Mannerisms

"It's like continually climbing a hill and finding there's another hill to climb. There's satisfaction in climbing the hill - you've reduced the risk - but you've still got another hill to climb”, says Rickman.

"So, climb the hill, get pilot production working, the next hill is to leverage off that, get customers, get finance to build a factory, get the process running in the factory, get a new generation of products out, get more design wins, put in a better process, design wins start to create volume, production starts to take off, build new factories," recalls Rickman.

"Each hill represents the highest risk that you see ahead of you. So don't try to solve all your problems, just head for the biggest risk, solve that problem, and the value of your proposition has increased as you reduce the major risk. You now have another risk and you organise yourself and finance yourself to deal with that risk."

"Another element of the model is chasm jumping”, adds Rickman, “What’s the point of following the normal business school approach to developing a company if you can prove, by jumping a chasm, it’s all going to be worthwhile?"

"So a lot of what we did in the early days was running over the small hills - sort of practising if you like - showing you could do it. You knew you had to go back and do it all again. But the risks were dramatically reduced because you'd shown the path."

"The chief scientist was our chief chasm jumper”, remembers Rickman, “ff you go about things in an organised structured way at the research stage, then you'll never get there - you'll run out of money."

"So you've got to have people who've got massive brain capacity, who can leap these chasms, then come back, and start again, and do it all properly”, recounts Rickman, “those people, because of their intellect - just simple mental capacity - can trail-blaze, whereas the organised, structured person won't be able to look ahead."