← James Reed: all about business
James Reed: all about business
25. Human-like AI is rewiring our kids' brains! Educating the future generation with Philip Colligan
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- [00:00]
James Reed
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrapped companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. With popular tech brands charging thousands of pounds for their products, is there a way to make technology affordable while still turning a healthy profit? Yes, according to today's guest, Philip Colligan. Philip is the CEO of Raspberry PI foundation, the charity and computer company making tech accessible to everyone. In this episode, we discuss how to balance social purpose with profitability, what your kids need to know about AI and the key to building a global network. Well, today on All About Business, I'm very excited to welcome Philip Colligan. It's Philip's joke, but you can shorten his name to Phil Ko. And we're going to have a lot more about Philco in this conversation and in the future. Last year In London, in 2024, the Raspberry PI technology company was floated on the London Stock Exchange. And since then, the value of that company has doubled and it's now worth a billion pounds. So we have a charity that started a business that has since been floated and is worth a billion pounds. And the charity, as I understand it, Philip, is still a major shareholder in the business, 47%. I think this is a super interesting story and a really powerful model that I'm personally urging more businesses to consider. So I'd like you to take us, if you could, to begin with Philip, on that journey, the Raspberry PI foundation decided to start this company. Why?
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Philip Colligan
Well, look, thanks for having me and it's great to have the opportunity to talk about it. So the founders of Raspberry PI, I wasn't one of the founders I tell you about when I joined, but got together around 2008 and they were focused on this problem of not enough kids having the opportunity to learn how to create with technology. They were involved in the undergrad computer science course at Cambridge University. And so there, you know, they were looking at a problem which lots of people were looking at, which was we've stopped inspiring kids. We stopped giving kids the opportunity to learn how to create with technology. And their idea, their insight, their innovation was to create a low cost programmable computer. Price of a textbook. That was the original price.
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James Reed
The price of a textbook.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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James Reed
Which is super interesting for the price of a textbook. That's cool.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah. And so they set themselves this price of $25 initially, of course, they didn't know the price of textbooks has gone up. And they settled on $35 eventually. And so they set about trying to invent a programmable general purpose computer within that price constraint.
- [03:04]
James Reed
So this product, obviously is growing in sales very rapidly. You got to manufacture, make more and more of them. That puts financial pressures on a business, doesn't it? You know, capitalizing and financing. Yeah, you know, production. How did you do that as a charity? How did that work?
- [03:22]
Philip Colligan
So the first period of Raspberry PI was a very simple, clean business model. So it was essentially a licensing business. So we owned the company, owned the designs of Raspberry PIs, and we licensed those designs to some manufacturing companies. They took the capital risk to manufacture and then they sold them. And when they sold them, they paid a royalty to the trading company, which meant that it was very clean profits because they didn't have lots of capital expenses in the trading business. And then a proportion of those profits was paid up to the foundation in the form of gift aid, which is one of the wonderful things about UK charity law is you don't pay corporation tax on gifts from a wholly owned trading company. And that worked for several years. We were doing pretty well. We sold many millions of devices under that model. A couple of things made it tricky to sustain. So one is that for the companies who we were licensing to, it meant that their margin structure was different to what they're used to in their main businesses. And over time, we realized that in order to grow, it became a bit of a constraint on the growth of the business because we were asking other people to put their capital at risk. And so over time, we realized there was a working capital problem in the business. And we also wanted to keep investing in R and D. I mean, the reason Raspberry PI Technologies has been so successful is the innovation it does is off the scale. I mean, it's seriously impressive. And so those two things came together. This idea that we could only really meet demand if we could get working capital into the business. And we wanted to keep investing in R and D. And so that was putting pressure on the idea of gift aid, from the trading company to the foundation. And of course, every year, as all companies do, we had a debate about dividends and gift aids. And, you know, that was getting more challenging because the choice about donation.
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James Reed
Well, yes, saying, well, we want to invest it in the next round of tech.
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Philip Colligan
It was kind of like that. Although honestly the foundation also come on to this, perhaps has never relied solely on funds from the trading company. So over our whole lifetime, more than half of our expenditure has been funded through partnerships and philanthropy. So we still hold true to that principle today. But back to the debate on the evolution of the company. So we realized would have been around 2017, I think there was a. Eben and I and our families were on vacation in Italy and Evan and I were spending a lot of time with our chairman trying to figure out this problem. We realized at that point. Point.
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James Reed
So you talk business off it?
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't. Yeah. I can remember this beautiful patio we were sat on and we said, well, look, we're going to have to find a way to bring some capital into the business. And that was when the. I think the seed of the idea of listing really took hold.
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James Reed
Did you actually discuss that on that Italian patio?
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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James Reed
We should list this company.
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Philip Colligan
We said it was an option at that stage. We were still exploring options for it and. And over the following years that sort of crystallized. We looked at lots of options, took lots of advice, as you would do. We have a fantastic set of board members, both in the company and in the charity. So we were able to draw on some real top quality experience.
