In today’s NHS, complex and challenged as it is, the importance of management  skills cannot be overstated. All senior clinicians run teams, manage resources and set strategy for their service and need to do so effectively. At the same time the public worry – and sometimes get angry – about ‘managers’ taking too much of the precious resource.

Faced with these challenges and an extremely busy environment, one NHS Foundation Trust decided that its senior staff needed practical means to develop management skills appropriate to them and so the CNWL Management Fundamentals Programme was developed and is now in its fourth year.

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) is one of the largest trusts in the UK, with almost 7000 staff. It provides Mental Health and Community Health Services to a number of boroughs in North West London and in Milton Keynes and specialist services – sexual health, addictions, eating disorders and prisons across a wide geography in London, Surrey and Kent.

The CNWL Management Fundamentals Programme equips senior clinicians at the trust with the leadership skills required for their managerial roles.

Programme Director and Chair of CNWL, Professor Dot Griffiths comments, “The advantage is that we can make it very focused on our Trust and the challenges specific to us.”

The programme is continually revised so it remains relevant in the fluid terrain of the NHS. This year, it was built around the five core challenges that the Trust faces: the landscape it operates in; finance; service quality; the workforce, and leadership – with modules focusing on each of them.

The Programme invites delegates to explore these challenges from the perspective of the Trust and of their Team. It uses a variety of speakers from health and other arenas like successful schools and national think tanks, as well as Executive Directors and specialists at the trust. Held away from the Trust, usually at the University, it uses a variety of teaching methods.

In speaking about the first module, one delegate noted, “it is a particularly beneficial course as topics were directly related, and could be applied to, practice within CNWL. It was also coordinated in such a way that facilitated networking with colleagues across departments that we would not necessarily have the opportunity to meet otherwise.”

At its core, the programme gives clinicians time outside their extremely busy working lives  to reflect on and develop their skills with their peers.

Dr Simon Edwards was a physician in HIV when he started the programme. He is now the Clinical Director for Sexual Health and HIV Services and the Trust-wide Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement:

Dr Cornelius Kelly, Programme Director and Medical Director of CNWL, said, “when we started four years ago we focused on (medical) Consultants but two years ago we opened up entry to all senior clinicians (doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, pharmacists) and this has undoubtedly added strength; the programme now more closely resembles the reality of the NHS and the challenges faced by its diverse leaders and managers. We give the participants a number of tools to look objectively at themselves, their team and service; we ask them to consider what changes might be made to deliver high quality, effective and efficient care to informed patients and carers in the twenty first century. We focus on measurable outcomes rather than inputs, taking examples from other high performing public services facing similar challenges. The feedback has been very good and we are seeing a positive impact on service delivery.”

The Programmes is organised into four two-day Blocks, each a month apart.  Each Block has a theme based around the challenges, and each Block is designed to test the delegates personally.

Participants contribute back to the Trust through Team and Personal Action Plans, and through a substantial Quality Improvement Project. They apply their learning from the programme to their particular service. Past examples have generated huge savings from changing pathology requirements,  the development of dementia screening in prisons, and exploring commercial opportunities for certain types of psychosocial training.

Dr Deirdre Bonner, a Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry, attended the programme in 2015. At the time, Deirdre was running a pilot in women’s prisons, screening the over 50s prison population for dementia.

Deirdre explained, “the prison population is aging and many prisoners have the biological characteristics of people fifteen years older than themselves. In the pilot we found a prevalence of dementia significantly higher than in the general population and a large number of the population had risk factors which would place them at risk of vascular dementia in the future.”

Dr Bonner developed a proposal to improve the diagnosis of dementia in prisons, providing appropriate support to prisoners, and dementia training to staff to enable appropriate release planning. She presented her business proposal at a conference chaired by the Head of Health and Justice Commissioner for NHS England South and received a positive response

Delegates begin their projects early in the programme, and continue to work on them with support from a coach for six months.

In the four years it has been running the Programme has developed a great reputation in the Trust.

26 October 2017

Conscious Leadership Notes – How to Be a Resilient Leader in the Face of Chaos

Dr Jayanie Kodituwakku PhD

At the end of our performance year we may be asked the following questions:

• How well did you perform this past year?
• What did you contribute to your team’s performance?
• How have you made an impact in this company?

