In this episode, we discuss a different lens through which to look at entrepreneurship with John Bloomer. John has taken a journey from chemistry to agricultural seed technologies through advisory and board roles to his newly found vocation within the Church of England. John started his career at ICI and through a period of active mergers and acquisitions through the 1980s and 1990s, arrived at Syngenta, establishing the wheat and barley breeding business and migrating into an intrapreneur role with that organisation, before heading into independent consulting. His current business activities, alongside being a priest and chaplain, include advisory work with a range of agritech companies, Non-Executive Director with Elsoms Seeds, and co-founding TraitSeq as a spin-out from the Earlham Institute.
We explore his twin journeys through technology transfer and theology, and reflect on the Doctrine of Participation that John wrote about in Faith in Business Quarterly. We explore how his faith, science and technology commercialisation sit alongside each other and some unusual moments of transition (where John started pitching God alongside pitching business ideas!) and his reflections from his theological studies and training at Westcott House at Cambridge. John discusses how he sees strong compatibility between his theological and scientific training, framing these in terms of the why and how of the world around us.
The Doctrine of Participation connects to entrepreneurship and technology transfer through five features. We explore how the infinite of theology and the typically finite value that technology transfer activities merge to create new opportunities. These, and the overarching doctrine (which is a theological perspective or framework) reveal some interesting perspectives on how entrepreneurs and technology transfer activities are creative as part of the broader world, be it economic, social and / or theological. John highlights the need for relationships (over transactions, a concept the podcast explored with David Mitchell) and how relationships drive building the networks that underpin successful technology transfer, built on humility, selflessness, curiosity, perseverance and an unconventional mindset.
Transcript
CB: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tech Transfer Talk. My name is Cameron Begley, Managing Director of Spiegare. And today, we have a real treat in my view, in that we have an opportunity to chat with John Bloomer. John, has been a colleague of mine for about a decade now, I think it is. And John has a really interesting set of perspectives, I think, to bring, where his activities in entrepreneurship and tech transfer across, both large businesses in the form of Syngenta, and smaller SMEs and start ups and ventures and the like, and how those experiences intersect with, and reinforce, his faith and his theological interests, and the journey that he’s been on in bringing those two worlds together. So, I’m really delighted to have John join us today. John, hello.
JB: Hi, Cameron, it’s good to be with you.
CB: John, we first met in 2015, I think it was, in a less than salubrious office in the Waite Campus in Adelaide, if I recall.
JB: Yeah, that’s right. I think we were working with ACPFG (Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics), weren’t we?
CB: We were.
JB: We were trying to navigate them into a new future.
CB: We were, we were, we were…it was David Mitchell.
JB: That’s it.
CB: Who, we can either thank or blame, depending on how we feel. I can generally, thank, I’m thankful that he made that connection, but no, we, ACPFG was in a bit of a transition. If memory serves.
JB: Yeah.
CB: And you were bringing in the best of your experiences from Syngenta and the world of agricultural biotech and tech transfer, and me a little bit more ‘hands on’ sort of restructuring and rethinking some of the deals they had. How did you get into that room, John?
JB: I went into something called Zeneca Plant Science, and the people that launched the squashy tomato paste very successfully, GM in the UK, which is a story we can tell another time. And then I basically became the commercial leader for wheat. That’s then put me into the seed sphere, where I started to build seed businesses in order to create a platform for biotech traits.
CB: Yes.
JB: That then took me through to when Syngenta was formed, in 2000, and I moved at that point, directly into the seed business. And I had 12 years then building cereals, the cereal seeds businesses in Syngenta and working in the seeds business in Europe and beyond. I got to 2012, though, I was a bit of an intrapreneur in Syngenta and…
CB: Sorry, an intrapreneur?
JB: Intrapreneur. It’s an internal entrepreneur.
CB: Yes, yes. Not a term that’s used, I think, a term that’s out there but not necessarily used in polite society that often.
JB: It is. And it’s an important one, though, because you can be an entrepreneurrunning your own organisation, but you can also be an internal entrepreneur building business within a bigger organisation. And we were incubating the cereal seeds business, to build it from very humble beginnings, to actually become the market leader in wheat and barley genetics. But that made me quite independent because I got used to running my own show. So, once business had to be integrated into the mothership of Syngenta, I decided to step back and become an independent. Well, I decided to step back to get a better balance of life. Quality of life and work-life balance. But what that did was, it basically landed me relatively quickly in the world of being an advisor and a consultant. And, I had a lot of links down in Australia because I helped to found Longreach Plant Breeders, which brought me down to Australia a lot. I was a founder director and worked a lot with GRDC, with AWB as was, with CSIRO, and so I had quite a good network in Australia. And so, when I started my consulting business, I actually had clients in North America, I had clients in Europe, and I had clients down in Aus.