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James Reed
It's interesting because, you know, this journey to take a company to public offering is one a lot of entrepreneurs aspire to follow. Talk me through how that worked for you. What was the. What. Why did you choose a listing?
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Philip Colligan
Yeah.
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James Reed
Over other options, perhaps. And. And how did you get to that point?
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Philip Colligan
So I think a lot of it really was about Eben and the management team in the commercial business. He is the entrepreneur that created Raspberry PI and is still running the PLC today. And a lot of it was about him understanding what he and his team wanted to build. And, you know, without going into the specifics of all of the options we looked at, there's a few pathways you can take.
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James Reed
Sure. I can think of several.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, right. So trade, sale or kind of, you know, private equity, all those sorts of things. And I think there was a lot of work done with the board of the commercial company and with Eben on kind of what sort of future do we think works best? And of course, from the foundation, we were thinking from the charities perspective. Our focus all the way through has been what maximizes public benefit. And you know, that's a very tricky judgment and you know, you take all the advice you can, but ultimately it's a matter for the Trustees to weigh their own conscience and the facts they've got in front of them and bring their experience to bear. Time will tell if we took the right path, but it felt like the best option. We took a couple of small strategic investments in the run up Lansdowne Partners organization called Ezra Charitable Trust in the US and then Sony and ARM all came on as investors over a few years in the run up to the ipo.
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James Reed
Right.
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Philip Colligan
Pretty publicly known. We had a crack at an IPO just before the invasion of Ukraine, which.
- [08:03]
James Reed
Obviously not great timing.
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Philip Colligan
Not great timing. So that was a sort of a fire drill if you will, because we did a lot of the work with investors, a lot of the roadshows and so on. It really made us think that it was a viable route for the company. And so when we came back to it in the run up to last year's ipo, we did again of course looked at all the options as you would expect, both in the company and in the foundation. And yeah, the consensus, very strong consensus amongst those of us involved was this was the right path. But as I said, history will judge that later on.
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James Reed
Well, I think it's really interesting. It seems to have gone pretty well so far. And it's really interesting because this firmly establishes Raspberry PI and my world as a Philco. Yeah, A philanthropy company where the foundation still has a big stake but the leadership of the business is out there innovating, developing and producing great products and growing the company to the benefit of all shareholders, of which the foundation is the largest.
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Philip Colligan
That's exactly.
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James Reed
I mean that gives a lot of dynamism to your social mission, doesn't it?
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, I mean it does a couple of really important things. So one of course is we've established an endowment, modest in the scheme of endowments, but you know, it's up 160 million pounds today, which is pretty punchy. And for an educational non profit, you know, pretty significant. We still own, as you say, 47% of the listed company. And also brand wise, I think it's been really interesting. So we've always had within a certain audience a very strong brand recognition and affinity. And people, you know, for us, brand is about that core value of democratizing access to computing education. That's kind of the core. And that if you talk to people who feel an affinity to the brand, that's what kind of gets them. This sort of is a real kind of visceral feeling.
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James Reed
There's a real connection, isn't there, between you and your customers and your community?
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Philip Colligan
And we wondered whether that would survive the ipo, you know, how would it be affected? And what's happened, of course, is that that's just gone turbocharged. And it turns out many more people in the world feel that connection with our mission.
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James Reed
What do you put that down to? Just greater awareness or.
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Philip Colligan
You know, I think awareness is a big part of it, and they can.
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James Reed
Participate in it as well.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, exactly. Precisely. I think there's also, and I don't want to overstate this, but, you know, trust in technology generally has taken a bit of a dive over the past few years, I think, for all sorts of reasons that we could dig into. But you'll know as well as I do. And I think one of the things that we've always worked hard at is being a technology company and charity that has high levels of trust with our community. And we've always been very open, authentic. You can go back, you know, Raspberry PI has published blogs almost every day through its whole existence. And we've been very open about our development processes. Things we've got wrong, things. Things we've got right. We've always been very closely connected to the community, and I think that trust has really helped us during this phase where we've got much more scrutiny.
- [10:53]
James Reed
So you, as the chief executive of the foundation, what's your sort of interface with the business? I mean, do you attend board meetings? Do you go to just the annual general meeting? I mean, they should be, you know, listening to what you've got to say, I guess, because you're important shareholder.
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Philip Colligan
It's changed.
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James Reed
How does that work?
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Philip Colligan
It's changed a lot.
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James Reed
So. Yeah. From where to where has it changed?
- [11:14]
Philip Colligan
Well, so pre ipo, I was a director of the company along with a couple of trustees, Eben and I, you know, we formed an amazing partnership and friendship over this past decade and, you know, would speak all the time about strategy and operations, both in the company and the foundation, because he cares as much about the foundation as anything else. So I'm no longer a director because, you know, we took the view that having the chief exec or the largest shareholder as a director of the company might not, you know, might send an odd message to the market.
- [11:44]
James Reed
You said you wanted to bring affordable computing to the whole world. I mean, that's a big ambition, isn't it? How's that going?