Resilience impacts our performance at an individual, team and firm level. If we don’t see where it evades us, we tend to perform at the same level we always have. Can we consider there is a level beyond what we currently experience?

When things get tough

There is much literature out there on what resilience is. To simplify this, let’s say resilience is our ability to bounce back when presented with a challenging situation. It allows us to continue to perform at a high level.

Depending on who you are, you may have encountered tough situations which could be on a daily basis in the work place or every now and then. Rather than being able to bounce back we may do the following:

• Overwhelm ensues
• Get anxious about our work
• Start blaming our leaders or management
• Point the finger at people we work with, it’s their fault!
• Stress takes over
• Performance at work may drop

I remember once working for a firm where two colleagues were on a ‘performance improvement plan’ – a PIP. They lost their ability to rebound and then it got worse as they started to believe they were not good enough.

Even if we are seemingly performing well at work, something may have to give way in other aspects of our life.

Ignorance is not bliss

‘Be Resilient’ we hear. Life would seem to be much better if we were resilient. So ‘how do I do that?’. When looking at the ‘how’ we gravitate towards a self-development book, a positive affirmation, yoga, a course, mindfulness or some sort of technique. These can help to a certain degree but in all my years working with leaders in organisations I’ve never seen tools or techniques create the sustained impact on resilience desired by an individual. Especially in circumstances when a curve ball is thrown.

We may also be in the misunderstanding that resilience is a ‘quality that may develop over time’ and needs to somehow be acquired through experiential learning or knowledge gained from ‘wise people’.  This is simply not true.

If we look at resilience from a different viewpoint, we can see how to reveal it, than acquire it.

Let’s do this

Firstly not all leaders, this is inclusive of anyone that is making decisions, may have an awareness they could do with some help in the resilience department. It just becomes normal for us to struggle, we get by and cope.

The first thing is to notice when you’re feeling tense, anxious, worried, focus is off or if there’s something you can’t quite put my finger on but know it doesn’t feel right. We can then begin to see the nature of thought and how our experience is being created.

When you wake up to the fact that your feelings are created by a thought-generated perceptual reality, it opens you up to a new way of experiencing the situation.

For example, have you noticed when you’re really angry at someone and then you get distracted by something else, you stop being angry. But then you think about that person again and you become angry.

Resilience is not acquired, it is not learnt and it is not handed down to you from previous generations or an ethereal mystery.

We all have a universal capacity for resilience in any given moment. It is not dependent upon what is going on around us. The only thing that gets in the way is a misunderstanding of where we think it comes from. You have the potential to be resilient right NOW.

***

 Jayanie is a former PriceWaterhouseCoopers Management Consultant, turned Innovator, Business Advisor and Coach who shows leaders the unexpected keys to Insight; the ultimate leverage point for creating a thriving organisation, team and life. She can be contacted via http://www.jayanie.com/. If you want to know more, sign up to her newsletter.

Executive Education has been recognised for its offering by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

We have been recognised by the world’s largest business education alliance for our pioneering ImpactLab™ – an experiential approach to learning which uses lab settings from across the College.

These experiential approaches take managers and executives out of their comfort zone and into unfamiliar environments in which they can experiment with new ways of thinking and working.

The ImpactLab™ takes place in settings across the College including the Carbon Capture Lab in the chemical engineering department, a performance simulator housed in the Enterprise Lab and a sequential simulation in partnership with the Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science.

These environments are used to help participants manage uncertainty, time constraints and stress. In the Carbon Capture Lab leaders are divided into two teams and given a 30 minute task of transporting carbon across the North Sea with the aim of focusing on decision-making under stress.

The performance simulator is a virtual reality simulator which allows business professionals to build their confidence in public speaking by giving a presentation to a virtual audience. The simulator, which was developed by the Royal College of Music, was originally designed to help musicians overcome their fear of performing in front of a large audience.

The association singled out Imperial in the category of schools that ‘Enhance Approaches to Leadership Education and Development’. This is for business schools who are creating non-traditional and sometimes cross-disciplinary opportunities for students to hone their leadership skills both inside and outside of the classroom.

Imperial College Business School was one of 30 global institutions recognised by the AACSB which connects educators, students, and business to achieve a common goal: to create the next generation of great leaders.

David Brown, Director of Executive Education at Imperial College Business School said: “We are delighted that our ImpactLab™ has been recognised as an industry leader in enhancing approaches to leadership education by AACSB.”