CB: In leaving Syngenta and moving into that independent role, you’ve been through a number of, different, you know, been through a number of consultancies, a number of activities. I’d sort of like to accelerate up to the present day, John, in terms of TraitSeq and some of the work you’ve been doing at, with Elsom Seeds and Earlham Enterprises, these sorts of things, which is, which is perhaps, perhaps, a little less intense for you, but that the TrailSeq, TraitSeq, sorry, sounds a bit interesting.
JB: Absolutely. I mean, you know, when I did eventually decide that advisory was, and consultancy, is going to be my thing, I did that for about 4 or 5 years, and I started doing more non-executive director work. So, I wanted to actually have longer-term relationships with certain groups. So, I became a non-exec director at Elsom’s, which was one of the leading family seed companies, virgin field crop seed companies here in the UK. And I took a position as a council member on one of the UK research councils, to do a little bit of public service. And was also a non-executive director at the UK Agritech Centre, Crop Health and Protection Limited. It was set up by the UK government. And, then I came also to Earlham Enterprises, which was the commercial arm of the Earlham Institute, which is a public institute engaged in genomics, and in data science and the biological, as that’s, applies to the biological sciences.
CB: So, John, you’re clearly a man with business experience and a deep technical appreciation for both about chemistry from your early days and, and, and now biotech and biology. And sitting alongside that, I suspect, is a faith that has endured through all that time. I don’t get the sense this is something, if you again, pardon the religious, it’s been an epiphany in the last few years. This is something that’s been there for some time. And, you know, I’m curious to understand, John, how you’ve had firstly, your faith and your science sit alongside each other, and then to maybe draw that towards faith and, you know, the clear entrepreneurial flair that you have to advise, NED (non-executive director)..
JB: I started to engage with the church probably more actively around 2000, when I moved, after Syngenta was formed, and me and my wife moved to Essex and we, walked into a little church in the village of Plessey. Which was a very, very welcoming church, and became our spiritual home for nearly 20 years. I found myself drawn to do a little bit more, started leading into sessions and prayers. A few people started to say my prayer started to sound like sermons. And so, the bishop then, during a vacancy where we had no priest said, ‘How about…’, said, ‘Well, John, you pitch, you pitch business ideas, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ He said, ‘Well, how about pitching God?’ And I said, ‘Okay, I’ve got that. I’ll have a go at that.’ So, took a step to become what’s called an authorised local preacher, an authorised lay preacher.
CB: OK. Yeah.
JB: Allowed to preach. And then kept thinking. But each time I did something, there was another little tug. And so, ‘Well, what’s next?’ Oh, well, you know, somebody suggested being a priest, and I absolutely laughed in their face.
CB: Really?
JB: I just said, ‘You must be bloody joking.’
CB: Right, it wasn’t, it wasn’t sort of, ‘Oh, well, that makes sense to me. That’s a natural progression.’ It was, it was…
JB: Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not doing that. No, I was, I was a little bit anti-clerical I think is the way to put it nicely. And so I said, I said, ‘No,’ but licensed lay minister, yeah, that could be something I could be drawn towards. So, I was selected, went through a process, was selected to be trained as a licensed lay minister. Decided that I’d like to go up to Cambridge and study.
CB: Oh, I remember that, yes.
JB: Yeah, yeah. So that was the beginning. That was in 2018 and went to a wonderful place called Westcott House in Cambridge, which made me, people there made me feel incredibly welcome, as a lay, a lay minister in training. But very quickly, when I got there, they created an environment where I kind of relaxed a bit. I, my resistance to the church and clericalism, kind of died down…
CB: Dissolved.
JB: Suddenly, went, ‘Ah, now I think I know what people are saying.’ And I went to the diocese and said, ‘Mea culpa, you’re absolutely right. I do believe that I may, I may, may, may, may only, be sensing a call to the priesthood. Can you please bring me into a process of discernment, and can we explore that together?’ And that led to me going through a selection panel. I’ll tell you selection for the Church of England – if you think selection to go and join a multinational company’s tough, going through to go to the Church of England is even tougher. Very probing, but a very life giving process that, eventually I received a call from my bishop to say, ‘Yes, we would like you to train to be a priest.’ I completed my training at Westcott, completing my studies and training, and as I said, it was deacon, ordained deacon last year, and a priest. So, priesthood a few weeks ago.
