Innovator of the Year Awards: London and the South East
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2021
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We managed to pack representatives of all 12 finalists (chosen from 90-plus entrants for the region round one table), plus guest judges Paul Abberley (CEO of our sponsor, Charles Stanley Wealth Managers) and former Award winner Jonny Ohlson of Touchlight, the pioneering DNA manufacturer.
With entrants ranging across the healthcare, fintech, food, energy and education sectors, as well as social media and high-tech engineering — and only around eight minutes for each to present and answer questions — the judges faced a formidable task. And of course the final choice of winners has to be subjective rather than scientific. But all the presentations were clear and concise — and there were several conversations across the table suggesting possible synergies between entrants in related business fields.
So, as always, we hope participants gain from the networking opportunities as well as the accolade of being selected as finalists — and we hope Spectator readers and podcast listeners will take a few minutes to explore their websites and products.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this, the first podcast in a series of podcasts for this year's Spectator, |
| 0:15.3 | Economic Innovator of the Year awards for 2021. |
| 0:19.4 | We're here today. |
| 0:25.0 | We've been meeting in a splendid venue called One Oldwich in the centre of London. We've met all 12 of our semi-finalists for the London and Southeast region. |
| 0:31.7 | I'm very happy to say that this year we had a record number of entries from all across the country. |
| 0:36.9 | We actually had 150, which is slightly more than last year, which was itself a record over the previous years. |
| 0:43.3 | So our awards event continues to grow and attract attention from entrepreneurs across the country. |
| 0:51.3 | Not surprisingly, the predominant number of entries are in London |
| 0:55.7 | and the South East, so we've had a large number at the table with us over a very enjoyable lunch |
| 1:01.6 | today. We heard from 12 very, very varied companies doing lots of different things, and we'll try |
| 1:07.7 | and sketch that in in the course of about half an hour on this |
| 1:12.1 | podcast. I'm joined by our two judges for the day who are Paul Abbey, Chief Executive of |
| 1:19.4 | our new sponsor this year, Charles Stanley Wealth Managers, and Johnny Olson, founder and Chief |
| 1:25.9 | Executive of Touchlight, one of our previous winners for this region. |
| 1:30.5 | He's in the DNA business. He'll tell us briefly about that. But first of all, Paul, thank you very much for being our sponsor and for being a judge. |
| 1:39.4 | Just tell us briefly why Charles Stanley took an interest in this award scheme and decided to sponsor it? |
| 1:45.8 | I think the main reason is that from our investment management activities, innovation is really |
| 1:51.0 | key. If you think back 20 years ago, some of the companies that might have been on our radar |
| 1:55.4 | to invest in don't even exist in any real way today. Equally, there are companies we invest in today, which were |
| 2:02.4 | barely known back in 2000. So you have to be looking at innovation to get clues to where the |
| 2:08.2 | economy is going to go in the future and where the big investment opportunities are. So the |
| 2:12.6 | whole culture of innovation and being abreast of what's happening is key to us. Also, many of our clients want to |
... |
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