Quick updates: ReSHAPE, an interview and an article

A few brief updates from me, although I haven’t been writing on here for a while it’s been a busy period for writing (more on that below) but firstly ReSHAPE 2024 is coming.

ReSHAPE 2024

ReSHAPE aim is to showcase the wonderful and rapidly expanding world of SHAPE ventures. The idea first came to me as we were coming to the end of ARC’s prototype version (SUCCESS) - the ventures were emerging but there was nowhere for people to see them and in the process of running ARC I had to explain to everyone, every time what a SHAPE venture was. There were plenty of STEM or STEM adjacent showcase events so I reasoned we needed something similar. I pitched the idea to Sean who was leading on Comms and marketing for ASPECT and ReSHAPE (Sean coined the name) was born.

I’m particularly pleased with the programme this year - for the first time it felt like the ecosystem has grown so much that there were a wealth of possible panels, talks and topics - while some themes will be familiar (Health, SHAPE and UK) new themes like advocacy and entrepreneurship emerged from seeing a growing number of such ventures emerge - building on a longstanding theme of universities and social change. However the most enjoyable part was working with Emma Salgard-Cunha at Cambridge Enterprise who (naively) agreed to help me design the programme - it is a much richer and more interesting programme as a result. The proof of both the growing strength of the ecosystem and Emma’s touch lies in the other good news - ReSHAPE sold out nearly 2 months early. Hopefully I’ll see many of you there!

The Entrepreneurs Network interview - Anastasia Bektimirova interviewed me for the Entrepreneurs network on SHAPE commercialisation and you can read it here - these were the most thoughtful questions I’ve had since I started.

Uselessly right, usefully wrong by Geoff Mulgan - Geoff Mulgan (former CEO of NESTA and ex-number 10) continues to push on the importance of social science generating falsifiable hypotheses. The thinking goes, more falsifiability means more evidence as to which theories work and under what conditions.

I’ve been meaning to write more on this area but the short answer is I see a through line from this kind of SHAPE research to commercialisation - OXED for example was based on the largest RCT in education history and such research is the basis of Deep social ventures.

Other news

I said I’d been writing but not all on SHAPE - and recently wrote an article on noise pollution in London for the Greater London project