CB: You’ve had the realisation that this, in fact, could be for you. But swirling around that, is this deep scientific understanding. You know, you are now a man of both science and of the cloth.
JB: Yes.
CB: And I’m curious about how you’re sitting those things alongside each other. You know it, I think I’ve heard it said, well, those two things don’t necessarily, they’re not necessarily miscible with one or the other. It’s maybe, it’s not both. So, but you’re sitting with both quite comfortably.
JB: Absolutely. And you know, it is, there are people who seem to think that you can’t be a scientist and can’t believe in God, or you can’t be a scientist and have a faith. I find them absolutely compatible. As a chemist, I, as a young lad, I used to think that chemistry answered all the questions. I could look around the world and see chemistry everywhere. I could see, everything I looked at, I’m looking at now…
CB:Yeah.
JB: It’s chemistry.
CB: Turned out it was physics, right?
JB: Well, I guess, well, you know, in organic chemistry, physical chemistry and organic chemistry, it’s all chemistry.
CB: Mind you, John, I’m with you. I see chemistry everywhere as well. But being a chemical engineer. But anyway, do continue. So you can see…
JB: We’ll have the chemist chemical engineer debate, another time.
CB: Another time. Yeah, yeah.
JB: But look, basically what the sciences do, is they explain how the world works, but it doesn’t explain why the world is there. Science doesn’t answer the why questions. And why is it all here? Why is it as it is? And there is a very, very eminent, theologian, scientist and priest called John Polkinghorne, whoI knew towards the end of his life, who basically said, both science and theology are both independent searches for the truth. They are both genuine, honest, committed, passionate searches for the truth. One is searching for the truth of how the world works, and the other is searching for the truth of why the world is what it is, and what’s the purpose and what’s the purpose of the world, and what’s the purpose of all, all of us? And those two, those two sit alongside each other beautifully. And the more I, the more I learn about science, about the depths of the human mind, about the outer reaches of the universe, I realise first, I realise two things. I realise how little we know, first, and, you know, you open one door, there are more doors. But also, I just see beauty. I see intense beauty. The beauty of mathematics, the beauty of the structure of the universe, of structure, of matter. And, that gives me a glimpse into the mind of God. You know, I just see the hand of something greater than us that we don’t understand, that has got amazing beauty and power. And so, so I see the two just walking very happily alongside each other.
CB: That is an incredibly elegant description of how science and theology sit along each other.
JB: I do recommend reading, you know, some very good writing by John Polkinghorne that, he was a quantum physicist and gave up his Professorship at Cambridge to become a priest, and then came back. I think he was, yeah, he was master on the Cambridge colleges. And at the end of his life, he used to come and worship with us at chapel at Westcott.
CB: Wow.
JB: And I inherited his cassock. You have his vestments, the college and we all had a draw, and I inherited his cassock. And I’m very, very proud to have it.
CB: Wow.
JB: I feel like, I feel I’m quite a very small person in very big shoes.
CB: Yeah, yeah, that’s quite a legacy. So how does the entrepreneurship and tech transfer intertwine for you?
JB: It’s, you know, it’s one of the first things I did. I did two pieces of study as I was training. I was up in Cambridge, during term time for four years. The first thing that I actually tackled was looking at entrepreneurship and theology, and looking at a theological perspective on entrepr…on business entrepreneurs. Because you’re absolutely right, you know, but often people see, just as they see the incompatibility of God and science, and faith and science. They see the incompatibility of faith and business, and God and man, you know, so, you know, I often walk across a bridge in London and looking across and see the dome of St Pauls and right next to it, the City of London. And I think, there’s God and Mammom, side-by-side. But, you know, there are a lot of things, I’ve met a few people who’ve talked about entrepreneurial spirit. And I thought, ‘Hmm. Yeah. So, what’s, that about?’ And also, as I was an intrapreneur and then became more of an entrepreneur, and then worked with entrepreneurs, I started to see some things that actually looked like, what you could call, a participation in the Divine. And the, basically what I did is, one of my first bits of research was, I looked at what’s called the Doctrine of Participation. Which is a, doctrine is kind of, almost a, it’s a theological perspective, it’s a way of thinking, a framework, by which you can actually talk about God in a disciplined way. And participation is the idea of that, if God is transcendent, so, God is beyond space and time, and everything that God creates, everything in the material world comes ultimately from God. There’s the doctrine of what’s called Creatio ex nihilo. So, God creates everything from nothing and holds everything in being. It exists because God wills it to exist. That’s, the danger there is, you’ve got a very distant God. God’s over there, does his bit.
CB: Everything else is over here.
