On finding the technical people to get Electrosonic off the ground in 1964 …
Simpson: I think that is very difficult, particularly when you see it through the lens of having lived through 50 years. Obviously when you start a business in your twenties, there are two things—first of all, nothing is impossible, but equally you have no idea what is possible or impossible.
You meet things as they come and you just do your best and I think we were very fortunate in having a nucleus of skills between us when we started that enabled us to actually get some very good work, which in turn then attracted one or two bright people to work with us and it took some time to work out the kind of people that we wanted.
Did writing the book cause you to reflect on how different office environments have become?
Simpson: Yes, that is certainly true, but of course we were never any kind of bureaucracy really, because the nature of the work was rather developing products where the productivity was definitely people working at lab benches and terminals of one sort or another and those sort of people did not have any kind of office culture if they could avoid it.
I think the sort of big difference, which we forget, is that we always used to have people called secretaries. Well, who has ever heard of a secretary today? Nobody expects somebody else to key our own correspondence and so you do all of your own keying now, and that has been true now for a number of years, but the transition was quite [and some] never got used to the idea that they had to type their own letters.
I remember when the personal computer first came out. I went along to the headquarters of a major company in London to find that the managing director actually had an IBM PC in his office, and it was there for show. He had not a clue how to use it. His secretary had a vague idea of what to do with it, but it was quite clear that it was there to show he had got a personal computer, not to actually do anything with it.
What lasting impression do you hope the book has on the integration industry?
Bowie: One of the things I would say is that it is not about the technology. One of the things that we do today [as Simpson says] people were doing in the 1890s. They just used different technology, so it is not about technology. It is about trying to create things for the client, and the systems integration is really when it all gets pulled together.
… We’re not a big harmonious beast like many of the big integrators in the world. We’re more like a collection of small entrepreneurial businesses.
… Electrosonic is a company that is willing to take risks, going to take risks in the size of the project, of the location, of all the technology. We are willing to really take on groundbreaking things, but what comes of that is we also take on the responsibility to deliver it and our history is of delivering for customers, so hopefully [the book shows that] we have taken on a lot over the past 50 years, but we have also delivered it and we’ve had a lot of happy clients out there, clients we have worked with for 20 or 25 years, so hopefully what the people take away from that book is just that, that we are a company that [is] entrepreneurial and we like to take risks and we do take on the responsibility and we deliver.
Simpson: What I hope is that it is a story worth telling.
The very last thing, of course, that I want to suggest that it is a complete story. The thing is, who knows how the business might develop further? It is going to depend on the staff. It is going to depend very much on identifying new opportunities. I think my colleagues have got quite a variety of options as to what direction to take the company in and I would hope that they will see it as a continuing story, not as a story that has in any way come to an end.
Otherwise, I hope that people will just find it interesting that it is possible to keep something going that long with such a variety of activities.
