Show Notes 207: From the Archive: Cambridge Legend David Cleevely, Part 2.

In part 2 of our conversation with David Cleevly in 2024, David shares the essence

of what makes Cambridge a global tech hub. David, a serial entrepreneur and

investor, is a fixture in the Cambridge innovation scene. With experiences spanning public policy, founding organisations, and shaping impactful programmes.

In this engaging episode, David sheds light on the importance of creating networks and fostering serendipitous encounters to drive innovation. Here’s what you can expect:

The Power of Networking: David recounts the founding of Cambridge

Network in 1998, a community-centric initiative aimed at connecting

innovators, investors, and academics. He recalls that this network sparked

numerous collaborative projects, saying, “We need to do something about

networking Cambridge together, and everyone agreed.” Today, it remains a

cornerstone of the Cambridge ecosystem, fuelling partnerships and growth.

Don’t forget to buy his book – Serendipity – and tune into episode 146 for an

even deeper dive.

Founding Cambridge Wireless: David also co-founded Cambridge

Wireless in 2001 to ensure Cambridge stayed at the forefront of technological

advancements. Originally focused on 3G deployment, it has since grown to

encompass wireless and 5G technologies, enabling Cambridge to become a

major tech testing ground.

Supporting Startups through Cambridge Angels: David’s role as a

founding member of Cambridge Angels has helped bring early-stage funding

to ambitious tech companies. For him, Cambridge Angels are “engineered to

create a bridge between budding startups and experienced investors,” laying

the groundwork for many success stories.

Serendipity in Innovation: David is a firm believer in engineered

serendipity—creating environments where chance encounters can lead to

groundbreaking collaborations. “Serendipity is not just about chance but about

creating opportunities for unexpected meetings that can change everything,”

he says. Programmes like the Impulse Programme, a Cambridge initiative

for innovation, embody this philosophy with its tagline, “Where chance

encounters happen.”

For tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and anyone passionate about the future of

innovation, this episode is a must-listen. David’s insights offer valuable lessons on

scaling with purpose, fostering community, and creating an environment ripe for

serendipity.

Episode Transcript

00:03

James Parton

Welcome to the Cambridge Tech Podcast, talking all things technology from the heart of the UK's tech capital. Here are your hosts, Faye Holland and James Parton. Hi, I'm James.

00:30

Faye Holland

And I'm Faye.

00:31

James Parton

Welcome back to the second part of our two part conversation with David Cleveley.

00:35

Faye Holland

And in this episode, David gives some invaluable advice on the power of networking and how some of the more collaborative organizations he founded are formed. Very much with this in mind.

00:46

James Parton

And as Faye said last week, if you're new to the podcast, this is a vital conversation to listen to. And if you caught it first time around, you'll no doubt learn something new on a second listen. Foreign. So welcome to our second part of our conversation with serial entrepreneur David Cleveley. In the first part, which was episode 112, we talked about David's career, the companies he founded and invested in. And in this second part, we're going to delve a little bit deeper into the Cambridge Cluster, the vital work David does with government on policy and one of David's favourite topics that we've touched on a number of times, serendipity and paying it forward.

01:26

Faye Holland

So, David, welcome back here for round two with us.

01:29

David Cleevely

Thank you very much, Faye.

01:31

Faye Holland

So we're going to kick off talking about the Cambridge Cluster. Like James has said, I think saying that you're passionate about Cambridge is a slight understatement. Listeners will no doubt attest to this. You've been the backbone to so much that we take for granted. So we've talked about Cambridge Angels and lots of the companies in the ecosystem in part one. One of the other things that you instigated that I'd like to start the discussion on today, is co founding Cambridge network in 1998. So what's the story? Because there's going to be a story. Right, what's the story behind co founding Cambridge Network?

02:09

David Cleevely

Cambridge Network came out of a number of strands of activity. Herman was very keen on getting investors into Cambridge and wanted to bring analysts to visit so that they could see what was going on firsthand. It turned out that Alec brewers, who was then the Vice Chancellor, lived in the same road as me. And occasionally it's the street you live on, it's about 16 houses. I used to, when I was cycling to analysis, quite often I would meet Alec as he was walking into work and we would have a chat about various things. And it turned out that Alec was very keen on having a bit more of a vision for Cambridge, which I supported. So at analysis, I produced a report with Alec and some others called Cambridge 2020, which at that point was probably about 20 years or so into the future.