JB: All over there. In fact, some people say that God is, you know, and God is everything that, that the created world is not. So, but also, but God is also completely and utterly intimate. Well, because God’s beyond space and time, whereas the world is…
CB: Yes. Right. Okay. So, if God is beyond space and time, God is not part of this.
JB: Exactly.
CB: Has to be outside it.
JB: But we all experience, and we all see the absolute intimate relationship between God and the world. And we see that, we feel it, we experience it, as a reality. And so, we say that God is both transcendent and immanent, is within the world. So how do your account for that? And the doctrine of participation is a way of, kind of thinking about that, where all created beings, everything from a grain of sand to a human being, participate, share, not in God’s essence, which is unknowable as a transcendent being, but in God’s works, God’s energies, God’s attributes, God’s presence in the world. And every creature shares in, and participates, in the divine, in those divine attributes. And every creature participates to the degree of their creatureness. So, a grain of sand in its sandiness, a human being in their humanness.
CB: As I have it in my mind at this point, just to make sure I’m keeping up with you, John, let alone everyone listening. So, as I have it, the theory of participation is, that each being or each object, an object or a life form, participates to the full extent of its being or its life form, or its objectiveness, in the world that God has created.
JB: Absolutely.
CB: I want to come back to how this all intersects with entrepreneurship, because there are some interesting, and it may appear flippant and I’m, and I don’t mean it to be, John, but I’m just going to try and tease this out a little bit. We talk about participating in the finite, as you know, as human beings in entrepreneurship and value creation through the bringing of science doesn’t create infinite.
JB: No.
CB: It, in fact, creates a finite amount that still has to be shared. Now, there are some venture capitalists out there who might try and pitch you the infinite, but I’m not sure that they’re using God’s works and the participation model in order to make that offer.
JB: I don’t think so. No.
CB: No, I don’t think they’re quite on the theological journey we’re on today, but I’m just interested to listen.
JB: God’s…
CB: Yeah. But I just, you know, but I think it’s interesting to just understand how entrepreneurship then sits in that participation because you are trying to create. Certainly, when I think about the science that I’m involved in bringing to market, one way or another, you’re trying to create more than the sum of its parts. You’re actually trying to create something that, at the risk, you know, more bountiful, that it gives more than the constituent parts. So, so it’s, it’s still finite in a way, but it is trying to create more than is there. So, how does how does all of this sit within the participation doctrine and the theology that sits behind that notion of participation?
JB: Well, look, you know, I looked, I, as part of my research, I looked at the business literature, the economic literature, the sociological literature, and theological literature, at what entrepreneurship is about. And I distilled from that research, five characteristics of what I would call entrepreneurial. And, looked at those and said, ‘How are they exemplifying participation in God?’ So, maybe I’ll run through those five.
CB: I think that’s an interesting place to land, what the five are and the linkages that you identified. Yeah.
JB: Yeah. Well, look, the first one, and you’ve already used the word several times, is creativity, creativity and innovation. So, creativity identifying needs and opportunities and innovation, you know, bringing them to life, bringing them to practical reality. And, that for me, is the core of entrepreneurism. Entrepreneurs are prolific creators. And, as we’ve already said, that God, we believe, is the creator that holds that, that created from nothing and holds everything in being, so that if God wasn’t there, everything would dissolve to nothingness, is the philosophical and theological perspective. So, God is an ultimate creator. God is infinitely creative, and we participate finitely in God’s infinite and absolute creativity. So, creativity is something that I think, is a divine attribute. And, good entrepreneurs are very creative. They’re very creative technically, they’re very creative commercially. They see needs and they want to meet those needs. And so, I think that the entrepreneurs effectively are co-creators, co-workers with God…
CB: Yeah.
JB: In, creating more than the sum of the parts, as you said.
CB: There is, though in the pursuit of the creation of more, there is a risk of mistakes. And worse. So, we all make mistakes, and they are made with good intentions. But sometimes, you don’t get good results. And I think, I think, yeah, certainly in our business, if you haven’t made those, you’re not trying hard enough. But there are those in entrepreneurship that are not of good intent. And, you know, some of those there are some quite well documented examples of that. And Theranos wouldn’t be a shock of, if I mentioned them. But there are others, both that have been entrepreneurs and indeed intrapreneurs, people who have behaved poorly within organisations and so on and so forth. So how does that, how do those behaviors sit in a world where you’re looking, you’re looking for good things to come out of it?
