The Percy Hobart Fellowship

About the Fellowship

The Percy Hobart Fellowship is a bespoke, 12-week course to give immersive, hands-on experience in innovation to personnel in the Royal Navy.

For so many years, civil innovation has benefited from military ingenuity – GPS, the Internet, duct tape, digital cameras, microwave ovens, synthetic rubber tyres. The economy is full of innovations that started in the military, were inspired by or were tested in the military before developing civilian uses. But the digital revolution means that knowledge now has to flow even more into Defence from outside.

That will require service personnel to have a different mindset and a new set of skills. Through learning modules and practical, hands-on experience in innovative startups, the Percy Hobart Fellowship will equip personnel with an understanding of the powers and practicalities of new technologies to help champion innovation within the Royal Navy.

More about Percy Hobart

Learning

Core to the 12-week programme is a placement in a fast-growing startup, which will be complemented by taught course material, mentoring and workshops to provide a theoretical and practical grounding in innovation.

STARTUPS

Fellows will be seconded into a startup and learn first-hand what it’s like to develop ideas, MVPs, and scale these, the culture in the startup ecosystem and what can benefit the Navy.

TECH INNOVATION

Experts in the field will lecture on a brief history of technology, the modern-day innovation landscape and in particular advances in technology. The focus will always be on applications in the Royal Navy and broader defence.

BUSINESS PRINCIPLES

This track is based on a min-MBA syllabus. Fellows will learn about commercial forecasting, modelling, market-sizing and risk. Experts in growth, marketing, PR and sales will give real life examples of channels and strategies bringing new products to market.

INNOVATIVE THINKING

The latest principles on innovation thinking as applied to leadership. Lecturers will also cover topics as diverse as the future of work, product development and design-thinking.

Startups

Spacehive

Spacehive is the world’s first funding platform for civic projects.
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Caura

Automative technology company currently in stealth mode.

Awen

Software company reducing the costs of cyber-threats to critical national infrastructure & advanced manufacturing.

Valerann

Valerann is developing an autonomous traffic control and management system.

Patchwork

Patchwork is a health tech start up providing software solutions in attempt to solve temporary staffing challenges.

Hagalaz

State of the art testing and exercising capability for those responsible for high consequence decision making.

Glasswall

Glasswall eliminates file-based cyber threats.

Cyan Forensics

Cyan Forensics sells software to help police, social media, and cloud providers find & block harmful content from paedophiles & terrorists.

Crypta Labs

Crypta Labs is an award winning Mobile and IoT Security company.

Red flags

Redflags from ThinkCyber is a highly innovative security awareness software service.

Stotles

The SaaS platform unlocking the potential of business and government working better, together.

Red Sift

Red Sift exists to democratise the technology essential for cybersecurity.

Rebellion

Rebellion Defense provides artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions.

Pando

Pando is an essential tool for teamwork and secure collaboration in health and social care.

New Vector

New Vector provides services for custom development, prioritized road-map development, support contracts, and commercial products.

Unblur

Unblur develops an AI software for public emergency services.

Olio

OLIO is a global food sharing app connecting neighbors, volunteers, and businesses.

Goodbox

GoodBox is a fundraising-focused hardware and software tech start-up, primarily serving charities and the non-profit sectors.

Futr

Futr is a British tech company using machine learning to provide access to data with natural language.

Vine Health

Vinehealth is a AI-driven platform providing support to improve the quality of life and survival of cancer patients.

The Future Fox

The Future Fox helps planners collaborate with communities with a digital engagement platform for quality insight.

Mentors (selected)

Violet Black

Violet is a CTI trained Leadership Coach specialised in supporting individuals to develop laser sharp focus, think innovatively and communicate skilfully. You can think of her as a personal trainer for the brain, guiding people to to increase their productivity, confidence and resilience and understand how the brain performs at its peak. She combines 15 years experience leading complex projects in the not-for-profit sector with cutting edge insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology to coach leaders to make an impact.

Jess Williamson

Jess Williamson is an upbeat Californian who has worked in the startup ecosystem from a variety of angles. Having spent 14 years in the UK, adventures have included two startups in Scotland, setting up Techstars accelerator programs across five continents, and more recently consulting UK government on engaging and supporting innovation in the housing market.

During her time at Techstars she was Global Program Director for their fintech accelerators with Barclays around the world and launched new programmes across EMEA + APAC including their first accelerator in Australia focused on defence and security.

She finally learned to slow down while on sabbatical in 2018 and visiting Antarctica, but enjoys working on industry innovation and being exposed to new perspectives.