- [11:50]
Philip Colligan
It's going pretty well. I mean, I don't know what their latest numbers are. Last time I checked, I think they were around 70 million computers. 7, 070.
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James Reed
Right.
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Philip Colligan
And that commitment we have to democratize. Access to computing isn't just for education. Now, you know, what we've seen is Raspberry PI is being available for entrepreneurs lowers the barriers for innovation in all sorts of settings. Social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are solving real problems that matter to them in a way they couldn't have done before. Raspberry PI was available because it just makes that technology much more affordable and much more accessible.
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James Reed
This is right across the planet.
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Philip Colligan
Right across the planet. Raspberry PIs are available everywhere in the world. Yeah.
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James Reed
So now you're separated from the business you're running, the foundation. What are your focuses for the foundation? Where are you taking it?
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Philip Colligan
The foundation's mission is to enable all young people to realize their full potential through computing and digital technologies.
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James Reed
That's a lot of people.
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Philip Colligan
It's a lot of people, yeah. Trying to move us to be a global organization. That's part of the journey at the moment. But we basically do three things. So we help schools introduce computing, computer science, AI literacy and related subjects. We do non formal learning, so that's things that inspire kids outside of school. So we run the world's biggest network of coding clubs called Code Club. We have Raspberry PIs on the International space station. About 120,000 kids write science experiments that run in space. And we work with organizations like the Scout and local youth and community organizations. So schools non formal learning. And the third thing is research. So we have a research center in partnership with the University of Cambridge. We have research scientists and PhD students working across all of our programs. And so those three things we try to bring together to really shift the dial on how many kids, and particularly kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, have the opportunity to learn about technology and make it part of their lives.
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James Reed
That's really good. I mean, it's very clearly structured. You said AI literacy in schools. I want to explore that. What is that? I think I could benefit from some AI literacy, probably all of the listeners. And we were all learning this, aren't we?
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, no idea.
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James Reed
What are you trying to help with that?
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Philip Colligan
So, I mean, as we know in the past few years, AI has become a huge part of the public conversation. And we actually started this work back in 2019, before ChatGPT. So it look pretty good in hindsight. Right. But we knew then and we know now that AI technologies are going to become a much bigger feature of, you know, it's the future of, in many ways, the future of computing. And so we're trying to figure out what is it that young people need to learn about these technologies, about how they're built, about the societal and ethical implications. And if I can, you know, I always use this example. So when I went to university, long time ago now, the Internet was really just getting going.
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James Reed
It wasn't that long ago. When I went, it didn't exist.
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Philip Colligan
So, you know, and there was a sort of sense of optimism and hope, but nobody really knew what it was for, I think is fair to say. If you look back now, I think it's fair to say we missed the educational challenge of that moment. And we missed it in two key ways. One is that lots of young people didn't have any opportunities to learn the skills and knowledge and mindset that would enable them to have jobs and careers and set up businesses in that new emerging sector.
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James Reed
That's so interesting. So we were kind of asleep.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah.
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James Reed
When this was coming out.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, I just. I just don't think we saw how important it would be to equip young people with a foundational understanding of these technologies. And that's.
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James Reed
Couldn't agree more. I mean, it's so obvious. We're looking back now, and the second.
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Philip Colligan
Thing we failed on is we didn't put enough social and ethical implications into the little education we were doing. And if you look, you know, the Internet's led to amazing advances. You know, life is so much better in so many ways. But it's also had some real challenges universally the case. And so I draw parallels between that moment and this moment where we are with AI. So this is a new form of technology. It's been around for a long time, but a new form of technology that I don't think anyone really understands yet, the scale of the impact it's going to have. I agree, but we don't want to miss this educational moment this time. You know, I think we missed it last time. I think we can learn that lesson and not miss it. So the thing that we're focused on is trying to understand what is AI literacy? And I'll come back to your question. And then how can we get it into the hands of all young people and particularly their teachers? So what does it mean, AI literacy? Well, firstly, it's like, what are these technologies? How are they built? You know, what is the difference between searching the Internet and putting a request into ChatGPT? You know, they're fundamentally different.
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James Reed
What is the difference?
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Philip Colligan
Well, you know, if you're searching on the Internet in a browser, it's going and looking at other websites and trying to find them through using metadata, data and all sorts of indexing to give you what somebody has written. A human has written Google and it's throwing up some results of things that humans have written. That isn't what's happening when you ask a large language model that has been trained on a lot of data and is a probabilistic system that is trying to figure out what characters should come after the one before. And it doesn't. I mean if you use these systems, they're incredible, right? One of my favorite little tropes at the moment is try and get one of the image generators to do a picture of a left handed person writing. Oh, keeps coming up with the right handed.
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James Reed
Let's try that at home.
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Philip Colligan
When I say that my wife's left.
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James Reed
Handed, she'll like that too.
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Philip Colligan
But it's gone because based on the data it's trained on. Right. And we've heard lots, haven't we?
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James Reed
Must be some left handed coders, surely, but not.
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Philip Colligan
But it's trained on photographs on the Internet and what are the majority of those? And we know that's a trivial example.