03:08

David Cleevely

There was also a dinner at what was now the defunct Cambridge University local industry links. And I brought some Malaysians into Cambridge to take a look around to see what was going on. And everybody was very exercised about these Malaysians wanting to build cyberjaya and their new thing where in fact actually Cambridge was already doing these things. We should be doing something about it, you know. And Herman stood up and said, Well, I propose Cambridge 2 as a result of a conversation that he, Alec and I were having at the end of the table. And then I stood up and said, well, we need to do something about networking Cambridge together and so on. And there was a general agreement about that.

03:48

David Cleevely

So suddenly all these things came together and Herman then put on a dinner at Murray Edwards then New hall, at which Fred Hallsworth of blessed memory stood up and said, what we need is a marketing czar. And out of that slightly confused conversation came the idea for doing Cambridge Network. And the next meeting we held, which was up on the Science Park, Miranda Weston Smith had done a whole lot of work and Herman presented a logo. And always when you've got a logo, you've got an organization. And away went. And that meeting had originally the first one was, I don't know, 28 people or something like that. The second one was 60. The third meeting we had was 120 and the next one we had was about 180 people. There was clearly something in the air and it just took off.

04:41

David Cleevely

The bit that I did in particular was because I always seem to be the guy with the business model and the governance structure in mind, I thought about how to get this thing off the ground because nobody was going to move first. So I simply said, I'm going to guarantee this £20,000, so if ever anything goes wrong, I have put a guarantee £20,000, I'll back it. And I got Herman and various others then to put in their guarantee of £20,000. There were in five originally and then six once. Everybody knew there was a guarantee of £120,000 backing this thing, everybody just piled it and away went on the.

05:23

James Parton

Subject of co founding really important organizations and lasting organizations around Cambridge. In your spare time, you also co founded Cambridge Wireless in 2001, the same year you co founded Cambridge Angels. I mean, obviously you've got that original telecoms background, but what was the opportunity that you felt that Cambridge Wireless could address?

05:45

David Cleevely

Many years ago, before we had broadband, I discovered that Cambridge was not on the list for the first rollout of broadband connected cities. As it happened, I was then doing some work with then Prime Minister, a certain Tony Blair. And I got inserted into Tony Blair's speech in Cambridge when he came up to launch a report that I had authored a commitment from BT to roll out broadband in Cambridge. And I'd done the deal on that one sitting in Restaurant 22, as it happens, with a number of very senior people with BT and Alec Bros. And I realized after having done that if Cambridge was going to get the infrastructure it needed, because at that time, if Cambridge didn't have broadband, what on earth was going to go? What was going on? And were about to enter a new wave of 3G.

06:47

David Cleevely

Of course, 3G is now nothing like this thing you need to run your smartphone. But 3G was the bee's knees, as it were. It was a cutting edge at that time. So we formed Cambridge 3G in order to create this marketing presence, right, to then encourage operators to deploy 3G in Cambridge early. And we did. We had the first base stations outside of the test beds in the Thames Valley, came to Cambridge because of Cambridge 3G. When 3G rolled out, of course we changed our name to Cambridge Wireless, but that's another story. But that was all engineered between myself and Jack Lang to shift all of that. That came out of a very specific need. Having learned the lesson of for heaven's sake, we need infrastructure in Cambridge if we're going to stay right at the leading edge.

07:40

James Parton

And you know, as we said, Cambridge Wallace has remained a really important organization locally. One of the organizers of Cambridge Tech Week were the primary organizer of Cambridge Tech Week and they also operate the 5G test beds. That legacy continues.

07:53

David Cleevely

Yes, and I'm very proud of what Cambridge Wireless is doing. You know, I was chair for a significant amount of time and occasionally she'll come back and ask me for a little bit of advice.

08:05

Faye Holland

Is it that bit of a double edged sword sometimes in the fact that, you know, with Cambridge Network you sat on their board and then you left and then you went back and sat on it again and you know, they will constantly, I assume, come and pick your brains as being one of the original co founders, Faye?

08:22

David Cleevely

I don't mind that coming back and asking me questions as long as, you know, I'm not encumbered. Being a formal chair role is a big job, right? Being an occasional advisor. I mean, before I came to do this podcast, I was sitting over there and giving some old mates from Cambridge Wireless, Some advice. Right, that's fine. I'm very happy to do that.

