Internet of Things experience in the LPG sector. Make-Sense provides a data collection and analytics platform that empowers the whole supply chain from the shop floor to the top floor to drive radical efficiency and growth improvements.

Make-Sense is working with several of the world’s largest consumer goods brands to radically transform how they can leverage manufacturing as a core part of their growth and efficiency strategies.

The problem

Wearable electronics are often rigid and limited in flexibility because of how they are manufactured. Wearable components often do not bend and stretch with the clothes that they are added to and can have issues with durability, especially when washed.

The solution

Textile Two Dimensional is a University of Cambridge spin-out that makes electronic inks using graphene, which can be printed directly onto textiles. These inks can be layered to create bespoke, functional and wearable electronics. The electronics, and graphene’s electrical and thermal conductivity properties, are integrated into the textiles while remaining flexible and washable. They can be comfortably worn and re-used several times, meaning that they are also cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

The company is working closely with end-product manufacturers to explore development for a range of smart wearables in areas such as personal health, fitness and wellbeing, protection and fashion.

Dr Tian Carey initially explored the potential for the technology during his PhD at the University of Cambridge’s EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology. As a result, Textile Two Dimensional continues to work closely with the Cambridge Graphene Centre to promote innovative research with an emphasis on application.

Traction

• 2018: Textile Two Dimensional and Cambridge Enterprise collaborate to accelerate adoption to market.

Dr Carey was awarded a 2018 Enterprise Fellowship to support him as the team at Textile Two Dimensional grows and the company develops from an ink manufacturer to a wearable systems manufacturer.

CEO and Founder, Snap Vision

Building on a background in computer vision, Jenny Griffiths developed Snap Vision, a company offering visual search-based solutions for the fashion retail and publishing industry.

Snap Vision fuses visual search with fashion to improve the shopping experience. Its solutions turn any image into the start of a search, allowing its users to ‘shop the look’ in a magazine or the real world, and instantly learn more or discover similar alternatives.

The technology combines mathematical rulesets and deep learning algorithms to understand user preferences, including colour, shape and pattern, making it easier for consumers to find items that they want. This results in a better shopping experience and helps retailers to increase conversion rates, improve customer engagement and generate additional revenue.

Jenny, CEO and Founder, leads product development at Snap Vision while also setting a strategy for sales and fundraising. As an SME Leader since 2017, Jenny has benefited from training at the London Business School alongside mentoring support. This has helped her strengthen skills for leading a growing business.

Since receiving the award, Jenny has developed a number of strategic partnerships and successfully secured additional equity investment. This will support Jenny’s goal to rapidly scale the company’s sales cycle in its next phase of growth.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are nearly one million preventable neonatal deaths each year. Keeping the infant warm could save thousands of newborns each day. However, most incubators are too large, complicated and expensive for universal use.

James Roberts became aware of the problem of pre-term deaths in a documentary while studying product design and engineering. He co-founded mOm Incubators Ltd to create a solution, and led the strategic development of a lightweight, collapsible neonatal incubator that maintains a regulated thermal environment for newborns to thrive in.

James is the CEO of mOm and the innovation has won numerous awards. In 2019, he became an SME Leader and says that the programme came at the right time to help the company. “The coaching has allowed me to work through a particularly challenging time for the business and we’ve come out stronger for it.”

The company has recently raised over £1 million in development funding and is preparing clinical investigations while applying for CE marking. In 2021, mOm will start its commercial evaluation phase, aiming to go to market soon after.

Oxford Space Systems' innovative structures, such as its novel large deployable antennas (LDAs), use both conventional and new materials. The LDAs offer significant savings in the build and launch costs of satellites and are lighter, less complex and can be stowed more efficiently than those currently in commercial demand. The development of a flight-worthy LDA is currently viewed as "strategically important" by the European Space Agency.

Although still in its early design stages, Oxford Space Systems is generating significant interest from satellite builders and operators globally and has gained investment from venture capital firms and various private investors.

Oxford Space Systems has the ambitious vision of establishing its position as the centre of excellence, making the UK the go-to supplier for large deployable antenna technology.

• Space Girl YouTube channel
  
• Shefali on Twitter
  
• Interview in Womanthology
  

Shefali is one of the ten winners of our 2016 SME Leaders Programme.

Problem:

Widespread uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) is essential to reducing global emissions, but is currently hindered by EV battery performance, safety and associated cost. Breathe creates software for EV batteries that markedly improves these characteristics without requiring expensive and time-consuming hardware changes.