Nick Gargan

Nick is a former chief constable and previously was head of the National Policing Improvement Agency, the body once responsible for delivery of all national police ICT systems. Since retiring from the police he has spent almost 5 years helping suppliers to sell into policing, playing a role behind the scenes in bids that have won contracts to the value of hundreds of millions of pounds.

He has been working with Public since 2018, helping Tech innovators to understand and engage with the police market.

He lives in York and enjoys walking in the Yorkshire Dales and Moors, as well as watching Leicester City FC.

Rachel Neaman

Rachel is an influential technology leader specialising in digital transformation, leadership, health tech, skills and inclusion. She has extensive senior leadership experience in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors in the UK and internationally, including at the EU, as the first Chief Digital Officer for the Department of Health, and as CEO of two charities. She is now a business advisor and mentor to senior leaders and runs her own consultancy providing advice to Boards and executive teams on strategy, leadership and digital transformation. Rachel is passionate about harnessing technology for positive social outcomes and ensuring technology works for everyone.

She is a Non-Executive Director of Checkit Plc and sits on the Board of the Campaign for Social Science, and on the Advisory Boards of DigitalHealth.London and Digital Leaders, of which she is a former Chair. Rachel is a frequent keynote speaker at UK and international conferences, has appeared regularly before parliamentary Select Committees, is a frequent judge of digital awards, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). She has featured in Computer Weekly’s annual list of Most Influential Women in IT since 2016.

David Altabev

David founded Urban Frontiers, an urban technology and smart cities agency working with cities, governments and startups around the world to develop innovative new solutions to urban challenges.

He recently led DCMS’s flagship £25m 5G testbed in the West Midlands as the Head of Urban Connected Communities, and works as the Head of Cities for PUBLIC, Europe’s leading GovTech venture firm.

Previously he was Director for Data & Demonstrators at the Future Cities Catapult, a UK Government backed innovation centre of excellence, leading a team of data scientists and urban technologists. Before that he led Nesta’s cities work in their Government Innovation department, and before worked on Innovate UK’s £35m Future Cities Demonstrator Programme. He’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Chartered Engineer with the Royal Academy of Engineer.

Mike Tinmouth

Mike is a global marketing director and business strategist. He has worked agency and client-side across B2B and B2C brands such as Geometry Global (WPP), Vodafone, Costa Coffee, Azimo, Microsoft, IBM and Dimension Data, driving their digital presence and delivering world-class results.

Liam Cahill

Liam is the founder and CEO of Sector 3 Digital, a consultancy that supports digital and progressive organisational transformation, primarily working with large non-profit community health and social care providers.

Formerly Liam was co-founder and COO of PrescQIPP CIC, a social enterprise ‘spun out’ from the NHS, delivering policy, pathways and business intelligence to 97% of the UK health commissioners as an independent subscriber-led digital community.

Liam currently advises and mentors a range of London-based Healthtech startups from early stage to series A, and is senior health mentor on PUBLIC’s GovStart programme.

General Sir Chris Deverell KCB MBE (Rtd)

A Politics, Philosophy and Economics Graduate of Oxford University, Chris joined the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in 1983. He subsequently served in the British Army for over 40 years, ending his career as a 4* General. Over this period, he led multiple organisations; civilian and military, front line and supporting, on operations and in headquarters, from 12 people to 23,000. As a result of these experiences, and of the excellent training he received over the course of his career, he now has a well-developed practitioner’s view of what good Leadership looks like, and how to engender the right Behaviours and avoid the wrong ones.

As a result of these experiences in capability development and acquisition, he became convinced of the need for Innovation in Defence and decided to establish an ecosystem to this end, centred on an innovation unit called the jHub. This proved highly successful, putting capability into the hands of users in 10 months (and into pilot in 9 weeks), accessing a completely new supply base for Defence from tech sector SMEs.

Programme Team

General Sir Chris Deverell KCB MBE (Rtd)

Chris served in the British Army for over 40 years, ending his career as a 4* General. Over this period, he led multiple organisations; civilian and military, front line and supporting, on operations and in headquarters, from 12 people to 23,000.

Mia MillmanPUBLIC

Mia works across programmes at PUBLIC including on the GovStart accelerator and on challenge-based initiatives such as TechForce19. Mia is a graduate of The University of Oxford.

Jane ForanPUBLIC

Jane has worked extensively in Government and Politics starting as a Parliamentary Researcher to a Minister. She worked in Westminster until 2019, most recently in the private office of the Minister for the Northern Powerhouse.

Run by PUBLIC for the Royal Navy