08:44

Faye Holland

Perfect. So, just on a broader Cambridge conversation, and I don't want to talk policy now, so I'm talking very specifically for the tech ecosystem. You know, we've got Innovate Cambridge that's just launched. We had the summit a few weeks ago. You know, we're now developing the tech strategy for Innovate Cambridge. What do you think we need to be doing to keep Cambridge highly competitive, moving forward from a tech point of view?

09:11

David Cleevely

I think we need to have a collective view about what scale means. I'd say that scale, as it has happened in Silicon Valley, is absolutely not the model we want to follow. And I think we need to understand that the chance encounters that lead to really great ideas only happen if you have organizations and structures that enable them to happen. We're sitting in the Bradfield center, and I had three meetings as part of an informal committee with Trinity about how to design this place and how it ought to operate in order that it would maximize the amount of serendipitous encounters. And when you walk into this place, you can see it does work. It really does. I mean, I walked in today and I saw loads of people I knew.

10:02

David Cleevely

We need to be thinking about that at scale, and the tech community needs to understand that it doesn't operate in isolation from that spatial and social environment in which it sits.

10:13

Faye Holland

Yeah, no, I think that's really, really important. And it is. It kind of is a nice segue into the next bit. So still a little bit on Cambridge, but in terms of the charitable contribution as well, which is quite specific, but something that you're very passionate about. And I know that you've mentioned it already, and that's Cambridge Science center that you co founded. You know, you really got off the ground. Tell us a little bit about why that charitable element has been so important to you.

10:42

David Cleevely

If you make some money, I think you really ought to give back to the community. I think that everybody needs to be a good citizen. The old line that a society grows great, where people plant trees whose shade they will never sit under is really important. And so I think that's what drives me. For all of those things, I look back on my life and see all the chances and opportunities that I got, and I think that really other people ought to have those as well, because how else are we going to prosper?

11:12

James Parton

And on that kind of vein, you've been heavily involved with Raspberry PI and the Raspberry PI Foundation. Again, I Mean, we've covered them a lot on the podcast they've obviously recently floated. You must be incredibly proud of what they've achieved over the years. Can you kind of go into your involvement with the organization and how you've helped shape that?

11:31

David Cleevely

Yeah, well, there's another bit of, I suppose, serendipity. Raspberry PI came to Cambridge Angels and some unsung heroes put money in. People like Robert Sansom and Jack Lang, of course, actually reasonably well known for his contribution to Raspberry PI. As it got off the ground, they decided that they were going to need a proper board to run the company, that is the company that produces the pies. And so they asked Herman, Sherry, Kutu and myself to join. And as Sherry said to me, when you get an invitation from Raspberry PI like that, you're not going to refuse, are you? So we all three of us joined the board. The charity was a separate organization. The charity owned, at that point, owned 100% of the trading company. We sat on the trading company board and, you know, made my contributions.

12:22

David Cleevely

And then David Brabham was asked by the charity trustees to take me out for a rather nice lunch at Japas Japanese Restaurant and asked me if I would like to become chair, not only chair of the trading company, but also chair of the charity. And again, following Sherry's line, how could I refuse when I took over? I know a dozen people, maybe a little more, in the entire organization, and the charity didn't have a proper business model. It was one of those things where we're giving money away to good causes, we must be doing good things. Well, my book, a charity has to be run just like a business. You have to understand exactly what you're doing, what you're trying to achieve, and you have to make every single penny count in order to be able to do that.

13:16

David Cleevely

So I did a number of things reorganizing what was going on. I was involved in all the technical strategy, discussions about the development of the pies, as well as the strategy for how to develop the foundation. And in about 2016, I held an off site at our house in Italy involving then chief executive of the foundation, Philip Colligan, and the chief executive of the trading company, Eburn Upton. And we had a couple of days of strategizing in temperatures that got up to about 37 degrees centigrade. At times it got quite hot. Not the discussion, but just the actual temperature. And there was one point where I had a chat with Eben, sitting in the car in our car park, and I agreed how were going to do the structure for the flotation.

14:15

David Cleevely

And that gives you some idea, I think, about how far in advance you need to do things. I'd been engaged with obviously the board of trustees, but also wonderful lawyer called Louis Glass who had helped put together the articles of association, revamping everything, revamping the governance structure. I introduced a thing called the Raspberry PI members. So the idea is that there are members of the charity and they elect the board of trustees. And the important point about that is if you can convince a membership of 30, 40, 50 people to do something, then you're probably right. Right. You have to have these democratic controls, proper governance structures in place to be able to make things work. So I did all of those things.

