Channel 4, 4IP

4iP (4 Innovation for the Public) was a £20 million investment fund created by the UK broadcaster Channel 4 and match-funded by commercial and public institutions to the tune of up to £50 million. In the two years it was running it funded sixty  small and large, risky, ground-breaking digital products and it was one of the most exciting times of my working life thus far.

In 2009 Channel 4 was seeking to promote it’s public service credentials.  Channel 4 is a unique broadcaster owned by the Government but wholly commercially funded.  Its’ version of ‘public service’ broadcasting is TV like Embarrassing Bodies and Big Brother. Channel 4 saw its’ chance to stimulate a new generation of talent to create innovative, public service digital media.

I was the project manager responsible for setting up the fund and then went on to manage the operations for two years.  Brilliant learning curve and a brilliant opportunity to emerse myself in the world of ideas and start-ups.  It exposed me to senior people across the channel and variety of different partners.  In these two years there were three-thousand digital product ideas submitted for funding consideration.  About sixty of these made it through concept, contractual negotiations and implementation and release into the market.

Some of the projects we invested in that I loved most were:

Schooloscope – a website that took OFSTED and DfE data and made it easy to understand for parents looking at schools.  It was like a school report card for Schools.

Mapumental – a mapping engine and prototype website that showed three data layers on a map controlled by sliders: 1) how far one could travel on public transport within a specified time, 2) house prices and  3)’scenic-ness’.  It’s a thing of beauty.

Patient Opinion – a service that gathers patient feedback on the UK’s health service, sells it to the NHS and report changes implemented as a result of the feedback.

Chromaroma – a game played out on the London Tube network using your Oyster travel card.  It’s like the Risk board game using passive data and your social network.

Papa Sangre – a video game with no video. It’s a first-person thriller, done entirely in 3D-audio sound scape on an iPhone.

Where Does My Money Go? – a datastore of government spending, analysed and beautifully visualised by Dave McCandless of Information is Beautiful.