He added: “We believe that the experiential method to discovery in Imperial’s STEM background has a lot to teach the world of executive development. The ImpactLab™ combines an enquiring consulting approach with high-impact learning to help change culture on a large scale. International awards such as this continue to endorse Imperial College Business School as a global pioneer in innovation.”

A business executive uses the performance simulator

The AACSB’s third annual Innovations That Inspire challenge recognises institutions from around the world serving as champions of change in the business education landscape, with a specific focus on innovation in leadership development, a key pillar of the accreditation process and one of five opportunities identified in the Collective Vision for business education.

“The biggest risk to business schools is not the rapid pace of change. It is in failing to prepare the next generation of business leaders to cope with that change,” said Thomas R. Robinson, president and CEO of AACSB. “Through its best-in-class leadership development program, Imperial College Business School’s ImpactLab™ is ensuring that the business leaders of tomorrow will be ready for whatever lies ahead.”

Beate Baldwin, Director of Open Programmes, Marketing and EMBA at Imperial College Business School said: “Our ImpactLab™ takes its roots from the scientific research that Imperial does: we begin by challenging our participants’ assumptions. We then test their ideas in a safe environment and invite them to think about their behaviour.

The solutions they validate are integrated in the work place and enhance the business. We are not here to prescribe nor “teach” but to inspire and support senior executives in this fast paced technology driven world.”

For an overview of all the featured innovations in this year’s AACSB’s Innovations That Inspire challenge, visit the AACSB’s website.

Professor Nelson Phillips delivers a webinar on how leaders can adapt their skills in the technological age. 

By Dr. Omar Merlo

A friend of mine told me that your milkshakes have wood pulp in them. Is that why they are so thick and tasty…?

What’s the real story about pink slime in chicken nuggets?

Why do you no longer care about peanut allergies?

These are a few examples drawn from the thousands of questions sent in by McDonald’s customers as part of the food chain’s ‘Our Food. Your Questions.’ campaign. Launched in 2012, the campaign invited customers to ask McDonald’s any question – either on social media or on their purpose-built website. The company convened a dedicated team tasked with giving honest answers, available for all to see online.

Industry observers predicted that this unorthodox initiative would backfire. However, McDonald’s proved their critics wrong.  Campaign reported that in Canada, where the question platform was first launched, the ‘Our Food. Your Questions.’ campaign accumulated 10 million interactions online, McDonald’s food quality and brand perception measures increased and monthly store visits grew by 50% in the second half of 2012, when compared with the first. [1]

McDonald’s food quality and brand perception measures increased and monthly store visits grew by 50%

‘Our Food. Your Questions.’ is an example of performance transparency – a marketing strategy which seeks to provide customers with a clear and objective view of what they might expect from a company. You might have noticed performance transparency when online shopping for example – a common approach is to show unfiltered customer reviews next to product listings. The goal is to give customers a complete picture of what they can expect from a product or service, including identifying limitations as well as strengths.

There is strong evidence that performance transparency strategies have significant business benefits. I recently published a paper on performance transparency with my Imperial College Business School colleagues Professor Andreas Eisingerich and Jaka Levstek and with collaborators at the Thunderbird School of Global Management. We found that transparency increases the level of trust that customers place in a brand and, perhaps most significantly, makes them more likely to pay a price premium for that brand’s products.

We found that transparency increases the level of trust that customers place in a brand

Performance transparency can benefit service firms as well as suppliers of goods and retailers. Andreas and I found that customers are more willing to do business with a service firm which they feel is transparent and pay a price premium for its services.

We also found that the positive effects of transparency persisted even when customers perceived a service firm’s ability to deliver their promised service to be low. So for a company new to market and yet to build a reputation for quality, or for a company going through a tough time, transparency could be a particularly effective strategy to address customer concerns.

Despite growing evidence for the business benefits of performance transparency, I still find that many executives are reticent to implement transparency strategies.

I still find that many executives are reticent to implement transparency strategies

In our research we conducted a survey of managers working in a variety of industries and found that eight out of ten had not considered ways of proactively employing transparency to enhance their company’s competitiveness. Managers described to us how transparency initiatives like sharing negative information can feel counterintuitive and contrary to their instincts to focus only on the positive aspects of their products.