JB: Yeah. I mean, if you’re going to be a co-creator with God, then you need to be a virtuous co-creator. So, you need to basically have virtuous motivations. And I think the second thing after creativity is, is what is the motivation of an entrepreneur? And if you, you’ll know when you talk to enough entrepreneurs, good entrepreneurs, sustainable entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that create enterprises that last for the long-term, entrepreneurs that don’t derail, or entrepreneurs that have a motivation which is beyond purely money. Money…Joseph Schumpeter, who was a famous economist, who first looked at entrepreneurs, and talked about creative destruction.
CB: Creative destruction, yes.
JB: He said, entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because they have the pure joy of creating, the pure joy of creating and building something new. Money is just the way they keep score. It’s the way that they avoid going bust because you can’t…Basically, if you’re creating, as you know, you need resources.
CB: You need resources. Yeah.
JB: Resource it…money is the mediator for resources. And resources, we live in a finite world where resources are limited. And so, you have to keep, you know, it’s no good having a great idea and being very virtuous and going bust. So, you have to keep score. But the question is, deep in your heart or deep in the entrepreneur’s heart, why are they doing this?
CB: This is the ‘why’ question you spoke of earlier, theologically explains why.
JB: Yeah, yeah. And you know, I actually said that, that the motivation of a good entrepreneur is a participation in God incarnate, in God in Christ. So, our Lord Jesus Christ is, as we believe as Christians, is God made human, God existing with us, both God and human combined. But Christ showed humility, not ego. And I think a lot of ego-driven entrepreneurs derail because they get above themselves. So selfless, selflessness. Christ was ultimately selfless and sacrificed himself for others. And I’ve actually seen, most really good entrepreneurs are incredibly generous. They, very rarely have everything they need. But what they’ve got a lot of, and they’ve got enough of, they will share, and very often, you pay it forward, and you give and then you receive. If they’re very open, they very often get back the things they need. And they get complete and they get the things that they’re missing.
CB: Yeah, which is, which is participatory in the environment that they are in.
JB: Yes.
CB: So, it does it does fit it sort of fits that framing of, or the use of, that word participatory. And I think the other thing that…
JB: Yeah, sharing.
CB: And the other thing that struck me, John, is that, there is, a focus on relationships, not on transactions. And this, strangely enough, is something we spoke about with David Mitchell on the show, about relationships and not transactions. And…
JB: That’s the, that’s, sorry, I didn’t mean to jump across to you there, but that’s exciting. That’s the third element I was going to talk about, which is entrepreneurs are relational and in multiple levels. You know, good entrepreneurs are great networkers, great team workers. They know, a lot of people think entrepreneurs are these big characters who do it all on their own. They aren’t. Good entrepreneurs realise it’s the power of the team. It’s the power of the people that bring all the things that they need, who, entrepreneurial leaders identify people that cover their weaknesses because what it takes to be successful in building an enterprise and based on technology or any enterprise, is actually having all those skills together. And they very rarely sit in, they don’t sit in one person, but also one person hasn’t got the capacity to do it all. So..
CB: Very true.
JB: And God. God is the most, is the most ultimately relational being. God is, if God has created everything, God is related to every single thing. And because everything, if everything is created by God and comes from God, it is created interrelated. So, every single thing is related to every single other thing.
CB: Everything else, yeah.
JB: Beautiful picture in, in the theology of a theologian called Maximus the Confessor, where he talks about everything being infinitely interrelated, not infinite, just not only interrelated through in space, but also through time. And right at the centre of that, is God. That is the only being that can actually connect with every single thing that has been, is, and will be. So, God is ultimately relational. We believe in a Trinitarian God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is a relational being, both three and one. Another, another paradox.
CB: Yeah. Three. Yes.
JB: But for me, entrepreneurs, they have to have individual strength, but they aren’t, good entrepreneurs and sustainable entrepreneurs, aren’t completely individual. They are ultimately relational.
CB: Yeah. It’s a fascinating comment you made there, John. Not only that, entrepreneurs don’t typically have all the skills they need within themselves, but even if they did, they wouldn’t have the capacity to execute it, because there’s this thing called sleep and eating and football matches and all this sort of stuff you’ve got to fit in. So, in amongst that ability to relate and that ability to recognise that they need different skills around them, that is not., it’s not typical of business folk generally. And in fact, it was only today, I was having a conversation here, I’m in Melbourne tonight, and I was talking about businesses that are extraordinarily good at operational efficiency and know how to execute a project and run an asset, you know, at the lowest cost per pounds per cubic foot per annum, but do not really understand the relationships and complexities in technology transfer and entrepreneurship.
JB: Yeah, yeah.
CB: And, that inherently means there’s a different way of thinking about entrepreneurship. Different mindset, I suspect you’re going to call it…
JB: Absolutely.
CB: To how normal, established, and dare I say, capital intensive or resource intensive businesses, run.