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James Reed
But that's an interesting example. I never heard it.
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Philip Colligan
Lots of examples of where the data that, that these systems are trained on is biased in all sorts of ways. I mean, look, large language models are trained on the Internet at the moment and all sorts of other data sources too which have a very western bias to them. And so, you know, you talk to indigenous communities and other parts of the world, their lived experience hasn't been the basis of the change.
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James Reed
Not on the Internet.
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Philip Colligan
Right. And so, so that's one example though that's a bit, well, let's say on the question of AI literacy, not fixing.
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James Reed
AI, that's opened up a whole new hornet's nest.
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Philip Colligan
I'll give you another example which is this idea of anthropomorphism, which is very hard to say. But this is the idea that tech companies right now are for good commercial reasons doing their best to make sure that our experience of interacting with AI systems is more and more human.
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James Reed
Like that's what anthropomorphism.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, make it human. Like making something human. Like think about, you know, Alexa or Google Home. It sort of has a voice, it has a name. You know, most kids in the UK first interact with AI systems. We'll be asking Alexa for something to help with homework for example. But we, our research shows that has a real problem, has a real negative effect in terms of young people's mental models of what these systems are. You know, it's not a human it doesn't understand. It processes something and then probabilistically comes up with an answer based on what it's interpreted. So one of the things that we're trying to help young people understand is that these systems are not humans or human like they're system that were designed and built by humans, but they have limitations.
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James Reed
What's the negative effect it has? So you're a young person, you think.
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Philip Colligan
It'S your mental model. It's like what's happening when I ask this system a question, do I think that it has empathy, for example? So lots of these systems appear as though they have some sort of. They make little jokes now, but they don't have empathy.
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James Reed
Clearly not. Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, maybe you're telling me they don't.
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Philip Colligan
I'm telling you they do. They absolutely do. If you trained it on different data, it would come up with a different response. And then we also want young people to understand about data sets and about the importance of diverse and high quality data sets and how the thing that you train these models on is so important. And then it's a different paradigm of computing. You know, it's different from the traditional method of giving humans giving instructions to computers. So what we're trying to do is break that down in a way that a teenager can understand. And so we have a program called Experience AI, which we developed with Google DeepMind, which is a curriculum. It's a series of lessons and videos and instructional materials and hands on exercises that teenagers can work through. And we provide teacher training.
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James Reed
But may I just ask you, if you're a teacher listening, where do you get that?
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Philip Colligan
How do you find that Experience AI? Just Google it and you'll find it. It's free. Experience AI.org those lessons. I think we're in the region now of getting close to 2 million young people have been reached with one of those lessons. We have localized and translated them for 23 countries and we're working on a list of other countries now. And so we're working really hard.
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James Reed
Experience AI.org yeah, yeah. And that's part of your foundation.
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Philip Colligan
That's part, it's one of our core products. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.
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James Reed
That's really helpful to people. I'm gonna go have a go myself.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah. And you know, the other thing to say is this stuff is moving all the time. You know, this technology is moving so fast. So we are updating and refreshing and continuing to do research so that, that, that those resources will always be the best that we can offer.
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James Reed
So there's no reason why any school can't access that.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And indeed we are. We're funding teacher training as well in lots of countries.
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James Reed
So a big part of your job is so just raising awareness of that. Surely that's there.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, partly it's awareness, but I do want to come back to this point about supporting teachers because, you know, even if we build awareness, even if I can persuade school systems this is something they should do. One of the things you've got to know is that almost every computer science or AI lesson taught now and forever will be taught by a teacher who didn't have the benefit of studying that subject themselves. And that's not to criticize those teachers. They're amazing.
- [21:26]
James Reed
Right, but that's true of everyone right now.
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Philip Colligan
Exactly.
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James Reed
None of us have had that opportunity.
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Philip Colligan
But we ask a huge amount of teachers in this context. And that's why I think it's, you know, if there's one ask I have of governments around the world, it's like, you've got to invest in teacher training, training. You've, you know, if we want kids to leave school understanding the way that technology is shaping the world, feeling confident and able to use technology to create the world they want, we've got to invest in teachers. It's really.
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James Reed
So how's it going? Are you worried that we're going to see a repeat of what happened when the Internet came onto the scene, or are we nailing it?
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Philip Colligan
Oh, no, we're not nailing it. We're a long way from nailing it. I mean, you know, you look around the world, there is, you know, England. We've had a computer science curriculum for what, 14 years now, requirement that every, every child in, every year studies some computing and, and lots of teachers and schools doing amazing work, but still hugely patchy. I mean, the thing is, changing school systems takes a long time because they're complex environments that have all sorts of demands and pressures on them. I think this new wave of technological innovation is throwing up real challenges for schools. And most of that.
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James Reed
Such as what are.
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Philip Colligan
Well, most of the debate at the moment understand why, and most of the debate is how are AI technologies going to change teaching and learning? So, you know, the debate around one strain of it is like, are kids cheating when they're using an LLM to write their essay? You know, or what does the assessment look like in a world where.