15:02

David Cleevely

I did a lot of some of the stuff about the plumbing, you know, to make the whole thing work as well as doing the negotiations and laying the thing out. So I was absolutely delighted. We, were going to, you know, flotation, to be frank, had been discussed all the time when I was not quite all the time I was chair, but a lot of it. And when I stepped down as chair, I was slightly disappointed. I mean, I'd already written in the fact that I had to step down as chair at the end of six years. So that's fine. I'd done that myself. And it's a very good thing, very good principle about organizations. Don't hang around too long. Of course it was going to take some time before we could get to flotation, so I wasn't going to see that.

15:47

David Cleevely

But I'm absolutely delighted that the groundwork proved to be the right groundwork.

15:51

James Parton

So how many years was it from that conversation in the car through to the flotation happening?

15:56

David Cleevely

Eight years.

15:57

James Parton

Eight years.

15:58

Faye Holland

Wow.

15:58

James Parton

Okay.

15:58

David Cleevely

Yeah, that's fairly typical, James. I think people have this idea somehow, you know, you have a conversation and then things, you know, next week. I mean, when I set up AB Cam, I didn't let a moment lose. You know, Jonathan originally said, oh, I'll get back to you in a few weeks. I said, no, we're going to meet this Saturday. That was from meeting him on the Monday, I think I said, well, we're going to meet on Saturday. Some things you have to do really quickly, but where you're doing long term strategy like that, you've got to accept that these things are going to take years to come to fruition.

16:32

David Cleevely

And what you want to be in a position of when they happen, you want to say to yourself, I'm really glad I did all those things three years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, because that has enabled us to do what we're doing now.

16:47

Faye Holland

I think it's a really interesting point as well, though, because I agree with you that if you're sitting on a board, there is a natural time when you need to move on from the board and get new people and new opinions in. But it's also quite hard because you've done that work and, you know, things may not carry on quite the same way. So, you know. But that, I guess. I guess that's just nature of the position, isn't it?

17:11

David Cleevely

On the other hand, Faye, if you've done a good job with a good strategy, that's solid and you have got the board to agree, okay, Other people coming in may vary things a little bit away from it, but it ought to be fairly robust.

17:28

Faye Holland

So I'm going to move us on in the conversation now thinking of good strategy and good policy. Let's talk about public policy and government, shall we? So we talked in the first part of your recording about the budget. You've always been extremely involved in public policy and the relationship with government locally, nationally, not just technology. But actually, like you talked about in the first part, you know, what does it actually mean to us as residents in terms of decisions that are made? So what I'd like to do is get, you know, you're, like, supremely busy and you still manage to do all of those things. Why, for you, is it so important that you are actively involved?

18:11

Faye Holland

And what are some of those key moments that, you know, you can look back on and say, that's what I've done in the area of public policy,.

18:21

David Cleevely

As far as public policy is concerned, I think the issue that I have is that I see gaps, and I suppose that's the entrepreneur in me. I can't see a gap without thinking, how do I fill that? What's the opportunity? And the gap in particular that I see with Cambridge and its growth is quite simple, really. If you've got something which is growing and doubling in size every 10 years, it's very difficult for people to recognize that you're twice as big after 10 years, you're four times as big after 20 years, you're eight times as big after 30 years. Now, I've lived in Cambridge for more than 30 years. If I projected it ahead, I may not. I'm likely to live another 30 years, but eight times the current size, and I don't want us sleepwalking into disaster.

19:12

David Cleevely

And it would Be a disaster, something of that kind of scale. If we don't think about it really carefully, there's a good chance of not being a very nice place to be. The corresponding thing, when I put the terms of reference together for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Economic Review and help put that together and get the raise of funding and so on, and doing that with Cambridge Head, the fundamental point there was to say, look, let's look into the future, let's see how this stuff is going. I was really going back to my time with the long Range Studies division where I started my first proper job. Even though I didn't treat it quite like a proper job, to be honest. But still that needs to be thought about.