JB: Like, you’re absolutely right. And you know, the next thing that I picked on in the characteristics of entrepreneurs, are the unconventional mindset they have. They view the world, they look at the world in a different way from what you’d call conventional business wisdom. It’s interesting, Saras Sarasvathy, who’s a cognitive psychologist, looked at the cognition processes of entrepreneurs and actually said, that they think differently from managerial business people. Exactly as you said. She talked about, actually, they have a, they engage in a process of effectuation rather than caus…
CB: Effectuation?
JB: Effectuation. They basically, the best way to describe it is this. If, let’s say we’re going to make a curry, yeah. Somebody once told me, an entrepreneur says, ‘I want to make a curry because that’s what’s needed.’ And we’ll open the fridge and see what’s in the fridge. And we’ll say, ‘Right, I’ll make a curry about what, with what I’ve got. And if I’m missing something, I’ll maybe pop next door and see if I can get a bit of this and a bit of that.’ That’s because they can see multiple possibilities and options for the resources they have available, and they can say, ‘Well, I could make a, I can make a tomato curry here, I could make a, I got a bit of beef, I could throw a bit of beef in it. Lots of different ways to meet a need from what we’ve got,’ and they go on a journey, then doing it. A managerial, that’s more, as a more causative, a causation approach, basically would say, ‘Right, give me the recipe. I will go and buy all the ingredients and I will make the curry according to the recipe, and you’ll get exactly what you expected.’ So, there’s two different ways of looking at the world there. And I’d say that, the entrepreneurial world sees the world as a place of abundance and opportunity. It is all possible. It is ‘can do’. The world of a business manager is a world of limitation of resource. And it’s a limited…
CB: Yeah, it’s a risk management, resource management approach.
JB: Yeah. It’s interesting. The approach to risk is, often people pick on that and say, ‘Oh, entrepreneurs are really risky. They’re risk takers, they’re reckless.’ Saras says that actually, risk, entrepreneurs regard risk as affordable loss. Or loss. What can I afford to lose and still survive? Rather than a manager or an investor, who is basically looking at expected return and removal of risk.
CB: Yes.
JB: So, they want to get a return and remove the risk of that through controls. Whereas a good entrepreneur will basically say, ‘This is what I can afford to lose, and I’m willing to lose that because the prize in front of me is far greater.’ It can make them overly, overly risky. They can take that one step too far, and they have to have the humility to realise where their limits are. But for me, that that is a participation in the abundance of God.
CB: Yes, I was going to say, this is the possibility of the infinite. Not the management of the finite. It’s the possibility of the infinite. I could, I could sort of see where that was going, to sort of, anticipate where that’s going to land there, John.
JB: Yeah, absolutely. But the other thing as well, is that as you have to balance that conventional, that different mindset with quite a lot of humility. Because, you know, if you basically say, the world is this amazing, abundant place full of opportunity, you’ve got to have the humility to say, yeah, but I mean, you know, how do I go about, you know, I can’t capture all that abundance and no, I’m not God. So, I need to have humility and know to what extent I can tap into that abundance and how I can engage with that mindset while managing risk because…
CB: Yeah. So humility, humility is a fascinating piece of the puzzle here. And just to skate slightly off to the side for a moment, that the lack of humility creates or, you know, just in the flow of this discussion, it strikes me that the lack of humility creates, what I would describe, based on some of the folks we talk with, it creates the hopium addiction. Because if one’s not humble, one’s not thinking about the context. You, if you go too hard, you’re, you’re selling hope.
JB: Yes.
CB: And hope is not a strategy. And hopium is the thing that people get addicted to. You know we, you know, we talked about this with a few folks. Hopium is the stuff governments are addicted to when it comes to science and technology. They just want that single magic story that solves the problem and you get addicted to it. The hopium.
JB: I think…you can’t lose hope.
CB: No, no, no, I’m not saying remove hope entirely. But I’m saying, don’t get addicted to it.
JB: And, I think, it’s that addiction. It’s a, it’s a blind, if you get blinded by hope. One thing I’ve said in my faith throughout, I said I am a questioning Christian. I ask questions all the time. And every time I say to people who engage in their faith, I said, ‘Keep asking the hard questions. Don’t just accept what you’re told, because you don’t check your brain out when you walk through the doors of a church.’ That was actually, that came from one of my lecturers in Cambridge, a very wise man. He said, ‘We are we are meant to use our brains as well as our spirits.’ But we, you know, it’s this, it’s this sort of, keep your feet on, reach for the stars and keep your feet on the ground. It’s a simple, trite, trite thing to say, but it’s so true. I think the fifth characteristic I picked out was, was, I call resilience and perseverance. And this, you know, entrepreneurs, good entrepreneurs, are incredibly resilient. They, you know, they basically, they take failure as, not as a defeat, but as an opportunity to learn. And serial entrepreneurs will probably talk about just as many failures as successes. As, as we know, we said the challenges in front of entrepreneurs are massive. The odds are stacked against you. You can run out of money. You can, uh, not get the right…
CB: Markets change. Markets change. Regulations change.
