Sir George Cox, Chairman of the Design Council

Sir George Cox has been Chairman of the Design Council since August 2004.

He started out as an aeronautical engineer. Later he became an entrepreneur, forming the IT consulting and research company Butler Cox – which he grew and then floated on the London Stock Exchange.

He's been Senior Independent Director of the London International Financial Futures and Option Exchange (LIFFE); Director-General of the Institute of Directors (IoD); and is Chairman of MERLIN (Medical Emergency Relief International) and of Enterprise Insight.

To watch the interview as a full interactive broadband experience, please click here. A text only version of the interview can be seen below.

Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Well I think you've obviously got some people who are much more entrepreneurial than others, but I think almost anybody can be an entrepreneur, and if you look at it, an awful lot of people become entrepreneurs later in life because of circumstances. They never had the ambition originally to start their own business, but because the company they are with won't act on their ideas, or because they have been made redundant, you look at the number of people who have become entrepreneurs later in life very successfully. So I think it's actually a path open to many more people than actually follow it to day.

What drives you?

Personally I think I've always been driven by the challenge to prove I could do something, also something I've never done before. If you go back over my CV, I haven't repeated very much, so I think for me it's the newness of the challenge, that's always had the real motivating effect.

Who do you admire – and why?

Of all the people that I've ever come across in any field that I've operated in, it would be Steve Redgrave. What I admire about him, and I've seen him right since he was a junior oarsman, schoolboy oarsman, right through until today, was the following: one is, his continuous quest to get better. I think most of us if we won an Olympic gold medal, that's it, I'd be doing interviews and I wouldn't want to get into a boat again. He won one medal and he wanted to win another, but he knew to win the next one, you've got to be faster than last time. It's no good repeating it. You don't automatically get better, and he did again and again, five times. Every time he was better than the last time. I think that's a terrific attitude. The pursuit of excellence like that is so rare, and I admire it. I also admire greatly the way his carried his success. I think if I'd have had his success, I would be unbearable!

What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation to me means looking at a problem or an opportunity in a new way. Taking a new idea and turning it into a new way of doing things, or a new offering to market or a new way of running the business.

How do you encourage innovation within your company?

Well I think you encourage innovation in the organisation you are in, by encouraging people to come forward with ideas, recognising you are not always going to act on them. You know there are times when an idea is good, but there are other priorities, or it confuses with other things you are trying to do, or you just haven't got time - so the fact it's a good idea, doesn't mean we are always going to act on a staff idea. But we are interested in ideas, and we are interested in everyone thinking we could do this a better way, at every level, right through a company, you know I think companies can be innovative from top to bottom, not just a few stuck on this edge. The other thing I think you must do, is you can't punish failure which comes from a mistake. The concept that a head must roll from a mistake, I've never aspired to at all. In my career I've had to remove people for attitude, incompetence, redundancy because the business was downsizing, quite unpleasant but at times you have got to do it, but I've never fired anyone, ever for making a mistake. As soon as you get an environment where you punish mistakes, you can't be innovative, and you can't encourage ideas and you can't encourage risk taking.

What is the greatest barrier to innovation?

The great barrier I think is having the confidence to pursue it. It's as simple as that. There's no barrier for the lack of ideas in this world, far from it. While we are sitting here there are exciting new usinesses being planned and formed. You know, tomorrow's Ebay is being planned somewhere today, tomorrow's Carphone Warehouse, some guy has got a little van outside and is planning it, you know tomorrow's Friends Reunited is being planned in someone's bedroom. There's no shortage of ideas and opportunity. It's about taking those and having the nerve to do something with them.

What keeps you awake at night?

Not a lot keeps me awake at night nowadays. I think you go through periods when you have problems, but I think if you take a problem and you can't even sleep on it, you've really got to have a different attitude. The ability to turn off from a problem is very, very important if you are going to run a business, because you are going to have problems all of the time, There's never going to be a day or a month when you're not going to get a problem or a crisis, and if you can't put it down at the end of the day, I think its very unhealthy.

If you had your time again what would you do differently?

Yes, I think there were one or two. I think like many entrepreneurs, I copped out too early. The business that I think many people would regard as quite successful, grew it over many years, became International, floated it on the stock exchange, sold it too a big American Corporation, had more potential than we realised, and I think looking back, one could have aimed higher with it. And I think that's true of an awful lot of entrepreneurs. An awful lot don't realise the potential of the business but get to the point where, you know, they think they've done it. So Ithink looking back, I think I would like to think one would have achieved more than one did with the company.

What are the best and worst decisions you’ve ever made?

Oh, I think the best business decision was to start a company. It was a most satisfying part of my whole career. When you start your own company it's down to you and your team and your friends and your colleagues working with you. You can say “We did that”. It's enormously satisfying. It gives you a terrific kick. Very, very pleasing. That was the most satisfying. I think that the best decision was that one. The worst decision was within that company, when we bought an American company. An awful lot of British companies make that mistake. Others do it, but you're not going to. You're going to succeed, and we bought this company and it was disastrous, and it set us back two or three years, and that was very much a personal decision that I learnt so I wouldn't make that one again.

What is the secret of success?

The secret of success I think is, in as far as there is one, is down to two things. One is a bit of luck or good fortune. Even starting your own business, you may do it well, perhaps you are fortunate in terms of the market, the circumstances that causes you to do it. The second is tenacity and consistency. For example if you are a great believer in quality, you're a great believer in it all the time, and you become intolerant to poor quality, if you believe in treating people in a particular way, that's got to be consistent, not this month's flavour of the month. It's not the latest campaign, the latest idea. I think having beliefs like that, then really tenaciously, sticking to them so that they say, well you know he always thinks like that I think is very important. If you look at a lot of successful business leaders, that goes right the way through.

What one piece of advice would you give to anyone starting a business today?

I think I would say have the confidence to aim high, but at the same time, have the humility to seek guidance.

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