大象传媒

Phil Smith is UK & Ireland Chief Executive of Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking for the internet. Cisco designs, manufactures and sells networking equipment.

Phil has 30 years' experience in the ICT industry and, prior to joining Cisco, worked for IBM and Philips Electronics. He was named as one of the nation's most influential leaders in UK IT in the Computer Weekly UKTech50 Awards and Wired 100.

An advocate of technology and innovation, Phil sits on a number of boards and organisations including Young Enterprise, The Business Disability Forum and the Confederation of British Industry.

He has four children and lives in Stratford with his wife.

Mariana Mazzucato is an economist, and holds the RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex.

Her work focuses on the relationship between financial markets, innovation, and economic growth, and is currently funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking; the Ford Foundation and the European Commission. She advises the EC on innovation-led growth through two expert groups, and is a member of related task forces in the UK, such as the UCL Green Economy聽Policy Commission.

Her most recent book, The Entrepreneurial State: debunking聽private vs. public sector myths聽focuses on the need to develop new frameworks to understand the role of the state in economic growth - and how to enable rewards from innovation to be just as 'social' as the risks taken.

Graham Mulholland is the Managing Director and Founder of the Derby based EPM technology group - a company best known for supplying carbon fibre components and assemblies to Aerospace, F1 and niche Automotive markets.

He moved straight from school to work and being a high level canoeist, Graham describes his eureka moment in business as a work experience week spent making slalom canoes in Nottingham. He still has the very first part he ever made in his office today).

Mulholland subsequently went on to link composite competition canoes to composites in motorsport. He now heads up epm on a day to day basis, and has turned it into a company that currently turns over in excess of 拢5.5m. Mulholland explains "We are all about contribution per employee employed, we make difficult parts and assemblies better and quicker than our competitors and we value this performance each day rather than necessarily chasing a increase in turnover."

Dr Mark Wareing is the Director of Pera Technology, one of Europe's leading New Product Development contractors - Conceiving, Creating and Commercialising innovations with Small, Medium and Large organisations.

They work with around 200 companies a year, developing new products and processes, "derisking" the New Product Development process and bringing in funding from private and public sources.

Prior to this role, he ran his own successful SME. He has also worked in the US, Far East and across Western Europe for large multi-nationals in life sciences, electronics and business services. Dr Wareing has degrees in Biology and Biochemistry, Medicinal Chemistry as well as an MBA from Warwick Business School. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Institute of Biology.