To help managers who are yet to consider performance transparency, my colleagues and I have developed best practice guidelines. You can find out more about these in my next article: 5 strategies to leverage transparency.

 Dr Omar Merlo is Assistant Professor and Director of the MSc Strategic Marketing programme in the Imperial College Business School. His main interests are in the areas of strategic marketing, services and relationship management, customer engagement and customer management. With Professor Andreas Eisingerich he also teaches on the School’s Executive Education programme  Digital Mindset for Customer Value.

[1] https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/mcdonalds-honest-approach-fast-food/1343221

Richard Watson, Futurist-in-Residence at the Tech Foresight Practice at Imperial College London

I stumbled upon a Wikipedia page recently about disruptive technologies. While the page provided a good summary of what’s coming next, it failed to excite me for a number of reasons. First, although the technologies were grouped by industry or sector, which was useful, there was no chronology or ranking of potential force. I thought Imperial’s Tech Foresight team could do better, so here, for your delectation and delight, is a table of 100 emerging technologies ranked by both time and disruptive potential put together by Anna Cupani and I, with the input and feedback of many academics and brilliantly brought to life by Lawrence Whiteley at Wond.

The technologies are divided into four groups. Horizon one technologies (green bottom left on the table) are technologies that are happening right now. If they are appropriate to your business, you should be integrating and executing these technologies right now.

Horizon two technologies (yellow) are probable near-future technologies (10-20 years hence). Experiment and discuss if appropriate.

Horizon three technologies (red) are technologies that are likely to emerge in the more distant future (20 years plus). Keep an eye on developments in these areas and explore if appropriate.

The outer edge of the table (grey) contains what we’ve termed Ghost Technologies. This is fringe thinking with some examples bordering on lunacy. However, while each example is highly improbable none, or very few, are actually impossible. There was some debate as to whether to include this section on the basis that many of these ‘technologies’ are pseudo-science, but if the history of science & technology tells us anything it’s surely that what starts as impossible or implausible often ends up being obvious or inevitable.

Finally, on the far right of the table are examples of companies active in each of the technology areas.  We are grateful to Gaby Lee for her help and extensive search on the internet. We excluded Imperial College here because it felt like we might be blowing our own trumpet a little too much. Also, because a planned future version is proposed that will highlight where Imperial is active.

So, here’s a billion-dollar question.

Assuming this table is roughly correct, how might you spot the companies or organisations that will succeed commercially? Which companies might you invest in or acquire? To my mind, this is roughly the same as asking what are the rules for innovation or how might you make your company more innovative and better positioned to succeed in a competitive and volatile environment?

My own particular background is in innovation working with the likes of Virgin, Toyota, and Unilever and I’ve been an expert blogger on innovation for Fast Company magazine in the US too, so I think I may have acquired some useful perspectives along the way about what makes some companies world-famous while consigning others to the dustbin of obscurity.

The first of my lessons learnt is that being roughly right is often better than being perfectly right. ‘Perfect’ can take a very long time, creates a lot of arguments and quite often the world has moved on by the time you are ready with ‘perfection.’ With many products, being roughly right and quick (ironing out any imperfections after launch) is often better than endless deliberation. This is more or less the Facebook motto of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ or the Silicon Valley idea of ‘Failing Fast.’ There are plenty of exceptions to this. With art, perfection is worth the effort, but if you work in pharmaceuticals, being roughly right might actually kill someone.

My second lesson learnt when it comes to innovation, especially radical innovation, is that Peter Drucker, the management guru, was right. When it comes to innovation, culture eats process for breakfast.

If you’ve got the wrong culture no amount of process or management consultancy can save you. You can change a culture, of course, but in my experience, this takes many years. In contrast, if you’ve got the right culture, innovation will, up to a point, naturally emerge through osmosis.

What constitutes the right culture? That’s tricky to pin down, but I’d say a company that’s curious, questioning and playful. Also, one that’s nimble and is not strangled by bureaucracy. One that tolerates failure and gives people the freedom to experiment too.

Being on a mission and having a well-defined enemy helps too. Think Apple and Microsoft in the early days or perhaps Virgin Vs. British Airways before Virgin’s David turned into another Goliath.

However, great cultures don’t just emerge. They generally come from the top of an organisation and are usually created by a charismatic CEO with a well-articulated vision of the future or, better still, a founder with something to prove.

