Sir Ken Olisa OBE - Living in a time of opportunity for young entrepreneurs

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders

International businessman Sir Ken Olisa believes post-pandemic Britain offers young entrepreneurs more opportunities than at any point in his lifetime.

Sir Ken – Chairman of the Restoration Partners technology merchant bank he founded, and Deputy Chairman of the Institute of Directors – is excited by the business revolution he says is taking place.

And he tells the Business Leaders’ Podcast that young people who have just endured more than 12 months of lockdown may well be perfectly placed to take advantage.

“If you are a young businessperson now, this is the best possible period,” he says.

“We are coming out of an economic winter, into an economic spring. The things that were frail before we went into winter will die. The things that are vibrant and strong will survive. In my lifetime there has not been so great an opportunity for innovation and change.”

Sir Ken, who grew up on a terraced street in Nottingham, started his career with American computer giant IBM, before enjoying a hugely successful series of senior executive roles with Wang Laboratories.

In 1992 he founded the technology merchant bank Interregnum. He tells Honorary Visiting Professor Mike Sassi about a time when Interregnum tested his leadership skills.

He says: “2002 was a terrible year for us. We must have nearly gone bust every month!

“I gave a leadership speech to the board… when I said: You only notice the rocks in the water when the tide is out! My senior independent director replied: Rocks? I can see the expletive supermarket trolleys!”

Interregnum survived and prospered. Sir Ken – regularly in news headlines as the Queen’s Lord Lieutenant of London – now runs Restoration Partners. He believes we’re heading into a period of unprecedented economic change.

“Today, we’ve just had a pandemic and the tide has gone out completely,” he says.

“All the things that were wrong are now there for us to watch on the beachfront.

“Why did we make people do two and a half hours a day commuting? Because we’ve always done that. No other reason. Why did we think people working from home were skiving? Because we always have.

“The pandemic has exposed things that have been in plain sight, but we haven’t tackled. Seriously competitive businesses will look at those things, reconfigure and compete. Others will not look at them, will not tackle them, will fail to compete and will fold.”

Sir Ken was the first British-born black man to serve on the board of a major UK company, when he joined Reuters. He has since served on boards in Britain and North America and is currently chairman of Africa’s biggest e-payments company Interswitch.

He believes disruptors – businesspeople who want to do things differently – will dominate markets in the coming years.

“For disruptors, it’s all about opportunities,” says the businessman, who has an honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University.

“You already see it, for example, in food delivery across the country. An entirely new industry is being built as a result of the pandemic. This is a wonderful time for the disruptor.”

Sir Ken predicts 5G will have as big an impact on our lives as the advent of the internet.

He says: “We are in what I call the Age of Ubiquity. Everything is – or will become – a computer. Technology can do things that couldn’t be done before.

“5G means we can now have an instant response to something. And access to the Cloud, means we have infinite computer power.

“The applications this makes possible, across all sectors, are still largely to be designed, implemented and turned into businesses.

“This is a revolutionary period of time… a new economic spring. It’s that big a step change.”