19:54

David Cleevely

It's very difficult for people to understand how to coordinate transport and electricity and water and health and education and to do that in a circumstance where things are growing really fast. At first, when I got involved in all of this, it was all exciting and, you know, I got involved with E commerce and government policy. I was one of the boards of the Ministry of Defense. I helped write the government white paper on communications which brought about ofcom, all those kinds of things, they're very interesting. But then actually in the place that you live and you can see how it's developing and you can see that this stuff is going to happen at rates of change that people have never encountered, you feel there's a real obligation to do something about it. I suppose I'm an instinctive chairman, you know, basically.

20:45

David Cleevely

Right, right, everybody, we need to get together to be able to address this particular problem because you might not see it now. You might just think that it's a queue for the traffic along East Road. You have seen nothing compared to what's coming down the pike at you.

21:02

Faye Holland

It's a huge conversation in itself. Maybe we should get you back to do a whole episode on that too. Yeah, yeah. These parts just keep going on and on, couldn't they? But, you know, that's why as well as founding companies and these, you know, networking organizations, you've also done, like you said, you were chair at heart, you know, so Cambridge ahead. You've just mentioned Centre for Science and Policy. You know, you've done all of those things as well, to actually tangibly do something and show progress in these areas.

21:32

David Cleevely

Yeah, the center for Science and Policy is an interesting one because I was given a budget of about 1 and a half, 1.6 million pounds by the university and asked to create an institute. And of course the academics wanted me to spend money on research reports which they would then use to tell policymakers who the academics considered to be interesting people, but rather ill advised and ill informed about what the eternal truth was as a result of this research report never struck me as being the right way to do it. Having operated in government and having operated in academia, everybody has their place. I suppose there's a kind of underlying need to respect everybody.

22:18

David Cleevely

Going back to this point about being a chair I designed in conversation as a chance conversation with Arnaud Demer who was then head of the Judge, I had some vague inklings, but I designed a system whereby people from Whitehall could come and have 31 hour meetings with experts in Cambridge on a series of topics that they were interested in or questions that they wanted answered. And the result is that there's now been about 14,000 meetings between people from Whitehall and people in Cambridge and we've had over 600 of these fellows through Cambridge is now the best networked university with government that there is in the United Kingdom. And that was the strategy.

22:59

David Cleevely

It was to use what I'd understood with Cambridge Network and with Cambridge Wireless and the way that Cambridge Angels had worked to then actually turn that into something operational so that you would actually then deliver something which was going to be completely unexpected. Various other universities have now copied the idea. When I did it, nobody had done it.

23:25

Faye Holland

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24:14

James Parton

We spent a little bit of time there talking specifically about policy in regards to Cambridge. If we can now spend a little bit of time looking globally, where do you think the UK ranks in terms of its investment and support for areas like semiconductors, quantum and say, forming regulatory frameworks for AI?

24:32

David Cleevely

I think the UK in general has a rather unhealthy obsession with science. It thinks that somehow the high priests of science are going to be able to deliver prosperity. And you can compare and contrast that with the United States where Edison and that culture is the primary driver, so called Yankee ingenuity. There is a profound difference between the two. One on our side of the pond, a kind of unwavering respect for the intellectual powerhouse, and on the other side of the pond, a real enthusiasm for the practical implementation and consequences. And that difference is the problem for us.

25:21

James Parton

So that's provocative. What do we do about it and what are the ramifications of those two different approaches?

25:29

David Cleevely

So one of my other things that I do in my spare time is I have a scheme with the Royal Academy of Engineering, where I'm a fellow, which is a policy fellowship scheme, largely modeled on the Centre for Science and Policy, where I'm getting people in from Whitehall to spend time with engineers, not just all experts, and understand how engineers think about problems. The issue that we have in the United Kingdom is that we do not have a chief engineer, we have a chief scientist, we do not have a chief engineer, we have a chief technology officer, by the way. But that's to do with people's views about Webby stuff and it. Let's talk about proper engineering, because HS2, Terminal 5, Channel Tunnel, all of these things, the changeover to green energy, all of these things are going to require engineering.

26:21

David Cleevely

The AstraZeneca vaccine, brilliant in terms of science, but 95, 98%, as Pascal Sorio from AstraZeneca said, the majority of the effort was engineering. It wasn't science, because if you're going to make vaccine at scale and you're going to deliver it, that's engineering, it's not science. In the uk, unlike in America or in Germany, or probably more importantly for the long run, for us in China, they think engineering is really important and engineers play a massive role in government and in policy. Over here, you're dismissed as an engineer because basically you're going to come around and fix the gas boiler. There is a very serious problem in the United Kingdom about how engineering is thought of. I'm doing my little bit with the Roddickan of engineering to try and change it over time. I'm hoping it's going to shift, but we'll have to see.

