Paul Collins is founder manager of All About Croydon, a local business directory and community resource site for Croydon.  Paul’s vision is to promote Croydon and to demonstrate, through the opportunities publicised on the website, the thriving nature of life in the borough.

How important is diversity to your company?

For Paul, innovation depends on diversity: “It’s important to be diverse and to be really open-minded.” Paul explains this connection by talking about how an open mind has helped him develop the good listening skills he uses to expand the content of his website:  “My business partner and I, in All About Croydon, listen to people talk about their businesses and have to listen out for what’s new about their business – the innovation.  It might be a new way of marketing or delivery.”  Paul believes that the reason that every local business he talks to is using innovation to grow is down to the great diversity in the local area.   Paul thinks that Croydon businesses are good at harnessing diversity for innovation and also that it is essential if they want to address the local market with their products and services.  “The only way companies can survive is to be diverse in order to fairly represent Croydon which is the most diverse part of London.”

Paul is very interested in cultural differences that mean, for example that even the use and significance of colour differs according to the culture.

Where do your best ideas come from?

“Listening to other people.  We build up a kind of Ideas Bank talking to other people, picking up on pointers.  Generally, I review my notes later to see if there is a good fit with our own business model.  If we don’t think it fits, we give the idea away to someone else.  We think of it as a spider web that makes the links between ideas.”

Paul is dyslexic and uses note-taking as a way of supporting his memory and concentration.  He discussed this and other strategies with a group of Ideas into Business workshop participants at recent sessions especially designed for dyslexic entrepreneurs.

Paul says: “I think it’s great that there is more recognition of and provision for dyslexia than when I was growing up but I think it’s important to talk about the strengths as well as the difficulties of the dyslexic way of thinking.”  Paul believes that the strong people-skills of dyslexics are helpful when it comes to the networking that is essential for the kind of business he runs.

Ideas into Business is delighted that Paul has agreed to be collaborate with the programme as an Innovation Champion.