- [22:55]
James Reed
What do you think about that? I mean, I mean, because in business now, everyone's using it. So you say to the kid, you can't use that, which, which isn't really helping them prepare for life after. Afterwards.
- [23:06]
Philip Colligan
That's right. I think there is foundational knowledge that you need young people to learn and that they might not learn by using those tools, but I think that you also need them to understand and, and, and experiment with and learn how to use those tools. My son, he'll kill me for saying this, he's a good kid, but he was doing an assignment for his computer science A level and he was building a game, programming it himself.
- [23:30]
James Reed
Yeah.
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Philip Colligan
And of course that game, he could just have gone on ChatGPT and written two lines of prompt. Prompt and chat GPT would have produced the code for him and it probably would have.
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James Reed
So what should the prompt have been?
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Philip Colligan
Build me a Battleships game. Right.
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James Reed
You can actually get it to do a podcast for you as well, right?
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Philip Colligan
Oh, no, no. I know Notebook is absolutely fantastic. But, but you know, what's so important is that kids do the work themselves in some circumstances, so they're understanding those foundational concepts. But also I think they should have space in their school career to experiment with these technologies and kind of, you know, use them as tutors or assistants or to give them feedback. I mean, for example, research, very good on this. That high quality feedback is one of the most important things for learning. Right. So if you, if you want to learn something, get somebody to give you feedback on a piece of work you've created.
- [24:19]
James Reed
Well, AI will do that.
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Philip Colligan
Well, yeah, that's right. And a lot of the, I think exciting innovations in AI technologies are around the idea of providing young people with unlimited high quality feedback. Because teachers are great at feedback, but they're rate limited by the number of students and how many hours are in the day.
- [24:37]
James Reed
Someone was telling me this was the thing they were doing socially. They put two different pictures into AI and said, which is the best? Yeah, it's like a photography competition. And the AI told them, which it thought was the best and reasoned it out.
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Philip Colligan
Yeah, but you said thought. It didn't think.
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James Reed
I did thought. So what did it do? It's called intelligence if it's not thinking. What you're saying is pattern recognition.
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Philip Colligan
No, but I think, I think it's fascinating, this whole debate, because I do it all the time. I form this trap.
- [25:05]
James Reed
So it wasn't thinking, what was it doing?
- [25:07]
Philip Colligan
Well, it was, it was, it was processing the pixels. It was processing the pickles pixels. And then you're right, is that it was pattern recognizing. Yeah, it was assessing that against what it had been Trained on a lot.
- [25:19]
James Reed
Of thinking's pattern recognition.
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Philip Colligan
That's true. That is true.
- [25:22]
James Reed
So it's artificial intelligence. We've got to remember the word artificial.
- [25:26]
Philip Colligan
But back to the school thing. So a lot of the debate is around the use. How AI technologies are going to. And they will, they will radically transform teaching and learning in some ways.
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James Reed
If it's not thinking. Sorry, why do we care about its feedback?
- [25:39]
Philip Colligan
That's a good question. But, but it's. But it. You care about it to the extent that it's useful.
- [25:45]
James Reed
Right. Because I'm thinking of my tutor or whatever. It used to give me pretty brutal feedback.
- [25:49]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [25:50]
James Reed
But I cared because I thought the tutor was a good guy and super clever.
- [25:54]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, but are you attributing the good guy, super clever attributes to your LLM?
- [25:59]
James Reed
Well, I don't know what to attribute. That's why I'm wondering whether to pay any attention to it.
- [26:03]
Philip Colligan
But I think you've also got to know that it's. It's flawed. But then I suppose your tutor was flawed too deeply.
- [26:09]
James Reed
I hope he's listening. He stimulated a lot of sort of thinking.
- [26:15]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well. And there you are. So that's the answer perhaps, is that the job of feedback is as much to stimulate thinking.
- [26:22]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [26:23]
Philip Colligan
As it is to give you the answers.
- [26:25]
James Reed
Because I always say. Because some people are quite sensitive around feedback.
- [26:28]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [26:29]
James Reed
I always say there's no such thing as bad feedback. It's just feedback and you do what you want with it.
- [26:34]
Philip Colligan
So I grew up. I grew up in the civil service with some wonderful people mentoring me. And I remember one chap said to me when I was upset with some feedback, he said, philip, you have to remember all feedback is a gift. But sometimes it's that jumper you got from your aunt that you should put in a drawer and never think about again.
- [26:53]
James Reed
That's pretty good. I like that.
- [26:54]
Philip Colligan
That's a nice way of thinking about my drawers.
- [26:57]
James Reed
Got a lot of old jumpers in it.
- [26:58]
Philip Colligan
Exactly.
- [26:59]
James Reed
So that's good. I like that.