JB: Creative destruction can destroy you, as well as you destroy…You know you can…
CB: Someone can beat you there.
JB: Exactly. So, so really, good entrepreneurs have a place they can go to dig deep. Where is the source of their resilience and perseverance? And as I said at the beginning, you know, we live in a world. You know, I think I think human beings live in the world of the material, the mental, body, mind and spirit. You know, you can find, you know, physical fitness as a way of getting perseverance and resilience. You can be resilient in your mind that, you know, you’re, I mean, you know, we’re all frail beings. Mental health is a big, big challenge.
CB; Yeah, very much so at the moment.
JB: And, you know, being an entrepreneur can break you. If you can draw on a spiritual strength, that is the deepest well you can draw on because it’s, it actually allows you, it’s a participation in, both in God’s existence, the fact that you can actually just stand and exist sometimes, is all you can do. Just pace a scripture. I think it’s the first thing I ever preached on, it said, you know, you put on the armour of God and eventually until, eventually you get to the point where you just stand because all, that’s all you can do when you’re under pressure. But also, it’s a participation in God’s strength and an ability to trust and say, now so many times I’ve just, I’ve got to a point of saying, right, I’ve done everything I think I can, now I’m going to offer it up. I’m going to trust in God. If it’s God’s will, this is going to happen, it’s going to happen. If it isn’t…And that’s incredibly liberating to just let go. Let go. I’ve done everything I can. And I’m going to be, I’m going to be humble. I’m going to be hopeful but not addicted to hope,but I’m trusting God and let go. And I’m going to draw on the spiritual strength of prayer, of contemplation, of actually saying, ‘In the bigger picture, does this matter?’
CB: Isn’t that an…question.
JB: I’m still going to exist. I’ll live to fight another day.
CB: Yeah. Isn’t that just a profound question about just how much does this matter? If it fails, what is the consequence of it failing?
JB: Exactly. Exactly. It would be a shame. You know, we, you know, entrepreneurs need to be responsible. Entrepreneurs are very free beings. And with freedom comes responsibility. You’ve got to be responsible to your shareholders, responsible to your family, to your clients, your suppliers.
CB: Your staff.
JB: Exactly. You know, as an entrepreneurial leader, it’s ,you have a lot of responsibility, and you do all that you can, but eventually you get to a point of saying, ‘I have done all I can, and now I have to let go. And because, if I try to keep infinitely grinding away, it’ll just kill me.’
CB: Yeah.
JB: I’ll be good to nobody because I’ll be burnt out. And I won’t be able to be good to anybody.
CB: Yep, yep. And, I understand that very much firsthand, John.
JB: I once said to one of my mentees, you know, ‘What does it take to be successful?’ And, I said, ‘Well, it takes skills, yes. It takes hard work, yes.’ And, I think in the past, I would have said, ‘It takes a bit of luck.’ I think, if I was a priest, ‘I’d say it takes a little bit of the Holy Spirit.’
CB: Yes.
JB: Working, working on your side. And that, is in God’s hands and not ours. And so, there’s an element that you just can’t control.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, indeed.
JB: And so, so absolutely, those three things need, and then, then maybe you might get there.
CB: Yeah. So, you’re standing ins…all that you have left is the ability to stand in, I think, it was in God’s armour, you described it there, John, or just, you know…
JB: Yeah, you put on the armour of God.
CB: Yeah, on the the armour of God. In lay terms, it might be…
JB: A place of righteousness. And, then when you’re, when you’re hit by so many things, you know, ultimately you resist and you resist and you fight, but ultimately, you just need to stand.
CB: Yeah, in lay terms, John, that might just be swinging the legs out of bed and standing up and getting going. But in order to then having to take and to takethose hits, if you like, and the armour or get out of bed and stand up. You’ve got to have a bit of drive to keep pushing on.
JB: Yeah.
CB: And I suspect, this is the final, this is the final piece of the puzzle.
JB: Well, that’s back to, we kind of touched on motivation earlier on.
CB: We did, we did touch on it earlier, but I thought ,really just come back to that to bring things in.