Solution:

The health of a battery naturally deteriorates over the course of its lifetime. Breathe’s  software monitors the health of the battery during its operation and uses this information to manage the battery intelligently, minimising degradation. This leads to enhanced vehicle performance, charging rate and safety. These benefits can be used flexibly, from creating much greater battery lifetime to enabling the use of cheaper batteries to lower project costs.

Breathe’s vision is to have an install-base of millions of units, improving the performance of all high-value systems reliant on batteries. It aims to be recognised as the provider of an essential battery management technology for any new battery pack. It is currently trialling its product with OEMs  (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and is hoping to deploy the software commercially in the next 12 months.

Breathe has demonstrated the effectiveness of its novel battery management software in a representative vehicle environment using commercially available batteries. Breathe’s software, which controls the current flow in and out of batteries, has demonstrated its ability to firstly extend the life of that battery by 2.4 times compared to conventional methods. It also increases the average vehicle range of that battery over its lifetime by as much as 5%. The technology is the subject of an ongoing patent application.

Traction:

• Winner of Environmental and Energy track at Imperial College London flagship venture competition Venture Catalyst Challenge.
• Breath is funded by The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, EIT Climate-KIC.
• Secured new office space, grown team, began a second CE pilot contract and closed the majority of a seed round in 2021.

The problem

Robots can be a useful educational resource to engage young people in science and engineering but they can be high in costs which prevents broader accessibility.

The solution

Founder of Robotical Ltd, Alexander, has created an affordable, working robot that can walk, dance, or even be programmed to play football. Targeted at young people from 10 to 18+, the robot is a fun, educational tool for both makers and educators.

Known as Marty, the 3D printable robot has a novel design. Unlike most two-legged robots, it uses fewer motors to control each of the robot’s legs, reducing production and retail costs significantly.

Designed with fun and engaging features, Marty can be used at home or in the classroom as a hands-on educational tool to help children build skills in coding and computational thinking.

Makers can build and adapt Marty using a Raspberry Pi and as an open platform, it can be easily reprogrammed using languages such as Python, Scratch and Javascript.

Marty launched for sale online at Robotical in January 2018 and is now available worldwide. The company also creates and sells resources such as activities and lesson guides to promote digital skills and learning in STEM.

Traction

• 2019: passed 5,000 Martys shipped to more than 50 countries worldwide, and launched edu-packs tailored for formal education, with teacher training approval
• 2018: full launch of Marty, with first four-digit order.
• 2018: named Best New Product at Business Insider's Made in Scotland awards
• 2017: secures a seed investment round of £285,000
• 2016: raises £90,000 in a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo
• 2016: Scottish Edge Award winner

Sandy was awarded a 2016 Enterprise Fellowship to support the development of his affordable robot and to build his startup, Robotical.

Formerly the UK Innovation Director for Atkins, Elspeth is the CEO and Founder of IAND, a digital platform that helps major enterprises manage multiple suppliers. 

Initially graduating as a chemist, Elspeth later turned her hand to transport and urban design, demonstrating business and technical leadership on over 100 transport planning projects both nationally and around the world.

Elspeth chairs the Enterprise Hub’s Innovators Network and is a judge for the Hub’s Launchpad Competition. She is also a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

In 2017, Elspeth was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to Engineering and Enterprise. 

Paul Excell is an award-winning entrepreneur, investor and global executive leader with an impressive track record of delivering growth and transformation in startups, scale-ups, global corporates and is passionate about social mobility. He is Chief Operating Officer and Non-Executive Director at ScaleUp Group^™️, providing tech scaleups with unique insights from successful entrepreneurs with over $4 billion in exits plus patient equity/debt growth funding (£2 million to £20 million). He has six tech clients in the growth portfolio, and his clients have raised £30 million to date. 

In addition to this, Paul is Co-Founder and Chair of Global iLabs, Founder and CEO of Excelerate^™️ and Non-Executive Director with Knowledge Gateway (University of Essex). He acts as a judge and mentor for the UK Enterprise Awards and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Launchpad Innovation Award and SME Leaders.

Paul was previously Chief Customer Innovation Officer, Chief Operating Officer/Group Technology Officer, SVP[PS1]  Global at BT, Chair/member of several business Boards (UK and Spain, Nordics, AsiaPac) and sat on BT Group Board committees on Technology, Risk and Diversity. He was an Engineering Council Board member and acted as advisor to UN Secretary General on sustainability, technology and innovation.