- [27:01]
Philip Colligan
But let me finish the. Let me finish the point about the school. So you've got the use of AI technologies, how they're going to change teaching and learning. But then you've got two other things. I think so. One is AI literacy. What foundational knowledge do we need all young people to understand so that they can choose a career in AI, choose to study more about it, or just be more confident citizens in a world that's shaped by AI? And then the third thing I think is how is the. How are the Fundamentals of the subjects we teach, the curriculum. How do they need to change to reflect a world where AI is so important? So if you look at biology, I mean, that's an informatic subject. Now we need to be teaching much more data science as part of biology curriculum. Same with geography, actually. And what does it mean, you know, what does computer science as a subject look like in a world where AI is such a big part of computing?
- [27:52]
James Reed
It's a bit like everyone used to study philosophy. That was sort of the subject.
- [27:56]
Philip Colligan
Right.
- [27:56]
James Reed
And then they realized a little more, you know, you couldn't call everything philosophy.
- [28:01]
Philip Colligan
Right.
- [28:01]
James Reed
Because it came out of religion, I suppose. And now the computer science is so pervasive and everything.
- [28:06]
Philip Colligan
And I think the, the world, if I was making a prediction about the future, it would be that computer science and AI will become much more integrated into other subjects. So it will be less of a standalone subject. It'll still be there, I think is a standalone subject, but I think we will see it being integrated more and more into other subjects. Subjects.
- [28:24]
James Reed
Yeah. Might be interesting to see how that pans out, but I think you might well be right. I have to get you back in a few years time for that. So, so, okay, so AI literacy, huge amount there. I mean, you talked about these couple of other things that you were promoting in terms of channels or streams of work for the foundation. Just, just give me a little bit more detail on each of those.
- [28:46]
Philip Colligan
Let me talk about Code Club, because that's one of my.
- [28:47]
James Reed
Yeah, that sounds really fun.
- [28:49]
Philip Colligan
Yeah. So Code Club, a code club was actually created not by the Raspberry PI Foundation. We merged with them shortly after I got there, a few months after I arrived. And it is a network of after school and community based coding clubs for kids and, and covers an age range of like sort of kind of 8 or 7 through to 16, but the sweet spot's really 9 to 13. That's where the bulk of the young people are. And it is run by an amazing network of volunteers and educators who we call mentors. And they help kids experiment with and build cool things with technology. And I spend a, a lot of time, I would spend more if I could in code clubs. And it is phenomenal to see the impact it has on young people because, you know, we all know, don't we, that schools struggle a little bit with project based learning. The idea that you learn by building things. And Code Club is all about learning by building.
- [29:41]
James Reed
Sounds wonderful.
- [29:42]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, no, it's terrific. And so we have, I think a little over 8,000 co clubs around the world now we had a lot more before the pandemic. We're building back.
- [29:50]
James Reed
So are there many right across the UK?
- [29:52]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, there's, I think we're up to 3,000 in the UK. It's our biggest market and they take place in primary secondary schools, community centers.
- [30:00]
James Reed
So our listeners who might be interested should look out for those.
- [30:03]
Philip Colligan
Well, and any of your listeners who are inspired to do something to help kids learn about technology. It's so simple to volunteer and set one up. We do all the heavy lifting for you really. And I promise you that the hour a week you spend in a code club will be the best hour that you spend every week.
- [30:19]
James Reed
There you go. Yeah, they are in the code club.
- [30:22]
Philip Colligan
They're just tremendous, endlessly fun. Yeah, well I, I ran one for years in my kids school and now we have one in the office that meets once a month on a Sunday for a couple of hours. And they are, they are the.
- [30:33]
James Reed
And you get. And you, as your Raspberry PI foundation, give people the sort of curriculum. So we cook books or whatever it is to do this.
- [30:40]
Philip Colligan
We create what we call the projects. So they're learning experiences. We've got over 200 of them translated into 30 languages, all free, all using free software. And then we also provide training for the ment. And the main thing, you know, the other thing we do is we make sure that they are safe. So we take safeguarding very seriously. So we have a team that focuses on making sure the venues are safe and that the volunteers have been properly background checked, all that sort of stuff.
- [31:03]
James Reed
Yeah, we can help you with that if you need any DPS checks. So, so that's good. And then, and then you would talk about research as well. What have you got going on in that space?
- [31:12]
Philip Colligan
Well, so, so the starting point is computer science as a subject. AI literacy, the whole gamut is relatively new. So it hasn't got the depth and length of research that other subjects have. And so we really wanted to make an investment there. So we established a research center, say at the University of Cambridge, led by a fantastic computer education specialist, Sue Sentence. Dr. Sue Sentence, who used to work in the foundation, has moved over there now and so they do original research into things like what they're helping us figure out what is AI literacy? What does it look like for primary school?
- [31:49]
James Reed
So you're quite tied in with Cambridge University? Yeah, very science faculty is that.
- [31:54]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, we're in the computer science department and we have about six, seven research scientists on staff at the foundation and they work closely with the team at the university and then we also collaborate with other universities around the world. That's something in the next few years I want to do much more of. And, and part of that is about supporting the next generation of computing education researchers. You know, there is.
- [32:15]
James Reed
Now that's a two way street then isn't that the university is giving you material and you're helping them.