JB: That motivation, because I think it weaves across all of them. It weaves the creativity and innovation. It weaves the unconventional mindset. It weaves the extreme relationality, relationality at multiple levels, and it weaves in the resilience and perseverance, the motivation. If, you know, we all say that God sees, God is the only being that sees into your heart. You and God are the only person that knows the people that know what is your true motivation? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is driving you forward. Why you do this? And I’ll say again, some people might argue against me, but certainly Joseph Schumpeter, I think, confirms this. And many other entrepreneurs, say that motivations that are beyond money are the things that are most sustainable. If you, if, you know, if you look, I’ve studied not just successful entrepreneurs, but also entrepreneurs and call them entrepreneurs in the shadows, ones that failed. And many of those have just been doing it for the money, overly focused on the money, not really seeing where value is created, not seeing where sustainable value is created. I mean, we’ve got to basically work in a way that is sustainable for the environment, sustainable sociologically and sustainable financially. If your motivation is purely in one of those three legs, then it’s going to eventually break. If you damage the elements and your resource base evaporates, or you damage your relationships and your team and you and nobody’s with you anymore and piss off your customers. Theoretical term.
CB: Yeah. Thank you.
JB: You know, then, ultimately your enterprise is going to fail. So having a motivation, having motivation that is, that is broader than just money, while absolutely keeping you. You know, if you don’t have funding, you’re not going to get anywhere. If you go bust, you’re going to go bust. But the view of actually doing something, having a vision that drives you forward, which is about the pure joy of creating something, as Schumpeter said, of making a difference in the world, of actually doing something for the common good. And, I think ultimately, making sure that what drives you is, is a good balance of intentions that will be good for the environment, good for society and good financially. I think those sort of things are more sustainable. My, my honest belief is that, if we don’t have the right motivation, it may be only God and ourselves that see that, but that motivation, if it’s wrong, will come out and it will ultimately cause the derailing of an entrepreneur.
CB: Yeah.
JB: And it will then cause derailing of the enterprise. Which is sad because then you don’t get destruction, you actually get things dissolving back into nothingness. So, so creation, nothingness, then it returns to nothingness. So, the motivation of an entrepreneur, I think, is if you don’t have the right motivation, it’s ultimately going to lead to failure.
CB: Yeah, yeah. So, John, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. And you know, I think you’ve touched on some really elegant ways of, of integrating, you know, your theology with the science and with the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurship that you’ve undertaken and given a bit of a framework of all of that through participation. I’d be interested in drawing things to a close today, John, is there a particular message or particular synthesis that brings all this together from, through your experiences, and also through your faith?
JB: Um, yeah, I mean for me. If you, if you don’t have something to believe in beyond the body and the mind, go searching. It’s really interesting and don’t, you don’t necessarily go searching in a church,although church communities are there. But go and find something that is beyond the material world. Ask questions. Ask why? You know, why am I doing this? What’s important to me? Ask some questions and go on that honest search for the truth. It’s actually having some faith, will, will, hopefully. And like me, it could be a journey of 50-odd years. I know it could be a road trip, but it’s not the road to Damascus. But the more that you find of that and the more that you discover of that. I think the more happy that you’ll be and the more wellbeing you will experience. Wellbeing, I think, comes from tending to the body, the mind and the spirit. And if we, in the secular world, the secular Western world, you know, we have we have lost the spiritual too much. And to regain that, I think, if we’re going to really enjoy peace, prosperity and wellbeing.
CB: Yeah. And I think, John, just bringing that higher calling and that ‘why’ question to the fore. You know, I, I think from our conversation today, that having that higher purpose as an entrepreneur is critical to sustaining success as an entrepreneur, whether it’s one, one thing or many things, if you’re a serial entrepreneur, it’s having that higher calling that, that, that will drive success.
JB: Yeah, I think being, you know, our work can be a vocation. Our work is a vocation. It’s a calling. I think that, that seeing what that calling is, is important. The one thing I’d also leave you with is, is that, you know, the basis of the Christian faith is love. And I think the one thing you shouldn’t lose is the sense of caring. Caring for each other, caring for those within our enterprise, caring about what we do, caring about the environment, and love and care, I think need to…If we lose those things from our life, then we are absolutely lost. That’s a little…
CB: No, no, John. Very, very powerful and very sage words. John, thanks so much for joining us today. It has been a truly fascinating and really, I think, in some ways, challenging conversation. And I do hope that those that have joined us, listening to this, feel equally challenged by the way you’ve brought theology and entrepreneurship and science into that triple helix we referred to. John, thanks so much for joining us.
JB: Bless you, Cameron, really enjoyed talking today.