He started his career as an apprentice and is now a chartered engineer (CEng), Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), the Chartered Institute for IT (FBCS) and Court Liveryman, Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Professor Mark Arthur Tooley FREng is the immediate Past President of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. He was the Head of the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering and Director of Research and Development at the Royal United Hospitals, Bath until 2017 when he retired from full-time NHS work.  Since then, he has held several part-time roles. He is a specialist scientific advisor for NHS England, a digital clinical advisor for the West of England Academic Health Science network, and a healthcare technology consultant. He is a registered Consultant Clinical Scientist, an honorary professor at the University of Bath, and a visiting professor at the University of the West of England.

Mark completed his BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath in 1979. He was sponsored by Westinghouse Brake and Signal company for the four years of the course. He then did an MSc and PhD in Medical Physics at the University of London. His MSc thesis was developing a EEG frequency analyser for anaesthesia. For his PhD research, Mark invented (with a cardiologist) an original method for rate-independent diagnosis of cardiac rhythm for implantable devices, which was patented.  He spent the rest of his career in Medical Physics and Bioengineering departments, both in hospitals and academia, working along medical colleagues. He has worked at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London, Bristol University, United Bristol healthcare NHS Trust, and the Royal United Hospital, Bath. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal College of Physicians, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, and the Institute of Physics. He is a chartered engineer and chartered scientist. Mark is on the peer-review college of EPSRC, has recently been a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team and the Royal Society Fellowship panel.

Mark has been a long-standing member of the Panel for Biomedical Engineering at the Royal Academy of Engineering (now called the healthcare policy topic group). He was recently a member of the biomedical engineering membership panel, the Policy Committee, and the working group for Systems thinking in healthcare. He has mentored on the enterprise scheme.

Mark’s research interests include innovations in medicine, physics applications in anaesthesia, simulation in medicine, physiological measurement, biological signal processing, measuring the depth of anaesthesia, blood pressure measurement and novel patient monitoring solutions.

As an entrepreneur and communications professional, Helen's mission is to help businesses do more good in the world. After nearly 15 years working in government relations and leadership communications, Helen set up her own boutique communications agency, HN Communications. A smaller and more person-centred alternative to bigger agencies, HN Communications works with large and small clients to deliver complex communications projects. Clients include Bosch, Heineken, Nissan and The Climate Group. 

Helen founded her latest venture, Leaders LIVE in 2020, just as COVID-19 hit. Leaders LIVE fills a much-needed gap in the market for an independent, online platform for thought leadership and debate. Leaders LIVE brings together leaders from business, government and NGOs to debate some of the biggest challenges facing our world today, from tackling climate change to addressing diversity. After only a year Leaders LIVE has built a dedicated community, with live events hosted on LinkedIn and YouTube. Events regularly have hundreds of live attendees, with thousands more catching up on the replay. 

With a mechanical engineering degree from Imperial College London and an MBA from Erasmus, Mike is a chartered engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Sainsbury Management Fellow. 

He has led turnarounds, helped establish new businesses and delivered complex projects; challenging and coaching teams to innovate and transcend existing performance. Mike’s experience includes senior operations, project and corporate roles with Royal Dutch Shell UK, and large-scale project development and delivery roles at Alstom in locations across Europe, Asia and North America. Most recently he has been a Director at Centrica Energy, where he is responsible for one of the company’s largest operated gas businesses. He is a Non-Executive Director of Acqualithium and Vice-Chair of the Board of Hymers College. 

Naomi started her career at the National Criminal Intelligence Service (now the National Crime Agency), where she spent three years looking at fraud and financial crime intelligence. It included a stint working with the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. She then moved to RBS, where she spent 10 years working in various risk roles, across both the first and second line of defence.

Most recently, Naomi has been working at LBG as a Director in the Chief Resilience and Security Office, where she led on operational resilience and cyber and information security policy. She co-founded the Operational Resilience Collaboration Group, made up of more than 40 firms working together to build resilience in the industry, and co-authored the ORCG industry standard on operational resilience. Naomi also developed the ‘Mind the Gap’ initiative across various FTSE100 companies, with senior women giving  inspirational talks and providing mentorships to help encourage more women into careers in security. 

