Last month our Operations Manager, Charlotte, and I had the pleasure of attending Cranfield University’s annual Venture Day. The focus was on Artificial Intelligence in business as well as business sustainability and the role AI plays in our ever changing market.

We both found it a very enjoyable and informative day.

Venture Day Morning – Sustainability & AI

The first panel of the day was titled Get Ready for the Future by Embracing Technology and Sustainability. The standout speaker for me was Alan Rance, the MD of the Midas Pattern Company, a plastics moulding company. He spoke about his sustainability journey and how he has made his company carbon net zero, including the in-house development of fully recyclable, sustainable plastics. They only take on business that is either life-saving or life-enhancing.

Another notable speaker was Professor Joe Nellis, Professor of Global Economy at Cranfield. Professor Nellis had the controversial view, to some, that the UK needs to lower corporation tax on UK businesses. He believes this will grow the economy and will encourage investment in the UK, stating, “Investment is the engine of growth.”

Following on from these, we had a choice of parallel breakout sessions. Charlotte chose to attend Entrepreneurship: The Future of Work. Sustainability, Technology & Worker Lifestyle were identified as areas of growing importance for the future of success in business’.

This session suggested companies will need to adapt, allowing for innovation. People’s priorities are changing due to placing higher importance on well-being, as well as AI advancements. Charlotte adds “I found these areas insightful. It certainly provokes thought about the changes you need to start making for business’ moving forward”.

I opted for Technology: Harnessing AI to Supercharge Your Business. This panel discussed what is hype and what is not in the AI world, and where AI is currently useful in business. Adam Cox, a cybersecurity expert, was the standout speaker in this session. He argued convincingly that while Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Opus get all the headlines, it is Small Language Models that have the most business potential. These small models can be trained on business-specific data, in particular, frequently asked customer questions to be used for answering support questions.

However, a concerning issue surrounding AI in business is its use for tasks previously done by junior employees (such as coding). Therefore only senior employees are needed to check and oversee what the AI is doing. This could be seen as preventing junior employees from gaining the experience needed to become senior.

Recommended AI tools to help small businesses are:

• Otter – for recording and analyzing sales and other meetings

• Uizard – for creating a prototype image from a sketch. This is then modified from a prompt

Venture Day Afternoon – Unconference

Following these panels, in the afternoon we had a selection of unconferences to attend. I had never experienced the unconference concept before. Participants suggested several topics they wanted to discuss, and everyone voted on their favourites. I attended the ‘AI and Resilience to Prevent Burnout’ session. This turned into a discussion where people shared their experiences with mental health in the workplace. Frankie Paterson, Director of Magic Words and fellow BGPer, shared a good strategy where they have a weekly management meeting to discuss all staff’s personal well-being and what can be done to help them.

The final speaker of the day was Adam Nemenyi of Sentry Aerospares, who shared his journey from a one-man band to a multi-million-pound company, all without any external investment. Both myself and Charlotte found Adam’s journey as thought provoking as it was inspiring.

Venture Day Summary

The whole day was well worth the long drive to Cranfield. Both Charlotte and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My main takeaways are:

• Generative AI like ChatGPT is very much at the peak of the hype cycle.

• More and more businesses are taking sustainability seriously, not just greenwashing as in previous years, globally.

We will definitely be attending Venture Day 2025.