Dr Paul Redmond, Director of Student Life, University of Manchester


Diarist Dr Paul Redmond @drpaulredmond


Three ingredients for innovation


to encounter the massed ranks of Greater Manchester’s finest. To my right, police officers in riot gear were clambering out of armoured vans. To my left, on the roof of Graduate Prospects, masked snipers were adjusting their telescopic sights to scan the streets below.


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Either something major was afoot or the launch party for this year’s ‘What do graduates do?’ had gotten seriously out of hand.


Within seconds a policeman was poking a suspicious finger at my plastic holdall.


“Excuse me, sir. What’s in the bag?” “It’s my sandwiches, officer.”


He stooped down and held the bag to his ear. “It’s tickin.’” “No it’s not. It’s turkey.”


Only then did the penny drop. The police vans, the cordoned-off roads, the sharpshooters stomping over Mike Hill’s roof terrace – this was the day the president of China was to visit the University.


President Xi Jinping was dropping in to have a personal tour of the University’s NGC building – a super high-tech construction home


arking the car on a drizzly morning I emerged from the campus multi-storey


to arguably the most important innovation of the 21st century so far. And that includes the selfie stick.


Officially, it’s a two-dimensional, atom-scale carbon allotrope formed in a hexagonal lattice. Luckily for our marketing department, it goes by another name: graphene.


Great things are expected of graphene – hence why the president of China was taking a detour up the M6 to have his photograph taken with it.


For not only is graphene a superb conductor of electricity, it’s 600 times stronger than steel, incredibly light, and almost ridiculously versatile.


Experts predict that eventually graphene will transform everything from mobile phones to medical science.


But forget the hype. As far as I’m concerned, all you need to know about graphene is contained in the following statement: When fully fuelled, an aeroplane constructed entirely of graphene would be twice as heavy as it was when it had no fuel. In other words, the fuel would be twice as heavy as the graphene-built aeroplane.


I got that from Brian Cox. So back off.


Graphene was discovered by two Manchester physicists who, legend has it, drew a line on piece of paper with a pencil, stuck strips of Sellotape on to it, and then repeatedly tore them off again (it’s science, ok?)


At first, they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as the process was repeated the flakes got thinner and thinner. Next thing you know, they’re thanking the Nobel Prize Committee and doing a turn on Desert Island Discs.


Those two physicists didn’t simply ‘discover’ graphene – there was no ‘Eureka’ moment. Instead, they built on years of research that had been going on in their field since the 1950s. Yes, the breakthrough was theirs, but as with practically everything in science, it was a long distance team effort.


Talk to experts on innovation and they will tell you that this is no fluke; that breakthroughs take years of incremental refinement and microscopic amendments.


Innovation also calls for the presence of three killer ingredients.


First, great innovators realise that their task is to address and conquer real-life needs – things that have stumped previous generations. Remember Dyson with his bag-less vacuum cleaner?


And who can forget the chap who invented those vibrating toothbrushes which come ready- equipped with inbuilt batteries? They met genuine needs. Needs that could be taken to market.


Second, innovators don’t hang about waiting for someone to give them permission. No. They just get on with it and take an almighty chance. One thing that all true-blood innovators know is that it’s better to apologise than to ask permission. This is no doubt why great innovators tend to be disastrous employees, and why so many of them strike out on their own – usually seconds before they are fired.


And finally, innovators turn their noses up at plush surroundings and fancy laboratories. For them, true innovation begins at home, or more specifically, in the garage.


Where did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard build their first circuit boards? You guessed it: in Bill’s garage. In fact, it was the same place where, on the other side of the Atlantic, the great Anita Roddick concocted her first vat of peppermint foot-balm.


Colleagues, in the spirit of genuine innovation, the advice is to forgo any venue that has the word ‘incubator’ in its title and head off to the nearest garage. And make sure to look after your Sellotape. n


www.agr.org.uk | Graduate Recruiter 29


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