Peter Ives is the founder of Business Dynamix -  Peter Ives cv - with extensive experience in supporting businesses, in particular funding and supporting innovation and technology based businesses. Since taking early retirement from NatWest, now part of RBS, he expanded his expertise to include Mentoring and Coaching, both as an individual skill and in developing and delivering mentor/ coach programmes.

Whilst the world of finance is not renowned for innovation, with the exception of some questionable funding products, during his time at the Innovation & Growth Unit Peter Ives was responsible for several initiatives. Two of the innovations were:

1.       There was a need to improve the quality of lending decision making by bank managers when lending to technology based businesses – there was a little used appraisal service which produced highly technical, weighty report produced by a limited number of technologist. Peter restructed and rebranded the service expanding the report to reflect more on the market and marketability of the technology. He brought in more market focused appraisers, substantially reducing the time taken and the size of the report. The changes resulted in a 1000% increase in usage.

2.       Technology based businesses often require access to small sums of equity finance allied to an introduction of business skills – Peter identified the opportunity to develop a service that could enable NatWest to develop packages of funds including small equity finance provided by Business Angels. After substantial research and discussions with key players in the Business Angel scene, including Prof Colin Mason, Peter set about developing and delivering  the NatWest Business Angels Service that could be acceptable to the Bank (a service that didn’t naturally sit within their rationale), Business Angels and businesses. There were several challenges but the service was successfully launched by the Bank’s Chairman. In due course, the service became a key component in the services offered by NBAN (National Business Angels Network).

Peter is a firm believer that innovation is about being prepared to challenge the norm and has worked with many businesses to develop an ‘open innovation’ viewpoint working with collaborators to constantly improve their products and processes accessing the skills of those outside their business.