27:23

David Cleevely

The UK needs to get out of its view that somehow inventing something is the same thing as innovation. I had this discussion at a parliamentary committee. I was called as a expert witness and I listened to all the speakers coming in. And when I was asked the question about what I thought about this new proposal for a thing called aria, which was the Advanced Invention and Research Agency, all this stuff to do with somehow the intellectual bit of this being the important thing, and I said, look, all I've heard so far in this parliamentary committee is People talking about two things. They talk about engineering and they talk about projects. So I would like to call it the Advanced Research and Engineering Projects Agency because that's what ARPA is over in the United States.

28:18

David Cleevely

They come from that Edison heritage of doing things, of implementing things, not just talking about. It actually turned out that the opposition then put a motion in to change the name of the bill to my suggestion, which is very amusing, but was rejected by then Science Minister because she said that she rather liked the name Aria. Now, my problem is, my problem with this is that invention for me conjures up a black and white film of a middle aged man in a tweed jacket emerging from a shed with his head on fire, clutching a test tube. Right. Innovation is a rather different matter. Innovation is about an entire supply chain, about how you actually get this stuff into the hands of people.

29:07

Faye Holland

Massively thought provoking stuff. I don't know where to go with all of that, but I think you're right. It's the, you can have ideas, but you've got to be able to execute them. And that's the bit that we're kind of missing. And I think about people like, you know, it's great to see Poppy Gustafson now being Investment Director. You know, we're getting, we're starting to get the right people in. So I hope that the work you're doing is going to start tackling some of that as well. But I'm going to move us on because I'm also very conscious of your time and I want to get through this lack, which actually I think is a really critical section. So as we wrap the discussion up, I would like to talk to you about your long held views on serendipity.

29:50

Faye Holland

And I would actually say our relationship came as a result of exactly what we're about to talk about. And just as an example, we were introduced by Anne Fisher 10 years ago in 2014. And your advice has literally been the bedrock of my whole approach within cofinitive. You. And then, I don't know if you remember, you immediately on meeting me went, Faye, you've got to go and speak to Jane at Cambridge Head and you've got to help because we've got this technology advisory group. Go do that and it'll work out for you. And that was basically it. That was kind of my main introduction into Cambridge. And we've worked on lots of things over the years, one of them being the Impulse program.

30:32

Faye Holland

And we referred to this earlier on and the strap line for Impulse, which I think you were behind is where chance encounters happen. So just tell us the gist of serendipity and what it, what it has meant to you.

30:47

David Cleevely

So serendipity means good fortune happens if you try. And it derives from the land of serendipity. It's happy chance, happy coincidence. Sri Lanka, Ceylon, as was in the old days. Serendipity is something that, once you've noticed it happening, you realize that it's absolutely everywhere in your life and will be the thing that determines what path your career and social life and everything else takes. It's all chance because I'm an engineer at heart. How do I turn that knowledge into something that can actually deliver something useful? And it turns out.

31:31

David Cleevely

But whilst I've experimented with things like Cambridge Oneness and Cambridge Network and Cambridge Angels and CSAP and all these other things, it really occurred to me that when we look at the way in which we're generating ideas in society, in the economy, and then actually turning them into useful product, there's a step which is the step of how do you get the right people to talk to the right people so that something can happen? We do that in Cambridge extraordinarily well. A lot of the stuff where I've, you know, managed to do things in Cambridge have been through those chance encounters and those kinds of discussions, raising money or having new ideas or whatever else it is. So the question really here is, can you operationalize it? And there's an example of how that was turned into something practical in the late 18th century.

32:30

David Cleevely

And the Lunar Society was a society that was formed by people like Wedgwood and Bolton. And their idea was that they would come together at the full moon because that's when you could travel on horseback during the evening, hence the Lunar Society. And you would discuss the latest scientific and other ideas, including art, as well as science. I'm a great believer in this crossover. You know, just doing science or just doing engineering doesn't cut it. We live a holistic existence. You cannot do it solely by looking at one discipline. They took the same kind of approach. And as a result, I'll give you a couple of examples.