A third thing I’ve learnt is that you never really know. What I mean by this is that nothing is 100% certain and nothing is guaranteed to work. There are no fool-proof rules. Things that should work often don’t and things that shouldn’t work often do. The only way to find if something really will work is, again, to experiment.  That’s the mindset you’re after. Keep exploring, keep adapting, keep evolving, keep trying.

Specific and practical tips

1. My first tip is to get to know as many young people as possible and hire as many as you can too. These people are more invested in the future than you or I, and they tend to be more closely aligned with change too. But don’t get too carried away. Young people tend to drive disruption, as anyone that’s read Thomas Kuhn’s classic book on the structure of scientific revolutions might remember, but you need to get the right balance between old and wise and young and energetic. Both must respect the other too.
2. My second tip also comes from Thomas Kuhn. New discoveries and ideas are often happy accidents and while the creation of such serendipitous events is difficult, keeping your eyes and ears wide open to interesting anomalies isn’t. This idea links to weak-signals in scenario planning lingo and perhaps with ethnographic research and design thinking too. As someone once said, the most powerful phrase in science isn’t “Eureka!” it’s “that’s interesting!”
3. Tip three is cross-fertilisation. New ideas are often novel combinations of old ideas, so mix things up a little in terms of the diversity of everything from people attending meetings and workshops to office seating plans. Or take an idea that works in one context and think about how it might be combined to work in another.

Only this morning I was playing around with a bottle of cough medicine that featured a label that could be peeled back to reveal a second, hidden, label containing further product information. What if you took this principle of hidden information and applied it to another product?

Finally, I’d like to leave you with something that’s more of a mindset that a top tip. The world is becoming more complex, volatile, ambiguous and uncertain, which creates a craving for sense-making, stability, rules and logic.

It also creates a thirst for knowing what’s next. We are contagiously curious about trends, especially tech trends that we somehow think of as being fool-proof ways of being in the right place at the right time.

There’s nothing wrong with following trends. Indeed, they are essential for incremental innovation and continuous product improvement. But remember that trends bend and many eventually snap if used too often or stretched too far. Critically, if more or less everyone is more or less following the same key trends, doesn’t that mean that more or less everyone is thinking along similar lines?

Trends are what the really smart innovators break. Successful innovators don’t follow, they create. They don’t codify conventional wisdom, they smash it to pieces and jump up and down on the fragments shouting “I’ll show you.” They don’t let dogma and other peoples’ opinions smother their originality or intuition either.  In short, they are the architects of their future and you must be the same in your distinctive way.

Professor Nelson Phillips is Abu Dhabi Chamber Chair in Innovation and Strategy, and Executive Education Programme Director Imperial College Business School.

In his TEDx Hessle talk, Professor Phillips argues that we need to get as good at digital leadership as we are at creating and applying digital technology. Digital transformation is about fundamental changes needed in our organisations where we work, the society where we live, and, perhaps less obviously, in the nature of the leaders and leadership we need.

Frans Campher is CEO of Integral Leadership Dynamics and Co-Director of our Leadership in a Technology Driven World programme.

Imagine, for a moment, that you and the people you lead are perfectly equipped to deal with the relentless change, ambiguity and complexity of the fast-paced and ever-changing world of business we live in today.

Now, imagine for a moment that they are not only able to survive change, but that they thrive because of it. How might that be?

Quite simply put, adaptive leadership is exactly that: the ability, as a leader, to create an environment of collaboration, creativity and agility that delivers outstanding response to change and that understands how fundamental it is to you, your team and to the organisations success.

Adaptive leaders recognise that the “command and control” leadership style of yesteryear does not resonate with the highly networked and social work forces of today. It stifles the flow of information, demotivates teams and works against innovation. At its worst, it can erode trust and engagement amongst your people.

Change is often scoped in a very controlled, technical way – we focus on the process and systems. Sometimes, we even redraw organisational charts. All well intended of course, however the business impact of a highly controlled environment is that change is slow, results are not what they should be and there is lower engagement. Your teams exhibit very little creativity, they show very little ownership and will often put in discretionary effort to achieve the outcomes you and your stakeholders want.

Human beings are complex and paradoxical in nature. The reason so many change programs fail is because we assume our people will fold in, and unfortunately this is not the case.