- [32:20]
Philip Colligan
Exactly. And, and you know, I'm a big believer. It's a lot of the work I did when I was at a place called Nesta. I'm believer that the challenge for all of us is how do we take academic knowledge and put it into practice. You know, there's this huge gap in the social policy sector where great insights and, and research and learnings happening in universities just not being applied in the field. And so one of the things I wanted to do when I joined Raspberry PI was figure out a way we could do that better. And I think, you know, we're making progress.
- [32:49]
James Reed
What have you learned so far then in terms of a way of doing that better?
- [32:52]
Philip Colligan
One of the things is getting teachers participating in research is hugely important. So seeing them as, you know, thoughtful, insightful practitioners having the space and support to do research in the classroom. I think the second thing is, you know, the, the academic way of distributing knowledge is perfectly valid. No shade, no shame. You know, academic journals, conferences are all great, but the overwhelming majority of us mere mortals never touch it. So you've got to think about how do you take some of those insights and make them actionable and digestible.
- [33:24]
James Reed
Digestible being a good word. I mean some of those documents, they're quite.
- [33:28]
Philip Colligan
So we publish a magazine called hello World.
- [33:30]
James Reed
So you do.
- [33:31]
Philip Colligan
We launched that in 2017. It's now called the magazine hello World.
- [33:34]
James Reed
Right.
- [33:34]
Philip Colligan
It's the first line of code that everyone writes.
- [33:36]
James Reed
Right.
- [33:37]
Philip Colligan
And that is by teachers for teachers. But we put a lot of research insights into that magazine. Amazing experience.
- [33:43]
James Reed
So how did you get the magazine just.
- [33:45]
Philip Colligan
Well, if you are a teacher in the UK and soon in the us, we will send it to you for free to your home every time. We publish it three or four times a year. But you can go to hello World CC and download a PDF and all of the back catalog for free. Free forever.
- [33:59]
James Reed
Fantastic.
- [34:00]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [34:00]
James Reed
So we're getting lots of useful actions out of this conversation for our listeners. Yeah, that's fantastic.
- [34:06]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, no, it's been a hugely successful part of our distribution of knowledge. It's been very successful. Yeah.
- [34:12]
James Reed
Well, so inspiring. I mean, you've also said that you want to take more of these initiatives around the world.
- [34:17]
Philip Colligan
Yes.
- [34:17]
James Reed
You know, I've struggled in my business career to sort of open offices in other parts of the world and, you know, expand our brand footprint and all these things. And it's, in my experience, experience, it's really not easy. How are you getting on and what are your sort of key things you think people should pay attention to when they're embarking on a ambitious goal like that?
- [34:35]
Philip Colligan
So you're right, it's not easy. I mean, it started for us because we had lots of demand for our educational resources all over the world. And we obviously, we've always made it available free and people can download and so on. And we started translating into other languages. But then we had this realization that, well, I didn't, the board didn't want to be a UK centric organization, just sort of shipping our curricula around the world. And so we took this view that we wanted to build capabilities in other parts of the world too. Some of it we do directly, some of it we do in partnership and try to build a global movement around this computing education, it's democratizing computing education mission we've got. And so we now have teams in the US in India, in Kenya, in South Africa, in Ireland. And those are teams that include educators, researchers, community managers and you know, the, the. So we took this very deliberate and quite difficult decision actually to build teams in those places, build organizations in those places. But it's enriched the work of the foundation overall immeasurably.
- [35:45]
James Reed
So how many teams do you have now around the world?
- [35:48]
Philip Colligan
So we've got, I mean, we have teams in six countries and then we have about 200 staff in the foundation and about probably 60 of those are not in the UK and most of the growth is happening outside the UK now. And then we have partnerships with nonprofits in 60 other countries. And those are, you know, varying degrees of depth. I mean, some of them are really deep, long term collaborations. But the important thing is we learn collectively so much from seeing how the challenge manifests and how curricula is developed, how school systems work in different parts of the world. It really enriches all of the, the efforts that we do.
- [36:27]
James Reed
So what tips would you give someone thinking of opening?
- [36:30]
Philip Colligan
So humility is the big thing, right? Particularly coming from Britain into countries like Kenya and India. You have to be aware of the sort of cultural baggage you're carrying and you have to go to it. And we were very deliberate with this from the get go with a Learning mindset. You know, we're not here to tell you what to do. We're here because we care about the outcomes for young people all over the world and we think we can learn an awful lot by working with you. And then we build local teams. So, you know, we hire absolutely stunning educators, researchers in those parts of the world and they, they then work globally. We work across the world as they work across locations. Yeah, yeah. And, and you know, and that's, that's been great. One of the challenges of course is, is about how do you hold on to a common culture and values whilst also respecting the different culture and values in parts of the world. And there's lots of work there and I'm not.
- [37:25]
James Reed
How do you do that?
