It was great to see so many members on Wednesday evening at our Christmas drinks event, which was also an opportunity to reflect on the year now past and what’s next in 2015.
At the same event last year, I was unveiled as the new Interim Chief Executive of Invest in Nottingham Club and have fond memories of Jim opening his legendary ‘contact book’ and rushing me around the room to meet as many people as possible, followed by being whisked away to the Old Market Square for photographs with Neil.
Then – fond memories of last year’s Christmas drinks with our Founding Father, Jim Taylor.
This was all very overwhelming, but coupled with an excitement for the task ahead in reshaping and refocusing what was already an extremely successful organisation.
January started with regular meetings at Jim’s house to discuss strategy, MIPIM, the Creative Class, the membership, Germany, entertaining and a multitude of other things. There were meetings with politicians and senior officials at both the City and County Council. We surveyed our membership and through this process and numerous individual conversations I started to get a feel for where we were and where we needed to go, to better serve our members and key stakeholders.
Sadly and very suddenly we lost Jim in February. It was a shock to us all, but both Natalie and I along with the Board agreed that the show must go on. Jim was such a tremendous energy and not having him around to take counsel and advice from left a huge hole. He’d worked to the very end in promoting Nottingham and his beloved Club and it was now my job to take this forward and make him proud.
My strategic plan for the next 18 months focused on three main themes:
- To better position the organisation to support the City and County with their inward investment activity.
- To clarify who we were, what we did and why we mattered to our membership and other stakeholders.
- To provide a clear offering to the business community to be able to go out and recruit new members.
To this end we took the decision and rebranded to Nottingham Means Business. The rationale was to present a clearer message to engage the business community and be better able to support the City and County. Although we moved away from ‘Invest in Nottingham’ in name, it was always with the intention to be better placed to support and work more closely with the inward investment team going forwards.
The new brand sits upon 3 pillars – Inform, Inspire and Invest.
Inform – to facilitate business communication, information sharing and collaboration through our well attended events and website and social media channels.
Inspire – to encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs and retain talent in our city and county. Our Creative Class event in the summer was a prime example of this initiative in action.
Invest – to support indigenous business growth and the drive to secure new inward investment. We’ve met individually with many of our members and been involved in hosting a number of potential inward investors.
We created 10 Interest Groups and appointed Chairs to sit on our Board, to be the eyes and ears of the international markets, indigenous business sectors and foundations that underpin our local economy. These provide essential market intelligence and moving forwards through niche based events will be a source of lead generation and opportunity spotting.
Now – Wednesday night’s Christmas drinks at the Nottingham Playhouse kindly sponsored by Russell Scanlan.
As we move into 2015, Nottingham Means Business will play an increasingly important role in shaping Nottingham and Nottinghamshire’s offer to the outside world. Connectivity, collaboration and ambition are in my view three essential ingredients to put our city and county firmly on the worldwide stage. We are good at many things in Nottingham but deciding and then backing what we can be great at and promoting clear, aligned and powerful messages and real stories of our business success and leisure offering is the secret to our success.
I believe we are a world class city, with the power to choose who we are, what we want to be known for and most importantly why it matters.
Thank you for your support this year – I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous 2015.
Best wishes
Simon