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Interview
M
ike Harris is a gentle, modest The four companies that Mike founded Mike then co-founded Garlik, a leading
man. At least for an acclaimed generated more than £6 billion for shareholders edge technology company spearheading digi-
entrepreneur who has built four who had backed his ideas, and created 5000 tal identity protection. Garlik has already raised
companies from nothing into empires new jobs in UK, France and other European £18 million in venture capital and is proud to
worth billions. countries. have Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the
Given this success he would be perfectly Having reached such a giddy pinnacle of World Wide Web, on its advisory board.
entitled to boast about his phenomenal suc- success it was hard for Mike to know what to
An Illuminating Idea
cess. Instead he allows his achievements to do next. Sitting on a beach in the Seychelles
speak volumes while he focuses on his latest in 2000, 55 years old and contemplating his ‘Eventually I got round to writing the book in
project: inspiring budding entrepreneurs. retirement, he decided to ‘give back’ his hard- 2007 and I was hoping that something would
While Mike is low-key, his ideas are in fact won knowledge to help novice entrepreneurs come of it. Then two things happened that
quite radical, refreshing and original. His new and would-be innovators. were perfectly aligned with my goals. A chance
book Find Your Lightbulb is not dry and boring, ‘I believe that the innovations of large cor- conversation over lunch led to the sale of 1000
nor is it an ego trip. It is an unselfish book; gen- porations can be translated to start-ups, and copies for employees and customers of a
erously giving away wisdom that he acquired that big companies can learn from the energy global consultancy that wanted to use the
the hard way in his rollercoaster ride over the and enthusiasm of small ones. So I decided to Lightbulb methods to promote innovation in
past 20 years as an innovative business leader. write a book and see what happened.’ large companies.
His book focuses on the reader, with ‘Then a friend of mine, Mynoo Blackbyrn,
anecdotes and exercises designed to spark
Mike’s CV
approached me on behalf of Triumphant
your own ideas. For Mike, it is all about YOU Events about running seminars for en-
and YOUR dreams. trepreneurs. Now all of a sudden there is a
When I interviewed Mike in his London • Grew up in Birmingham and graduated whole explosion of possibilities.’
office I complimented him on how engaging I from London University with a degree in Getting people excited about your idea is
found the book, he was quick to give credit to Chemistry in 1970. the first step, as Mike explains in Find Your
his editor, Lisa Murray, for making it so clear Lightbulb. He says your genuine enthusiasm
and reader-friendly. • Worked in IT with Midland Bank (now has to ‘infect’ others.
Mike doesn’t see himself as a high HSBC) for 15 years. ‘An idea only lives in the way you talk about
achiever, just a regular guy who has focused it,’ says Mike. ‘I recall back in 1975 when Bill
on his twin passions of finance and technology. • Founding CEO of First Direct phone Gates’ big dream was to see a PC on every
After 15 years cutting his IT teeth with Midland banking company, which is valued at more desk and one in every home. Everyone thought
Bank (now HSBC) he set up First Direct in than £1 billion, 1988- 1991. “what a load of rubbish -that’s never going to
1988, creating a phone banking service that happen!”’
transformed the worldwide financial services • CEO of Mercury from 1991 to 1995. Bill Gates was way ahead of his time,
landscape and which is today valued at more Sold to NTL making £2.5 billion for Mercury seeing a future no-one else could. In the same
than £1 billion. shareholders. way, Mike was a visionary in 1997 when he set
In 1991 he was appointed CEO of Mercury, an outlandish goal for Egg to have 10 million
the telephone and internet provider. Mercury • Chairman of Mercury One2One mobile internet banking customers in the UK. At the
became a major threat to BT, which at that time provider, Sold to T-Mobile for $10 billion. time there were only half a million people con-
had a virtual monopoly on the UK home phone nected to the internet!
market. The consumer business he built from • CEO of internet banking company Egg
Only Child’s Play
scratch was sold to NTL, earning £2.5 billion in from its foundation (as a division of Pruden-
cash for Mercury shareholders. Mike was also tial plc) to 2000. After just three years Pru- An internet enthusiast and evangelist, he
Chairman of Mercury One2One, a fledgling dential undertook flotation, retaining 79% says: ‘the internet is a major force, an incredi-
mobile phone company, which eventually sold with the bank valued at £1.3 billion. ble tool for entrepreneurs as a means of infor-
to T-Mobile for $10 billion. mation, networking, marketing and delivery of
A Good Egg
• Currently Chairman of Garlik internet products and services and excellent customer
identity company which has raised £18 mil- service. The World Wide Web is in its infancy.
But perhaps Mike’s most epic success was lion in venture capital. What we are seeing now is only child’s play.
launching the internet banking company with Over the next decade we will see a massive
the quirky brand - Egg, in 1998. • Chairman of innovation at RBS. transformation.’
The branding, of course, isn’t as exotic as Audacious goals lead to what Mike calls a
you might think: naming a company after a • Regular speaker at mid-career MBA Big Inspiring Future (BIF) and he advises
distinctive food certainly worked for Apple and courses at the MIT Sloan School of man- entrepreneurs not to let their BIFs be destroyed
Orange, and for Transport for London’s Oyster agement 1996 – 2006 by criticism.
card . But in the relatively conservative world Far from being defensive, Mike takes a
of banking, it seemed like a revolution. • Facilitator of workshops on leadership, positive approach to critics. ‘When someone
And revolutionary it certainly was: Egg was innovation and entrepreneurship with clients says “that will never work” and tells you
successful beyond what anyone had imagined including 02, IBM, Colt, Intel, Oracle, Adobe everything that’s wrong with your idea, they
when it floated on the London Stock Exchange and EDS. provide a list which is incredibly useful as a
in 2000, valued at £1.3 billion. design resource. It becomes a set of intelligent
Business Matters issue 164 • 23
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