33:10

David Cleevely

One was there was somebody who you would now describe as being on the spectrum, a chap called James Watt, who was then introduced and managed to get enough resources so that he could build a thing called a steam engine, or rather he took the Newcomen engine, and he had an idea for how to make it much more efficient. And he had his governor, which allowed you to regulate how fast the steam engine would work, what would never have never have got that without the Lunar Society. And as part of that extended network, there was a chap called Stevenson, who was a young man, approached one of the other members of the Lunar Society and said, I've got a great idea for how to put Watt's engine onto steel rails and actually make it move up and down and pull things.

33:57

David Cleevely

And that's how we got the steam engine. We forget that in order to drive proper innovation, we need to have these structures in place. And this serendipity, my book, which I'm going to be releasing shortly, is called Serendipity. It doesn't happen by accident and it doesn't happen by accident. Of course there's chance involved. I'm not going to guarantee when I walk down the street or I'm cycling in Cambridge, I'm going to bump into somebody who's going to change the complete direction of my life, but I can change the probabilities of that happening. And the insight that I think I bring on this is that we can construct networks, as we've done with Cambridge Network, as we did with Cambridge Angels and all the other things that I've done, we could construct networks that raise the probability of those chance encounters.

34:52

David Cleevely

You quoted the Impulse program, you know, these chance encounters lead to great things. Right. It was indeed my strap line. I can't remember exactly word for word, I'm afraid, anymore. But that's not the point. It's basically, you engineer the opportunity for these chance encounters and great things would happen. It's a missing part of the infrastructure of the uk. Going back to industrial strategy and where we get to, I think we need to put in place organizational structures similar to my Policy Fellows program at Cambridge and Royal Academy of Engineering, that will enable those interactions to take place. They will seemingly be random, but they will shift the probability in the same way as I put two chemicals into a flask and they react very slowly.

35:47

David Cleevely

But if I put a catalyst in there, they will act really, they will react really quickly because the catalyst gives you the surface by which the molecules can actually meet and do their thing.

35:59

Faye Holland

That's serendipity. So, perfect. Thank you.

36:03

James Parton

And was that an exclusive with the book title? There was an exclusive for the podcast. Did we just hear that?

36:08

David Cleevely

It's an exclusive at the moment.

36:11

Faye Holland

Well, we'll get you back on for the book launch. We'll get you back on. Thank you. We've covered so much there. My last comment stroke question. But I think you're just going to laugh at me for asking is I remember a long time ago or certainly pre covered. We had a conversation where you sat there, you sat opposite me and you said, I'm definitely going to stop some of these commitments. You know, I'm going to start winding a few things down. How's that working out for you, David?

36:39

David Cleevely

It's working out very well for me. I'm not doing anything like the amount that I used to do. I mean, I took my grandson snowboarding at Milton Keynes yesterday for the entire day. It's not something I would have contemplated being possible when we had that conversation. Now I have written out plans for how I've done that. You know, stepped down from Raspberry PI, stepped down as chair of Cambridge Science Centre. I've got two major companies that I'm chair of, focal point positioning here in Cambridge and Chemify, which is based up in Glasgow, which is the most amazing, fascinating company you will ever come across. We have a general purpose machine for manufacturing any molecule. It is going to completely revolutionize chemistry and biochemistry. Those things are really important for me.

37:29

David Cleevely

I have gone along with Cambridge ahead with the policy chair of the Policy Group because that's really dear to my heart, as we've covered in the podcast. But generally, yeah, I'm trying to find enough time to finish off this blooming book and get it published before Christmas. I'm managing more time with the grandkids, which is great. And that's probably the most important thing.

37:50

Faye Holland

Yeah. Well that's great to hear. So thank you so much for being with us today and covering these two episodes.

37:55

James Parton

Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, David.

37:57

David Cleevely

Thank you very much indeed, chaps. I really enjoyed it.

38:07

James Parton

We really hope you've enjoyed these two episodes and if you're still eager for even more David Cleveley, then tune into episode 146 where David talks about his book Serendipity. It doesn't happen by accident.

38:19

Faye Holland

Join us next week when we talk to Corrosion Radar CEO Shiraz Enonsour, which is also available in video format as well as audio.

38:35

James Parton

Today's show is produced by Carl Homer of Cambridge TV and supported by our media partner, Business Weekly. The Cambridge Tech Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and on cambridgetechpodcast.com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five star review. It'll really help others discover the show.

Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/

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