Tao Group was selected to be a 'Technology Pioneer' firm by the World Economic Forum

Tao Group Ltd, United Kingdom Representative: Mr Francis Charig, Co-Founder and Chairman Company Profile: Tao Group has developed intent®: open multimedia middleware designed to power the current and future generations of mobile phones and other digital client devices. Innovation: Tao has developed intent®, a functionally rich multimedia platform now used by many of the world's leading mobile networks, OEMs and ODMs in their digital client products for mobile and home networks. intent allows them to provide music, gaming and Java services enabled by Tao's industry-leading spot solutions, or they can deliver a single content and software infrastructure strategy across all of their platforms, irrespective of operating system, hardware and function. intent, with more than 10 million licensed sales to date, is now being used in products including mobile phones, PDAs, cameras, home servers and digital television.

Interview with Tech Pioneer Tao Group, Francis Charig, Co-Founder and Chairman, Tao Group Ltd., UK

1) Briefly tell us what it is about your company/project that makes it so special? Tao’s intent® product is a seamlessly integrated, high-performance multimedia software platform for mobile, consumer electronics and automotive devices. Uniquely, intent is independent of operating system, processor and programming language making it ideal for the rapidly converging markets of mobile, handheld and home-based electronics. An open platform intended for network operators, manufacturers and content publishers alike, intent facilitates the development, interaction and execution of rich services and applications over any intent-enabled device. This means that in an increasingly complex world consumers can have the same, rich experience irrespective of the number of devices they own or where they are.

2) What country best facilitates starting a tech company? What single thing can a government do to encourage Technology Pioneers? We have only had the experience of starting a company within the EU and specifically the United Kingdom so it is difficult to compare one with another; there is a history of creativity in the UK that makes it very attractive in bringing together the appropriate engineering skills but overwhelmingly high social costs and an increasing burden of excessive bureaucracy can act as a significant deterrent. If one is to look at the long term interests of any nation, then the most important focus by government [to encourage Technology Pioneers] has to be the appropriate education system and a heavy focus on science.

3) What makes an innovator? Someone who can take an idea and apply it in a creative, practical and business-like way to real problems or opportunities. Innovators and inventors are not the same.

4) How does your company directly contribute to improving the state of the world? Users in an increasingly technology-oriented world are challenged by the new generation of tools because of too much diversity and complexity. These challenges create a division of ‘have’ and ‘have not’. It's a particular problem for the older generations. Our intent software removes those divisions whilst simultaneously creating material advantage to content and service developers, operators and device manufacturers.

5) What value do you hope to gain from being a Technology Pioneer? Further exposure to others of the value of Tao's technology and increasing even more our access to key influencers.

6) What do you think the role of technology should be in society? Technology should be governed by people and not vice versa. There has been a tendancy for this to be turned on its head. Ultimately technology should be focussed on "improvement" in society (improved health, improved quality of life, improved wealth across nations and individuals, improved habitat, etc.) but the reality is that technology is driven mainly by a search for profit.

7) What is the right balance in society between scientific interest and ethical concerns? There is no clear-cut answer to this. We cannot just generalise across the whole of the scientific plain. "Ethical concern" is extremely subjective; for example, it can be heavily impacted by religious or political beliefs and as such there is no single answer to such a question!