Rapid Innovation Group blog

Becoming (in)credible

As a recent graduate working with start ups (not infrequently run by people who would themselves be considered ‘young’ in the corporate world), I think credibility is one of the biggest issues a young professional comes up against. The trouble with credibility, and this is by no means a new problem, is that it has historically been associated with age and experience; a 22-year-old is thereby automatically less credible than an older counterpart.

However, social media has changed the nature of the credibility question. Anyone who takes 15 seconds to do a Google search for me can easily discover the year I finished university and when I started work; it’s not an enormous leap from there to deduce my age and experience. Maybe that’s my fault for having an uncommon name, but I think the point holds true on a broader scale given the extreme potential for tracking just about anyone through tools like stalkbook and StalkedIn. Trying to conceal your age or relatively little professional experience is simply not possible in overcoming the credibility gap. Coupled with the awkward selfies and angst-ridden blogs lurking out there for those of us who went through adolescence on Myspace and Bebo, social media can seem like a young professional’s worst enemy.

We all know the value of being seen as reliable and able to deliver: it is the key to being taken seriously as a professional and the ‘+1’ factor in networking. The trouble is actually getting to be credible. Although social media might sometimes be a hindrance, it can also be turned to the advantage of the young professional. Credibility hinges on trustworthiness and expertise, both of which can be developed by purposefully building an online presence.

We must firstly be constantly aware of the fact that anything we do on the internet could become public knowledge. I have a hard time viewing as credible anyone I don’t personally know whose social network settings allow me to see photos of them on the lash in Ibiza. That’s not to say I don’t believe in having a laugh, but slack privacy makes people appear somehow less professionally trustworthy. This seems like an obvious point, but as a recruitment manager who makes a habit of checking out all applicants on facebook, it apparently isn’t.

Blogs and Twitter can provide the means for establishing referable expertise, so long as you are addressing the people you want to hear you about relevant issues. This may simply consist of commenting on other people’s thoughts, but it’s still an important way of expressing engaging points of view.

Write about what interests your audience, be they recruiters, customers or peers. Do it with a bit of style and personality, and people may be interested enough to read more of what you have to say. Even if you’ve never worked in a given area before, being able to articulate thoughtful arguments on that topic boosts your reputation as someone who can be trusted to communicate well and has the potential to become an expert. If an applicant sends me to her blog, I wouldn’t expect to land on a post about the relative promiscuity of girls at her university. (Nor would I expect that post to be littered with errors … Spell check, guys. Editing errors do not look professional or expert.)

However, all of this is nothing without delivery. As a young professional (or company), coming through on your promise is vital. Without the gravitas of a long career or big brand behind you, there is little for you to fall back on if you come up short. You don’t just get to ‘be’ credible – you have to invest in and prove yourself to get there.

As the demographics of those using social media change (I recently learned the average facebook user is 38) and given the emphasis on entrepreneurship as an option for young people in light of the economic climate, the definition of credibility may be in flux. Defining your own professional brand online can be the first step in shifting the credibility bias away from age.

The Transferability of Skill

This is my first week at the Rapid Innovation Group and I come to the company from an unlikely background. Having studied English, literature, languages, and medieval studies from undergrad through a PhD, I have often been asked in sneering tones, “What are you going to do with that?” Along with everyone else, I would have myself doubted that I would go on to found an online language-training business and start working for a hi-tech consultancy, but such is life.

With no actual training in business, I have been thinking a lot about “transferable skills” in my first few days at RIG. The concept is not as popular in my home country of America as it is here in the UK, and I’ve known many to dismiss the notion of transferable skills as a wishy-washy theory that has no validity in actual practice. But after less than a week at RIG, I find myself performing tasks that I have spent years training to execute swiftly and cleanly. Thank goodness I’m a medievalist.

First and perhaps most obvious is the skill of research. Knowing what questions to ask can be as important as the desired information itself. Being familiar with both the methodologies and tools of research, as well as frameworks for organizing and structuring information, data, and even thought saves time, energy, and therefore also money. Tracing the manuscript origins of a West Saxon copy of an Old English poem with an Anglian original requires a remarkably similar process to determining the potential marketing direction of a burgeoning startup. I’ve heard reported that Joseph Strayer, a prominent medieval historian who worked for the CIA, claimed that medievalists made excellent operatives because they were accustomed to making informed decisions on the basis of limited evidence. I see his point.

Most striking to me, however, is the importance of language. This includes nuanced ability to craft the English language, the ability to analyse someone else’s language, and the ability to speak other languages. When impressions count and arguments need to be made forcefully and quickly, language must be clear, clean, and to the point in order to have the desired effect. Understanding the subtleties of language allows one to perceive metamessages—whether consciously or unconsciously created—in the language of another party; this skill can be critical for assessing the tone, interest, or desires of a client, customer, or partner.

The importance of knowing other languages also cannot be undervalued. On the research front, knowledge of multiple languages allows one to gauge more quickly and accurately cultural values and sentiments held in other countries. Will this product find a market in Germany? What are South American newspapers reporting about this technology and its impact? These are hard questions to answer without knowing languages. Even more important is the ability to cross over into another’s culture via language; by eliminating this barrier, one eliminates many hurdles on the way to successful business. In my own experience, America is such a diverse country that no matter from where someone actually comes, I think of him or her as “American” so long as he or she speaks fluent American English. The fluency of language eliminates disconnects and makes it easy for me to feel “at home.” The same is true in developing relationships in non-English-speaking countries. 

