I spent yesterday evening watching NASA’s Perseverance Rover land successfully on a planet (currently) around 126 million miles from Earth. Despite all the technology and automation, it was a very human drama, centred on the men and women in Mission Control as they nervously waited to see if Perseverance would make it to Mars intact. What an incredible accomplishment! Not a “cheems mindset” in sight!
Inspired by internet meme culture, the term “cheems mindset” was recently coined by Jeremy Driver and I’ve seen it pop up on Twitter and elsewhere. He defines it as “the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome them.”
We’ve seen a lot of this around the pandemic – particularly naysayers on the speed that vaccines could be created and then distributed. A lot of this seems to be bound up in wanting to appear smart, by suggesting that things are more complicated than most people realise. However, while many commentators were talking us down and coming up with reasons why things couldn’t be achieved, innovators were getting on with the job of fighting the virus.
Kate Bingham, the venture capitalist and chair of the Vaccine Taskforce, doesn’t have a cheems mindset. I’ve shared it before, but if you’ve not read her interview in Die Welt and La Repubblica, you really should.
According to Driver, the opposite of the “cheems mindset” is “the improving mentality”, which was coined by our Head of Innovation Anton Howes. This is what entrepreneurs have in abundance and it’s what we need more of across the whole of society (including politics).
That’s why I’m cautiously optimistic about Aria – the new £800m high-risk science agency. It will be modelled on America's Arpa and its successor Darpa. I say "optimistic" because it's ambitious (though will need more cash to work at scale), but “cautiously” because it takes more than political will to make this sort of project work. Last year, Ben Reinhardt outlined in incredible detail what makes – or made, if you think it’s no longer as good as it was – Darpa special.
Bingham proves a huge part of success is driven by the people, and as Paul Graham tweeted (in effect subtweeting the UK Government): “Darpa was successful not just because of the policies it embodied, but also because of the people who ran it. If another government copied the policies but put the wrong people in charge, they'd get little benefit.”
Many people I respect think it’s a shame renowned Australian computer scientist Michael Nielsen dropped out of the running to lead it. But when the job adverts for all positions go out they should include: “must have an improving mentality; those with a cheems mindset need not apply.”
Street votes
As previously trailed, we’ll have a report out this year on the impact of planning policy upon entrepreneurship. I hope (and expect) it won’t need to include an idea that Policy Exchange scoped out in its report this week because it will already be law.
In Strong Suburbs, Dr Samuel Hughes and Ben Southwood make a compelling case for Street Votes, which would let homeowners vote on upgrading their streets. The incentive is huge. On streets that agree to allow typical forms of gentle intensification, they calculate the average participating homeowner would make £900,000.
Entrepreneurs would most obviously benefit from access to a wider talent pool and in time the reduction in housing and rental costs for them and their teams. It would also benefit entrepreneurial house builders.
As I wrote in my endorsement: “Fast-growing firms play a crucial role in the British economy, creating innovative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. In recent decades, however, the UK’s planning system has largely locked them out of the housing industry. By devolving planning powers to communities, this outstanding scheme may give entrepreneurs a chance to deliver the housing we need in the places it’s most needed.”
You say hello
Like most people, I miss the serendipity of bumping into new people at events. While it (hopefully) won’t be too long before we do that in person, I think we’ll continue to do online events alongside physical ones. After all, we now regularly have events with people from around the country and world that can’t easily be replicated physically.
But I want more serendipity in online events. That’s why we’re trialling a new platform for our next event: The Future of International Business.
The system is Spacein and it was created by Matteo Console Camprini – a long-time friend, supporter and Adviser to The Entrepreneurs Network. It’s still in beta, but I hope you can join us for the webinar and also for the networking before and afterwards (this is built into the timings). And just like our physical events, I’ll be there until the last person leaves to switch off the metaphorical lights.
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