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Richard Reed, Innocent drinks.

Richard Reed is the co-founder of innocent drinks, the UK’s fastest growing food and drinks company. The business, started in May 1999 by Richard and two friends, now has a turnover of £15m, selling over 400,000 smoothies a week.

The Innocent story shows that with a non-corporate attitude, a sincere commitment to the cause and creative thinking it is possible to create a fast growing, profitable company that acts responsibly.

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?

I reckon that we are all entrepreneurs, some people just don’t realise that they are, but an entrepreneur is just a person that has an idea then implements it. And if you’ve ever moved house, if you’ve ever organised a wedding if you’re running a household, you can be an entrepreneur. It’s a series of putting together different projects and managing it over all. We can all do it.

What drives you?

I want to prove that you can genuinely have a business that is financially successful, but doesn’t do it at the cost of the bigger picture and that hopefully leaves things a little bit better than it finds it.

Who do you admire – and why?

The person I would say who I’ve met and admire the most is a guy called Paulo, who is running the Greenpeace campaign to save the Amazon rainforest. I’ve never met a guy who has achieved so much with so little, in such tough circumstances. He’s a guy that has had to be under armed guard for eighteen months, has to travel around in bullet proof cars, has three different bounties on his head, and him and an incredibly talented, tight team of fifteen individuals, are doing their damndest to protect an area of rainforest the size of America. It’s a truly humbling experience to see someone achieve so much, with so little in such a tough environment.

What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation, to me means making things better.

How do you encourage innovation within your company?

Well again, every single thing a company does, is a direct consequence of a human being either thinking of something, or not thinking of something, or either doing something or not doing something, so the best way of making your company innovative is to employ bright, talented imaginative people, who consequently think of great ideas, and then to make sure that your company is entirely porous, and everybody gets the opportunity to put their ideas forward and every one gets listened too, and then also make sure that your company is porous with the people that you work with, be it the people that buy your drinks, be it the people that in our case, we work with our suppliers, and making sure that we listen to their ideas as well. A little example, on our website there is a button you can click, which goes through to where we ask you to tell us what we should do next. Its just an open ended form that you can fill in. we have hundreds and hundreds of people that fill the form in, and we just go and read it and we think, “well that’s an interesting idea, people want something with a bit more ginger, or that’s great we never thought about doing a bigger pack for kids” and so it goes on.

What is the greatest barrier to innovation?

Its fear isn’t it! Totally fear, because everyone has good ideas, its just some people don’t say them, as they are scared of saying them, some people say it but don’t do it for the fear of it not working, and some people like the idea, and have been sold it, but don’t take it because they think “oh it’s a bit different, so we won’t do it”. So it’s just this weird nebulous concept of fear, I think is the biggest stifler of it. What we try and do at Innocent and again I’m sure that we could do it much better than we do, but what we aim to do is to encourage people not to be scared of failure. We say failure is just to direct result of having taken the initiative and that’s a good thing. It will also be someone else’s; learning experience, so if you’ve got an idea, go for it and lets see what happens.

What keeps you awake at night?

I have to say, nothing keeps me awake at night. I’m very blessed!

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

Oh, I’ve made so many cock ups over the last six years, made lots and lots of different judgement calls the wrong way, and bought things we shouldn’t have bought and all that type of thing, but in terms of the bigger picture, Innocent for me in terms of the principles of the company and what we are trying to do, I wouldn’t change that for love nor money.

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

The best decision I’ve ever made is deciding to be part of Innocent. Saying keep it 100% natural, 100% healthy, 100% delicious and lets be as ethical as we can. I think that was a good, big decision to make for Innocent. In terms of the worst decisions, I don’t know how much film you’ve got in the camera! I’ve cocked up numerous times, I can think of little examples, big examples, but fortunately getting that one big thought right first has helped us through the silly decisions I’ve made since.

What is the secret of success?

I think that there are many secrets to success, but some absolute key ones are “keep the main thing, the main thing”, “know exactly what it is you are going to do, that’s going to be different and that’s important to the people who buy your product or service,” and just make sure that every bit of the business system is working towards that. A second thing is persistence. It’s a really boring thing to say, but it’s really true. You’ve just got to keep at it! And I think, and I’ve said this before, the biggest thing over all though, is to surround yourself with brilliant, talented people, because every single thing a business does, is the result of a human being doing something or not doing something, so the more you get brilliant people on board, the more the chance of your company to be successful.

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

Take a hard look at yourself. Work out what you’re good at, work our what you are bad at. Then find some people that share your visions and values in life, that are good at the things you are bad at, and then you find this great team and from that you can achieve anything.