Instead, take the adaptive leader approach and put the challenge to your people, ask for their input, notice the tension arising. In fact, the best will create and foster tension so that diverse views emerge. When we embrace diversity, we generate multiple possibilities that deliver better solutions and outcomes – a win-win for all stakeholders.

Here are 10 questions to ask yourself when you are facing an adaptive challenge:

1. What is the purpose and mission of your business or unit?

Frame the challenge and link it to your overall purpose and mission to maintain a consistent connection with what your team holds dear.

2. Who are you in this system?

How do you react to change, what biases do you bring into the situation? How does this impact your identity and the way you foster delegation? Being aware of your own biases will open you up to wider and often better possibilities.

3. What is the adaptive challenge here?

Scope the adaptive challenge by socialising your thinking and asking for input from your people and stakeholders. This will increase trust and engagement and foster greater creativity.

4. What is your capacity to telescope into the detail? Equally, what does the challenge look like from distance?

Being able to telescope out and look at the whole enterprise system is critical.

5. What are the essential values and capacities that has made you successful to this point?

Be sure to retain essential values and capacities. By holding onto essential values and capacities you will gain quicker buy in to the change you are seeking.

6. What have you done to ensure everyone’s input is heard?

It is imperative that all views are heard (even if you do not accept or use them). Once you have heard someone, they are more likely to accept the change you are proposing.

7. Who are the key people you need to engage on a one-to-one basis?

Make sure you have effective conversations with key stakeholders to understand where they are and what their thinking is in the situation. The greatest fear that people have in change is what they are losing, how their identity, autonomy or status is being impinged. What can you do to mitigate this?

8. What processes will you put in place to ensure that rigorous debate is fostered?

Generate creative tension and discussion so that there is rigorous debate and the best decisions are forged.

9. How will you keep your people focused?

Create clear outcomes with your people, ensure accountabilities are understood and accepted, follow up with regular discussion. Keep them focused with regular check-ins.

10. How will you hold accountability?

Hold individuals and teams accountable to deliver and for results down the line.

Professor Bart Clarysse & Dr Jana Thiel

Are you an analytical, experimental, or visionary innovator? Knowing may help you write your next business case.

Faced with challenges like technological disruption and changing patterns of consumer behaviour, big corporates know they need to innovate or be left behind.

Across the world corporate incubators and accelerators are being established, innovation teams expanded, projects launched, and startups founded and funded. Leaders and investors have high hopes and companies such as Google, Amazon.com, and Tesla are setting the benchmark. However, innovation initiatives often fail to live up to sky-high expectations.

We have studied how companies approach innovation and can suggest three models used by companies when developing business cases for innovation initiatives: analytical, experimental, and visionary.

We hope these models will help you decide which innovation strategy (or combination of strategies) is right for you given your tolerance of uncertainty, timescales and desired outcome.

Analytical

Analytical innovators develop business cases using methods familiar to executives and business school students. They analyse market trends to identify unmet customer needs and build investment proposals which aim to achieve breakeven typically within a few years. Their analytical approach requires supporting data. This data is often drawn from similar projects in different industries or regions of the world. Therefore, the innovative project that emerges might be unknown to the company or its industry but is unlikely to be new in the world.

This approach can lead to successful and sustainable new enterprises in a short time.

Experimental

Experimental innovation happens in environments with higher levels of uncertainty. Experimental innovators work on concepts where a future market can be anticipated, but is yet to be activated.

In the absence of data, experimenters take action. Using agile methodologies (for example approaches inspired by Lean Startup or real options reasoning) they introduce ideas to the market by funding, testing and refining prototypes through small proof-of-concept projects. Over three to seven years successful businesses and new product lines can emerge.

Experimenters need patience and the ability to pivot in response to market feedback. They must build a community of supporters to sustain their ideas over time. Corporations that encourage experimentation need mature processes to stop projects that fail and to redeploy resources.

Visionary

Visionary innovators lead whole movements often inspired by grand challenges like addressing climate change. Perhaps building on past success, visionaries have the confidence and resources to overcome the highest levels of uncertainty and be agents for economic, technological and social change. For example, when Richard Branson started his space program in 2005, everyone was very sceptical. Today the idea that in a few years spacecraft could fly passengers rapidly from one big city to another is no longer surprising.