Form1 Partners

On Thursday 28th, Form1 hosted an intimate dinner on integrating AI into your Learning Technology Ecosystem.    We were delighted to bring together our corporate partner, GP Strategies Corporation, and our adaptive learning scale-up, Obrizum, for an evening of diverse discussion, kindly hosted by Amanda Nolen.    We kicked off the evening with thanks (which seemed highly appropriate on Thanksgiving). We shared thanks for our families, our communities, our ourselves. Taking a moment to reflect and be thankful for human connection.    As bubbles popped, we moved onto the challenges we are facing in our roles. With a variety of sectors (Education, Finance, Telecoms ect.) and differing senior perspectives (MD, Risk, Learning ect.) around the table - the challenges varied but the themes remain the same.    - How to innovate with legacy systems? - How to connect an ecosystem for a seamless experience?  - How to prioritise challenges and effectively vet technology? - How to empower the team & support them grow? - How to get Senior Management to prioritise change?    I expect everyone reading this post to recognise many of these challenges.    But the final question, how do we address these challenges and shift them to opportunities? And can we use AI to do so?   This triggered an interesting debate, mostly with AI being applied to increase speed to… Effectiveness Competence Data-driven decision making    The most important takeaway is understanding the pain point – what is the challenge? AI is not the full solution but is an impressive enabler. Integrate AI in areas of data, repetitive tasks and duplication and instead repurpose that time to maximise human connectivity, creativity, and community.

We brought Miami to London! Form1 was proud to host Replicant’s UK Resolve Conference last Thursday. Huge thanks to Gadi Shamia and Alexander Tunstall for hosting, and to Camille R. and Dylan McDermott for being such fantastic speakers. Thank you to all who came, we had some brilliant questions about Replicant from our guests!

A big thank you to everyone who joined us last Thursday for our focused panel discussion on how we can bring best-in-class innovation to the UK public sector. A special thanks to James Kidner, Hetti Barkworth-Nanton CBE, Sally Walker, Georgina O'Toole, Pamela Cook, Nick Barras, and Sean Williams for leading a lively, engaging, and interactive conversation, with fantastic participation from the audience too. Here are our top 3 takeaways from the evening: ➡ Progress in supporting SMEs in government procurement is promising, but more change is needed. Culture is key; being able to reframe thinking from a specific ‘want’, to a more abstract ‘need’ will allow for greater innovative and forward-thinking solutions to come to the fore. ➡ Collaboration between corporates and SMEs can drive innovation. The right partnership behaviours, supportive commercial arrangements, and advocacy from others are essential for success. ➡ Risk and innovation go hand in hand. For SMEs to thrive, we need a supportive system that navigates the challenges of procurement frameworks and risk-averse buyer behaviours, which often favour established players over smaller ones.   We’d love to hear your thoughts too!

Our CEO, Hetti Barkworth-Nanton CBE, took part in an expert panel yesterday, alongside Sean Williams, Pamela Cook, Chibeza Agley, Georgina O'Toole, Sally W. and Nick Barras.   Organised by Form1 Partners, the discussion explored how primes, SMEs and government can work together to create value for the UK public sector, exploring potential solutions to public sector challenges, differentiating corporate tender responses, and how to generate social value across the UK.   To learn more about how Ploughshare creates value, visit our website: https://ploughshare.co.uk/   #Innovation #GovernmentInnovation #Collaboration #Impact

This thread and FT article should be of interest to anyone at the Form1 Partners event last night, on the partnership between SMEs and government in delivering innovation.. https://lnkd.in/edYV9nJ3 Hetti Barkworth-Nanton CBE Georgina O'Toole Nick Barras James Kidner Matt Bunn John Downes

Form1 was in Miami this week for #Resolve24 - Replicant’s acclaimed CX conference that brings together forward-thinking customer service leaders to discover and shape the future of CX and AI.   Replicant is a global leader in call centre technology and has resolved over 1 billion calls using AI!   Great to see some exciting product launches. In particular conversation intelligence which gives business actionable insight into every single call they have in their contact centre.   Thank you to Gadi Shamia, and Stuart Wilson for being such great hosts!   #Tech #Innovation #Technology #AI #Partnerships #ScaleUp

We are delighted to introduce Neil McLellan. Neil has an incredible network in Professional and Financial Services, as well as tech. He has been very valuable in helping Form1 plug into the Scottish Scale Up scene. Great to have you onboard Neil!

It’s been one year since Form1 kicked things off and launched our brand and website with our Oktoberfest party! Here’s a look at our growth since then: 👉 Advisors: 47 ➡ 124 👉 Clients: 8 ➡ 18 👉 Team: 4 ➡ 9 👉 Clients won for our partner scaleups: 2x ➡ 25x 

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 It was a pleasure to visit Scotland this week, where we met with a number of experts from across the Scottish startup, scaleup, and VC community to discuss how we might be able to support Scottish scaleups to expand their growth.   📈 The Scottish scaleup scene has fantastic foundations and potential, but not enough companies progressing to become globally competitive. We’re excited to start helping unlock this potential.    🙏 A big thank you to those who met with us; including Ana Stewart, Paul A. John Trower, Chris Wilson, George Kelsey, Calum Smeaton, Shane Corstorphine, and especially Neil McLellan!   Watch this space! 

Last night, Form1 was proud to co-host a fireside chat with the Co-founders of FuturePlus, Alexandra Smith and Mike Penrose, at the beautiful View venue within County Hall, home of Sustainable Ventures   It was an incredible opportunity to share insights and ideas with leaders dedicated to advancing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and delivering measurable outcomes 🌎   Key takeaways included:   - Progressing towards ESG goals boosts the bottom line and strengthens business resilience - it's more than just doing the right thing - Robust data is essential for proving the financial benefits of meeting ESG targets and provides a crucial evidence base for balancing competing ESG priorities - Amid conflicting ESG trade-offs, data and machine learning offer clearer insights into optimal solutions, improving decision-making - By acting as an early mover on ESG, businesses can avoid the higher costs of compliance when further regulations take effect Huge thank you to James Kidner for hosting so eloquently and to all who attended and participated in the conversations over nibbles and wine! 🍷