Unfulfilled dreams and snowmen
04 February 2009
Some people dream and then do, and some people dream and then don’t!
Personally I fall somewhere in between – a few really good ideas have been followed through, while others – equally good – have never made it to the drawing board. I was reminded of this failure when speaking to Kevin Pope of Nohau last week. He is obviously someone who has an idea, thinks about its viability and if it ticks the boxes he does it. Simple really. Trouble is I can’t always find the right amounts of time and enthusiasm at the same time, but a true entrepreneur will always make sure that these do happen. Kevin, for example, as a 14 year old wrote a computer program for a game and subsequently sold it as part of the games bundle that came with the Atari platform back in the '70s.
Not that raw enthusiasm is the answer to everything. Kevin was talking candidly about the market in the UK for his range of products and no amount of raw enthusiasm or optimism is going to sell all of his high-ticket instrumentation and comms hardware at the moment. That is not to say that it won’t sell, just that people will only buy when there is a necessity, and even then there may be options to rent or reduce numbers so that the shopping list has been severely butchered even before it arrives with Nohau.
On the other hand, the world of embedded systems, particularly software, continues to grow. As Kevin put it: “Hardware is a necessary evil – it is the software that makes the differnce.” The power of modern PCs, according to Kevin, has enabled tham to be the hardware platform and with the addition of only a dongle can test just about everything. This has lead to a dramatic shift from hardware, for emulators for example, to software solutions. Kevin’s idea of a modern embedded distributor is a supplier of hardware with an expertise in software and his enthusiasm for this model has resulted in a respectable portfolio of principals that include Keil, IAR, Quadros, Sysgo and Frontline; and these are among the companies that are still prospering despite the cautious market.
£1bn in lost revenue
On a completely different subject, and just as the latest example of ‘glass half empty’ Britain, Monday’s snow is estimated to have cost the UK economy somewhere in the region of £1.2bn (according to the Federation of Small Businesses) in lost productivity. ‘Experts’ added up the number of hours ‘lost’ and came up with a figure approaching a billion pounds. Personally I went home at lunchtime, built a snowman with my son and then went to work on the computer for the rest of the day. No time was lost – broadband has transformed the way that we can work at home and many of us do an element of home working irrespective of the weather. We actually work at home because it is more productive. Even in manufacturing, where time could be argued to be directly aligned to productivity, I don’t think in our current environment where factories are still on an extended Christmas break and four day weeks, a few lost hours is not going to make the slightest bit of difference. So my thoughts are we should celebrate and enjoy the stolen hour to build the snowman and then just get on with it so that no time or money is lost. But then there is no gloomy headline in that and gloomy headlines is what we appear to enjoy in the UK.
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