I’ve always held the notion of transferable skills in high regard, but I did not expect to be using so much of my academic training right from the start. From my limited perspective, there are few backgrounds I could see as more useful for business than one involving detailed study of language and literature, and I am thankful for my training as a medievalist. “What will you do with medieval studies?” It seems quite logical to respond, “Start a business, then help develop hi-tech startups, of course!”

"Get Thee Down to a Hackathon, Young Man"

Hackathons are generally seen as being the preserve of enthusiastic developers. It’s all about the code, surely..??

I recently had the good fortune to be accepted for the Seedcamp Seedhack event – there were going to be 120 attendees, with a mix between coders and ‘business types’. My personal aim in going was to see inside the black box and understand what ‘bits’ it actually takes to build a web app/service.

As the event approached, I had a sense of great excitement at taking part but also a lot of self-doubt: what can I possibly contribute?

Shortly after arriving at LBS on a Friday evening, we were taken at breakneck pace through a raft of API presentations by companies such as Facebook and GIS Cloud. Then there was a special session highlighting the role that entrepreneur-driven innovation can play in the delivery of healthcare: Richard Stubbs, Programme Director for NHS Innovation Challenge Prizes, hailed the role of local initiatives as the antidote to the ‘one big system mentality’ behind the failed NHS core IT project. This was then nicely illustrated by the presentation that Mohammed Al-Ubaydli gave on the approach that his company, Patients Know Best, takes to healthcare data innovation.

In the days running up to the event, we had all been encouraged to post ideas on the event’s forum so that they could be commented on and voted on. The people with the highest scoring ideas then pitched them to the room – ideas included a credit scoring system based on social media data, a Facebook API-driven social dating application and an online social calendar. Teams were formed on the spot and went off to start work. Our mission was to have a minimum viable product (i.e. a working demonstration) by 4pm on Sunday.

Although I had posted my own idea which was a concept based on emerging Smart TV platforms, I chose instead to join an existing group so I could see a web app being built from the ground up. I joined up with three bright young developers from a development company in Bielsko-Biala, Poland who wanted to write a web-delivered system to integrate all the different operating and financial data sources that a small professional services company uses in order to generate easy and insightful profitability analysis metrics.

Fortunately I was able to be very useful – there was an emphasis on having an outline business rationale (which was based on the Lean Canvas framework) – so ‘business types’ like me were able to provide critical input on the customer proposition, the routes to market and the revenue models.

What was great was how much the developers valued the business input as they wanted to make something not just ‘cool’ but also with commercial potential.

By Sunday, most of the teams had a product demonstration ready. My team had a nicely designed online dashboard with a set of metrics and interactive Javascript graphs linked to dummy data on a custom-built Ruby on Rails engine. Very satisfying!

As we headed off to the nearby pub, everyone was happy but exhausted – at least one person had coded for 48 hours straight! I came out of the event with a much better sense of what it takes to build a decent web service, and having met a really good bunch of talented and motivated people (and having eaten more pizza in two days than I thought was humanly possible).

If you haven’t attended a hackathon, I would strongly recommend it!

Many thanks to Carlos Eduardo Espinal of Seedcamp and his team for putting together a fantastic event.

"I had a major decision to make: shut down or change"

StarBase, founded in 1992, is a London-based performance testing software consultancy with established testing expertise in a wide range of industries. We spoke to Stephen Davis, StarBase founder and MD, about his experience in starting his own company.

Why did you start StarBase?

"The reason I started StarBase was basically because I was fed up with big company politics and the fact that some people were more interested in empire building than working together for the benefit of the company, customers and staff. I was looking for an alternative to working for large companies; I wanted to work for them, but I realised I didn’t have to work for them directly.

"By understanding their requirements and challenges, I aimed to deliver solutions that would help them achieve their business objectives. I wanted to focus on delivering a great service and use the skills and knowledge I’d accumulated for the benefit of other businesses. I say to new staff, 'you only know what you’ve achieved by looking behind you at what you’ve done.' And most people want to do a good job."

How has your view of running your own business changed since you started StarBase?

"The enthusiasm and optimism I had at the beginning was replaced very quickly with a realisation that starting and running a business is tough. You’ve got to be able to dig deep to stay the course. The enthusiasm gave way to pragmatism: I had to lower my sights initially, and I had to revisit my business plan a few times.

"My initial aim was to focus on smaller companies, and that concept completely failed. My view was to target companies with a turnover of £50m - £150m but the reality was that they don’t buy enough services to warrant doing this. Further down the line, a significant turning point for StarBase was when the market we were targeting completely disappeared in January 2000. We had been focusing on the IBM AS/400 business computer but with all the upgrades put in place preparing for Y2K, no one planned to spend any money in 2000. I had a major decision to make: shut down or change. That was a major learning point – you have to be prepared to be adaptive and change as your market evolves.

"You do something, and you think, 'okay, that should work.' And when it doesn’t, you have to think, 'why isn’t it working?' You’ve just got to be ready to adjust your course and willing to revisit your business plan. You have to plan but you don’t have to stick rigidly to it. It has to evolve with you. Sometimes the plan is just not as clear as it should be; at other times you have total clarity.

"I’m a great believer in trying things, in experimentation. But I also have a view that if I’m not sure if something is going to work, try it, but if it’s going to fail, let it fail fast. I used to procrastinate and I don’t any more. I realised that by not making a decision I was making the situation worse. If I make a decision and it doesn’t work, I know it’s the wrong answer and it must be something else.

"Sometimes business leaders don’t like to be seen to fail, but if you look at the big ones, the ones in the media, they’ve all failed at some point in their careers. They’ve all had companies that haven’t worked or products that didn’t sell. You have to be prepared for things not to work; otherwise, you’re being too cautious."