Presenting the award, Professor Andy Hopper commended Trampoline for its imagination and determination pursuing a disruptive innovation through to success in the market. Receiving the award Charles commented:

“Trampoline’s journey has not always been straightforward. We were probably five years too early in the market with our business network analysis technology. Then the global economic crisis led our main investor to withdrew from the market, leaving us high and dry. But far from losing heart Trampoline has always thrived on challenges. We had a radical innovation and we knew the commercial opportunity was huge. So we invented a new form of venture finance, becoming the world’s first company to raise money through equity crowdfunding; we turned our offices into Shoreditch’s first shared workspace, now famous as The Trampery; we reconfigured our product strategy to match customer opportunities. 2011 was an amazing year for Trampoline with a succession of high-profile projects culminating in the launch of Tech City Map by Prime Minister David Cameron. Now 2012 promises to be even more exciting. We are honoured to receive this award tonight from the University where Trampoline’s story began. Above all we hope it inspires other innovators and entrepreneurs to play the long game and muster the determination required to bring truly disruptive innovation to the market.”

Charles concluded with a discussion of Atos’ widely discussed Zero Email initiative which seeks to transition all internal communication away from email by 2014. He examined a possible role for network analysis in benchmarking overall patterns of email use, identifying outliers and using game mechanics to discourage long CC lists and heavy attachments.

“The Tech City Map, which underlines the fantastic level of creativity and innovation taking place in the area, is a great showcase for East London’s start-up community. It’s also a demonstration of how small, innovative businesses can collaborate with leading corporations. It’s fitting that the Tech City Map is 100% home-grown in East London with its creators Trampoline and Playgen both based in Shoreditch.”

The project was developed in partnership with Thomson Reuters, Mother, Cisco, Atos and LinkedIn and the user interface was designed by Shoreditch-based business Playgen. The BCS and London Borough of Hackney also supported the project.

A gallery of photographs from the launch event is available on the Trampery’s Facebook page.

After this the Duke walked through the Trampery workspace, stopping for a short demonstration of Fuerte’s augmented reality iPad application, before arriving in the newly-opened Trampery Studio where he met with influential figures from the Tech City community and additional entrepreneurs. Finally Charles gave a short speech welcoming the Duke, after which the Duke gave a speech and unveiled a plaque commemorating his visit.

There are some wonderful photographs from the Duke’s visit on the Trampery’s Facebook page.

Towards the end of the meeting I demonstrated the prototype of a platform developed by Trampoline that sets out to analyse the cluster of businesses by aggregating social network feeds for up to 10,000 people working in East London. The prototype only includes 80 businesses but it can already generate analysis on the relative influence of each one and link them by the similarity of their interests.

The meeting concluded with the group agreeing to form a partnership bringing together all existing datasets and developing an analytic platform to furnish the information required by stakeholders. Trampoline will coordinate the partnership and lead the development effort.

We designed the Trampery as a microcosm of the East London creative community. It rapidly became known for its distinctive style, deftly mixing antique furniture and contemporary design, persian carpets and modern art, gleaming computers and victorian machinery. Rather than focusing exclusively on technology businesses we built up an inter-disciplinary community including non-profits, media and arts projects alongside hardcore software engineers.

By the end of 2010 the Dereham Place space was bursting at the seams so we took the decision to move to a larger site and spin it off as a separate venture. Today our plans reached fruition with the opening of an all-new Trampery on Bevenden Street, just the other side of Old Street. We’ve doubled our deskspace capacity, gained a dedicated 2,500 sqft space to host events and laid on facilities that are even more sumptuous than the first version. Interior features include a 20 metre wall clad in teak decking reclaimed from an old ship and bespoke meeting room doors made from slabs of solid oak that pivot in the floor and ceiling. We’ve placed the canteen at the heart of the site. It’s the social junction of the whole building where people cross paths and swap news. We wanted it to be the first things guests encounter when they arrive.

There are some photographs on The Trampery’s website and its Facebook page. You’re welcome to come and visit us.

Download the report from McKinsey’s website

The policy is essentially a good one, recognising a phenomenon that’s already creating value and looking for ways to augment it. Unfortunately this sensible idea got mixed up with the Government’s political need for a convincing story about what happens to the (hugely expensive) Olympic site after the games are finished.

I was interviewed for the article and Wired used several of my more colourful quotes in the article, including this:

“Old Street is one thing: you’ve got this clear historical process,” Armstrong says. “In the 80s it became a cluster for the printing industry. Graphic-design businesses grew out of that and as a result Curtain Road, Shoreditch, became the epicentre of our dotcom boom. To take that natural phenomenon and then say there’s going to be a Tech City stretching from Shoreditch to Stratford — that’s just not a logical step.”

and this:

“In the case of Silicon Valley, and Israel too, it’s absolutely clear that the starting point was a massive defence industry investing in that area, which created a university system of a particular kind and a certain technical base. Unless the Government is planning on creating a huge weapons programme in Stratford and then waiting for 40 years, then it’s mad to be fixated on that model.”

You can read the whole article online. Meanwhile I’m meeting the Prime Minister’s policy team on Wednesday so I’ll have an opportunity to discuss my thoughts directly.