1. Investigating Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Developing the idea
Professor Colin Gray
For non-entrepreneurs, the challenge of identifying an idea for a business, product or service
can be very daunting. According to Julian, though, the answer lies in being alert to everyday
changes and problems that occur around us and in developing a mindset for identifying
problems and thinking up solutions. Simple ideas like Julian’s can lead to businesses that
provide anything from a livelihood to fame and fortune!
Julian Brower
It was an advertising board. When you go into a corner shop and you want to put your little er
eight by five advert in the corner you go and you pay your money, you wait for the person to
decide where it's going to go. It sits up on the screen – on the board outside for about a week
–
Professor Colin Gray
An electronic type screen –
Julian Brower
Yeah an electronic type screen. Well with modern day technology flat screens and mine was
particularly focusing on a concept called electroluminescence screens – these are paper thin
screens and in a years time they are going to be an A1/AO size. You can cut the quadrants
up in to little eight by five inch and you can sell the advertising space. So you can use it for
flogging your you know spare bits – logs that you've got from your garden or a local taxi or
pizza company or national companies could advertise on it – all done on line so you don’t
have to go to the shop.
Colin Gray
Can you just take us through the process of how you came to identify that original idea of
yours, the um the notice board – the electronic notice board in the various shops
Julian Brower
Well um that specific idea came from an observation er I went through this idea of trying to
put um – I had a couple of months free and I decided to do some DIY and I went to the local
shop and I put an advert in the board and I went to about ten shops in my local environment
within five miles and I wanted to put half – half of the adverts didn’t appear on the board.
Some of them fell off. Some of them got the timings wrong. Some are still there two and a
half years later. And it was just so inefficient. And I looked at them and I thought you know
these boards are half-empty. I'm sure there must be a modern innovative technological way
of doing this. And immediately I thought advertising screens which I'd seen in London being
used by um – companies um promoting houses, estate agents, valuers, putting adverts in
these boards. They look fantastic. They're not boards. They're television screens. They're
posh television screens. So I just put two and two together and I came up with this idea and I
thought you know if we can contact this board on line we can cut out the middleman, the
person behind the counter. Well we pay them twenty per cent of our income, turnover, of our
profit for the purpose of keeping the board in. So we are never going to have a problem
finding people because people are going to take the money. All we want is a bit of their shop
front space. So that’s where the idea appeared. But I actually think there are a lot more
ideas out there than people realise. The thing is I'm not convinced we live in a society where
we promote new ideas. I think often we’re told, you know, oh no it can't be done. Well my
philosophy is now of course it can be done but there is just another way of doing it. So I think
people have a lot more ideas and if you actually stop and think about it there are a lot more
ideas hidden away in your life than you actually realise.

2. Professor Colin Gray
Are you going to return to the idea?
Julian Brower
I may very well do so but I'm waiting for technology to catch up to where I want it to be. I'm
hoping that nobody will steal it um and I'm also hoping that er the the social aspects of it will
improve. But I also think there are other places to put e-boards. I think that shopping
centres, garages, anywhere where people there’s a through put of people where they want to
look up on a board. Anywhere where people want to advertise locally. And the great thing
about this is that you type in your postcode on the computer. You then decide I want within a
five-mile radius. An e-board will calculate all the potential outlets for you to see. And you say
well I only want fifty per cent of those so it will calculate all that for you. It's such a simple
idea. The software is manageable because I have someone on board who’s prepared to do
the software. The initial outlay was quite big. It was close to a hundred thousand quid. Well
you know that’s a lot of money and in this working environment now with the way banks are
playing it's not so easy. This is one side of entrepreneurialship – am I prepared to put a
hundred grand mortgage on my house for an idea that I fee a little bit uncomfortable about?
But this me as a person now not as a business. You've got to be the right person and be
prepared to take the risk.
Professor Colin Gray
How long do you think you can keep on working in your laboratories? It sounds like your
ready to go.
Julian Brower
Yes but once again it's money. It's risk. How much risk am I prepared to pay and that risk is
increasing on a monthly basis. The cost is going up and I also have to be convinced that
governments er and councils and the like are going in the right direction for this type of thing
to go ahead because you know it's all about people um wanting to use these local shops. It's
the – the throughput of people is critical. Um the other thing that's very important that I wanted
to bring into it is a little bit of green because that’s the buzzword at the moment. You know
solar power and all the rest of it and if I could put a green element into it, a sustainability
element into it that would also add a bit of value and I could put that through the marketing
side of things and you know the more sustainable green e-board because you don’t have to
drive to our shop so each advert saves x amount of carbon. And these are all part of the deal.
So you just basically have to look for all these little things and you now what you learn on
these courses you turn them out and you pop them back into the marketing strategy because
you know you get all the buzz words out. People want to see these things.
Professor Colin Gray
You've obviously got a lot of very useful tools from er doing an entrepreneurship course of
that type. How has the experience of actually going through all those analyses that you've
described and also your actual experience in business and in changing jobs and things
informed your current views on entrepreneurship and your views on how you might be starting
up a business in the future
Julian Brower
I think for me it's just clarified some weaker issues in my knowledge by developing the tools
that have come out of this course. I have really been able to condense out the areas of risk
that I needed to look at in more detail. One of the key areas of risk is myself you know and
these issues come out. As an entrepreneur I think I am a classic example. I think about a
hundred ideas a week. I want things to happen instantaneously. And I want to get as much
money out of it or as much success out of it as I can. But you can't do that, especially in
modern day business. Competition is intense now. So for me it has simply etched in stone
certain rules that I have to follow before I go out and start spending my money on developing
a new idea. And for that reason most ideas don’t get through but some do and one will get
through that will make me a great success.

3. Professor Colin Gray
And do you apply that sort of same sort of approach then to the products of the current um
current laboratories where you're now working with – coming up with scientifically and high
technology based products and services. You apply the same …
Julian Brower
I think it's a very different world there. The world is very, very big science. Um the world is er
the forefront of science that is not so easily moveable. The – the whole business environment
is quite different from my little e-board stuck in the – however I can apply my rules or my little
box to it but of course it's going to produce completely different results. But the point is I've
got the toolkit there. Um and in most cases well in fact in all cases so far nothing comes out
of the box because it's so big and your customer base is very limited. Not many people want
to buy the latest neutron gadget. Maybe a couple of rocket science companies. So you're
very limited. E-board gave me a lot more flexibility. But once again the toolkit which is taught
on an entrepreneurial course is is the way forward.