Professor of Enterprise and Director of the
Leeds Enterprise Centre
at the University of Leeds.
Keeping on track – but not a train in sight
Vehicle-based satellite navigations systems (Sat Nav), which first started to emerge in the early 1980s, now represent a huge global market. In Europe alone sales in 2009 exceeded €1.5 billion. Many of the leading brands have become household names. For example, Garmin with global sales of $3.5 billion (www.garmin.com) and TomTom with global sales of $1.5 billion, in 2009 (www.tomtom.com). Not surprisingly, as the market grew so did both the number and size of suppliers – competition was very intense.
The systems rely on a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device, which can determine the location of a vehicle, person or anything else for that matter! The location is regularly recorded and transmitted to a central database using mobile cellular, radio, or satellite technologies. The position of a device can be displayed on a map in real-time or recorded to identify movements or routes. Whilst, we are familiar with car-based Sat Nav systems they have many other applications. From surveying to monitoring and from climbing to tourism.
The market for personal tracking has also begun to emerge particularly as a result of increased functionality of mobile phones. Such as, the Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone. Specialist phone applications became available to take advantage of these new GPS-based features. For example, the LocoBlog mobile phone application and web site supported location-based mobile photo blogging. As users blog and upload images their location is tracked and displayed on website (www.locoblog.com).
The Apple iPhone 3GS, launched in 2009, provided a built-in digital compass with GPS technologies to find the direction of travel to orientate of maps. This service used GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile network masts to identify the exact location of mobile devices. This high-level functionality was incorporated into new iPhone Apps, many of which were developed independently. By March 2010 over 2,600 iPhones Apps that used GPS were available.
With so much competition surely gaps in the market wouldn’t go unnoticed by the larger players for long. They could expect to indentify an unmet consumer need and use their considerable resources to address it quickly. Perhaps this is why it was so surprising that Sara Murray was able to develop and launch her ‘buddi’ product and service under their radar (www.buddi.co.uk). Sara developed the ‘buddi’ after her daughter went missing in a supermarket and she had no way of knowing where she had gone. Sara could not find any product on the market that provided a discrete way of tracking vulnerable children. She developed a new device which was small enough to be worn discretely yet powerful enough to provide reassurance.
Like Sat Nav systems and mobile phones the ‘buddi’ used GPS technology to track people and combine this with emergency support. This kind of tracking device may be equally useful for vulnerable elderly people or lone workers as it is for children. Sara Murray was awarded Best Female Entrepreneur 2009 by the BT Business Essence of the Entrepreneur awards (www.essenceoftheentrepreneur.co.uk).
I think Sara has got that entrepreneurial ability to spot a good idea through having a personal experience. But, what makes her different from most people is realising that this was a real opportunity and then obtaining the resources to take it to market. I can’t help thinking that this won’t be her only enterprise!
Dr Nigel Lockett
Director of Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (CEIM)
www.bradford.ac.uk/ceim
www.nigellockett.com
Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink
In the last 30 years sales of bottled water have grown to more than 1.3 billion litres in the UK and to over 9 billion litres in the US. This is of little comfort the estimated one billion people in the world who don’t have access to safe clean drinking water.
Duncan Goose, founder of Global Ethics and One Water (www.onedifference.org), set-up his new venture, in 2005, to sell ethical bottled water and donate 100% of its profits to installing a specialised water pumping systems called PlayPump (www.playpumps.org). He recognised the potential … “The water market is an absolutely huge market in the UK, worth £1.5 billion” (Guardian, 22/03/2007). At one level Duncan’s vision is simple – use all the profits from selling water, to people who can afford it, to provide clean water for people who cannot. Clearly, there needs to be more to it than that. In his younger days Duncan travelled the world, in fact he was inspired by Ted Simon’s motorcycle journey in the 1970s, detailed in his book Jupiter’s Travels (1979). Duncan is in good company, actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman were also inspired by reading Jupiter’s Travels. As you can image Duncan has his own adventures, including surviving Hurricane Mike that destroyed many communities in Honduras in 1998. Duncan recalled … “What really struck me was to make a difference we did not need a lot of money, just a little money spent in the right way” (Sunday Times, 01/12/2008).
One Water was conceived and launched in 2005 just at the same time as Bob Geldof’s Live 8 appeal was launched. Having created a vision and sharing it with organisers of Live 8, he faced the challenge of promoting and supplying it to individual consumers. Can you imagine how you would go about persuading retailers and supermarkets which have shelves full of numerous brands of bottled water to delist one and put yours it its place? Indeed, it was hard very work for Duncan but when Total (www.total.co.uk) became the first national stockist in 2006 others started to follow. In their first year One Water donated £70,000 to charities working in Africa and India. By 2008, this had exceeded £1 million. Then One Difference started expanding its vision to include other humanitarian issues in developing countries, such as HIV through the sale of One Condoms (www.onedifference.org/condoms). Interestingly, Duncan has recruited other people to promote his vision, including actors David Tennant and Rebecca Lacey.
Dr Nigel Lockett
Director of Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (CEIM)
www.bradford.ac.uk/ceim
www.nigellockett.com