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng was born in Buxton, Derbyshire in 1936.  Having spent five years living in Canada during his childhood, he returned home towards the end of the Second World War.  He attended King William’s College on the Isle of Man before studying Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Dr John C Taylor is one of the UK’s most successful and prolific living inventors and, over a sixty-year career, has invented, produced and sold components for numerous electrical appliances around the world. 

While at his company Strix Ltd, Dr Taylor established the business as the world-leading manufacturer of kettle controls.  His research was instrumental in designing the ubiquitous safety switch that turns a kettle off when it boils and prevents it from overheating, and he also designed the 360˚ cordless connectors in modern kettles.

Dr Taylor’s innovations led to the production and sale of almost two billion kettle controls - 75% of the global market.  His inventions in the development of bi-metallic safety critical cut-outs for electric motors are also used in domestic appliances such as hairdryers and fan heaters.  His work has also seen over four hundred patents filed, including automatic windshield wipers, electric motor protectors and cordless kettle connectors and controls, and it is a testament to these components’ visionary design that they continue to be in prolific use today.

Awards

Dr Taylor has been the recipient of many honours including, but not limited to, the following:

• Appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011 for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of British engineering, innovation and commerce
  
• Appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year honours list for his services to business and horology
  
• Four Queen’s Awards given to the company he started, Strix Ltd. Three are for Export and one is for Innovation, granted for his 360˚ cordless kettle connector, used by millions around the world each day
  
• The Harrison Medal, awarded by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for excellence in horology
  
• Awarded the Chancellor’s 800^th Anniversary Medal for outstanding philanthropy from the University of Cambridge, presented by HRH Duke of Edinburgh.
  

He is also an elected Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and has been conferred Honorary Doctorates from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Durham University.  When he’s not inventing and innovating, Dr Taylor is a keen aviator, mountaineer, yachtmaster and philanthropist.

Philanthropy

Dr John C Taylor is a committed philanthropist and has made a number of donations in order to ensure that young engineers in the UK have the tools they need to be competitive in a global market.  In 2017, he became the main sponsor of the new Dr John C Taylor Enterprise Hub, affectionately known as the Taylor Centre, in the Royal Academy of Engineering.  He also established in perpetuity a Chair Professorship of Innovation in the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. 

Following his career in creating electrical control switches, Dr Taylor became well-known for his interest in clocks and is one of the world’s leading experts in the work of John Harrison, an early pioneer of timekeeping and sea clocks. This led him to design and help build the Corpus Chronophage, a large, time-eating clock which that stands proud on the exterior of the Taylor Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Dr Taylor donated the clock, alongside a bestowment to make the Taylor Library possible, to his alma mater in order to support bright students of future generations.

http://www.johnctaylor.com/

Richard has significant experience in managing early stage and high-growth investor-backed businesses. He has spent the last 20 years finding, building and exiting these, investing in many. 

He has a strong focus on numbers, financial models, strategic and execution planning, and risk management. He has a toolkit of methodologies to call on to help businesses grow.

He is an experienced non-executive director of both SME and PLC (AIM) companies, has a good knowledge of the funding landscape and is well networked (UK and global) with connections to most Venture Capital, PE, lawyer, accountant and High Net Worth Investor communities. He has led and advised on many fundraises, including: grant; EIS  and SEIS High Net Worth Investors; Venture Capital Trust; crowdfunding; ‘follow-ons’; Series A; ‘new’ such as, revenue-based funding; and all forms of debt.

Richard is a trained mentor and coach and able to challenge and win trust at the same time. He has designed and delivered incubator and accelerator structures and programmes.

He founded and runs Realise Capital, a strategic financial and growth practice, is a chartered accountant (FCA) and previously has had roles as co-founder, CEO and corporate finance director. He has seen and had to deal with most situations that arise on a growth journey and can be hands on if the need arises. He has supported more than 75 ambitious founders to achieve exits in excess of £150 million and raise investment in excess of £25 million.

Amelia is a Senior Growth Architect at BCG Digital Ventures. She has more than five years’ experience building and scaling numerous B2B and B2C tech startups in the UK, US, Dubai and France. She has also worked with some of the world’s largest corporates to accelerate their marketing, sales and e-commerce efforts.

Her capabilities include competitive market intelligence, data-driven marketing experiments, analytics, go-to-market strategies, proposition development, digital marketing, and creating martech stacks across traditional and digital channels. Prior to BCG Digital Ventures, Amelia was a Growth Strategy Consultant at Manifesto Growth and Head of Brand and Partnerships at TRIBE.