Silicon Valley Is Not The Only Innovation Game In Town. Introducing Moonshots & Moneymakers: The Oxford Innovation Conference.

It’s 5pm on August 8, 2022 and Nkatha Kimathi, the proprietor of a behavioral health care center based in Arizona called Sananga Care Homes, is at The Magdalen Arms, a saloon located just outside the medieval walls of Oxford University. In the midst of a nationwide heat spell, Nkatha finds herself at the bar chatting with Rob Spurrett, the chairman of Oxford Space Systems and co-founder of Lacuna Space Systems.?

Nkatha ( Nkatha Kimathi, MBA ) and Rob ( Rob Spurrett ) didn’t know each other a week earlier, but they’re here at the Magdalen Arms (pronounced “Mawd-Lynn”) — along with about 100 others — to participate in a business gathering called Moonshots & Moneymakers: The Oxford Innovation Conference that dives into the beating heart of entrepreneurship: innovation. The goal of the conference is to help proven money making businesses chart out a path to become hyper-growth moonshots that will attract massive amounts of capital. And it's taking place a half a world away from Silicon Valley.

One of the biggest changes in business innovation is the porous nature of the three traditional innovation ecosystems: venture capital, universities and governments. Twenty years ago, each of these were relatively closed, cliquish and exclusive. Now, they are being pried open, inviting outsiders to collaborate for one simple reason: the capital that awaits a successful business built on innovation is too much to ignore.??

These three distinct pools of innovation: venture capital (“I’ve got my own a great idea, now I just need some capital to fund it.”), the university innovation ecosystem (“I’m going to solve the world’s problems from my laboratory using academic grants.”) and the government innovation ecosystem (“If I solve a problem for the biggest customer in the world, the government, they’ll underwrite my risk.”) has also led to three geographic centers of global innovation: Silicon Valley, Oxford University and Washington, D.C. It’s also what has brought Nkatha the entrepreneur and Rob the inventor to this bar in Oxford.

Rob is a veteran of Oxford’s robust innovation ecosystem. He’s part of the elite class of Oxford business leaders who know how to steer a company through years of invention before even having a working prototype. As the head of Lacuna Space, Rob and his colleagues have developed a new way of transmitting information around the globe at low cost—it’s literally a moonshot. Lacuna Space has gotten pretty far mostly on research grants and “friends and family” investments to create a model and a demo. All they need now is a few industries willing to give it a go and someone to fund the launch of 15 satellites.

Nkatha knows that the right technology can turn her money making business into a moonshot, a business with virtually limitless growth potential.?So why is the owner of a health care company networking with a rocket scientist who’s looking to launch a satellite network??

“You have to be open-minded to make things happen in our business,” says Nkatha. “I’m here to find any innovation, from artificial intelligence to climate tech to robotics, that can help us grow. My industry operates on a pretty old model: it’s staffed largely by older women that pour their hearts and souls into helping our clients who suffer from mental health and addiction disorders. We’re trying to get them to shower regularly, learn how to use a calendar and do their household chores. If I see tech here that can help them, then I’ll find it, fund it and implement it. One significant tech enablement in my business can change the game for us.”

What Nkatha brings to the table is deep knowledge about her sector. She knows how to make money so she’s highly tuned into what her clients will actually pay for.?

Rob, the rocket scientist, has a moonshot idea. One that can change the communications game just like the internet once did. But he’s got to find use cases for his technology or else it will never find its way to the marketplace.?

In the week that Rob and Nkatha spend at this conference, they will have dozens of conversations with other attendees just like the one they’re having tonight. By the end of the week, experiments, joint ventures, investments and friendships will be borne. But, above all, innovations will emerge. The innovation economy is alive and well outside of Silicon Valley.

Moonshots & Moneymakers: The Oxford Innovation Conference , where the leaders of tech-enabled businesses intersect with the innovators of enabling technologies, takes place every August followed by The American Innovation Conference (Washington, D.C.) every February.?