- [37:26]
Philip Colligan
Well, I don't know if I've got the perfect answer. Yeah, I mean it's still a progress, but I think it's a lot of listening and you do have to spend time in each other's contexts, I mean, in that. And we agonize over this from a sort of climate perspective. But it does involve flights, it does involve people spending time in other parts of the world. We just had our, some of our learning teams from the UK spend time in India with the learning teams there and the insights and you can see how many ideas they've come back with about how we can design things better for all kids all over the world, not just, just in an interview.
- [38:00]
James Reed
FaceTime is still important.
- [38:01]
Philip Colligan
It's hugely important. We hold a residential every year, the foundation, where most of our colleagues from around the world come to. We actually hold it in Cambridge where we're based. And that's a two day event which is just very focused on building relationships between people across the organization. And then, you know, when we're hiring new leadership in different parts of the world. And one of the things that I've learned is, is you really have to devote a lot more time to the alignment, the cultural alignment. And I mean that both ways. It's sort of how can we learn from them and how can they learn about us?
- [38:36]
James Reed
So there's, you mean in the recruitment process as well, making sure they're aligned.
- [38:40]
Philip Colligan
Yeah. So I will not hire people that haven't had a face to face meeting with a hiring manager. I think some people think I'm crazy. I insist on it. I think it's hugely important. I think spending time together there I would agree with that is just, you know, we can do.
- [38:54]
James Reed
So you can't get a job in your foundation over zoom then?
- [38:57]
Philip Colligan
No.
- [38:57]
James Reed
Right.
- [38:58]
Philip Colligan
No, we did some of that, of course, during the pandemic. I'm not saying we made bad hires. We made great highs during that period. But I just think it's so important that you're, you're.
- [39:06]
James Reed
What is it that's different?
- [39:07]
Philip Colligan
I don't. Somebody asked me this recently. Why are you insisting that I fly over there to interview this person? Like, there's just something about.
- [39:14]
James Reed
Question.
- [39:14]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's something about the dynamic on both sides. There's something about the interaction which is so different and the time you spend together which is so different from being on a screen with somebody. So, no, I will. I'll come back on when I figured out the specific answers to that. But for now I'm saying it's intuitive. It's a gut bat. You got to do it.
- [39:35]
James Reed
It's a good thing.
- [39:37]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [39:37]
James Reed
So there is some flying required. But you try and manage it and we. Do you. Do you cross fertilize ideas super actively. Are you going to be setting up more locations?
- [39:46]
Philip Colligan
No. Well, I'm holding the line at the moment that we have a lot of work to do in those six. We chose them very deliberately.
- [39:52]
James Reed
So talk me through them again. Just remind me.
- [39:54]
Philip Colligan
So it's the uk.
- [39:55]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [39:55]
Philip Colligan
Ireland. And Ireland was because we merged with an organization called the Coded Dojo foundation, who we've now incorporated fully into the foundation. The usa. And in the usa, we focus on two states. We work all at over the. The. The country, but we have staff in Georgia and Minnesota. There's a reason behind each of those.
- [40:19]
James Reed
Come on, what's the reason?
- [40:20]
Philip Colligan
Well, so Minnesota has always been the pretty much the bottom of the ranking for computer science education in the U.S. has it? Yeah. And I figured when we were looking at where we should base our teams, I was like, well, we should go where they needed most. Right. And so let's go to Minnesota and see if we can move the dial and then Georgia because it's just such a fascinating, challenging place to do education because you've got the atlant region and then you've got a very rural sort of big state. And so both of those states together, if you can crack, you can crack that.
- [40:52]
James Reed
You can crack most of it.
- [40:53]
Philip Colligan
Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's. That's probably unkind, but, you know, California and New York do not need the Raspberry PI Foundation. They are doing, you know, they've got loads of tech companies, they've got loads of philanthropy. So one of the things we looked at is where, where could we add most value so then India.
- [41:06]
James Reed
Right.
- [41:07]
Philip Colligan
And where we currently focus, there's a.
- [41:09]
James Reed
Lot of technology in India.
- [41:10]
Philip Colligan
It's amazing. I mean, in their idea of scale is just incredible. They move. When they move, they move so quickly. There's a lot to learn from there.
- [41:19]
James Reed
As a nation, but there's still a need, you feel. It's a huge population.
- [41:23]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, it's a huge. Well, it's a huge population. And also, you know, there are. There are lots of kids going to schools in India where they have no access to computer science education at all currently. So we work in Odisha and we work in Telangana, two states, and we have teams in both places. And, you know, again, we found fantastic partnerships with state governments there. You know, Odisha, I think, has three times the size of the education system of the whole of the uk, so, you know, it's not local government in our sense at all. And then Kenya and Kenya and South Africa. And we were very fortunate in securing significant philanthropic support to expand into Africa. And we went through a process of kind of deciding where, again, we could. We could have an impact. But also we wanted to choose parts of Africa where there was a technology sector. Sector so that we could be connecting with that.
- [42:15]
James Reed
South Africa is very advanced, isn't it?
- [42:16]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Kenya too. I mean, amazing. We actually make some raspberry PI products in Kenya now.
- [42:22]
James Reed
Right.
- [42:22]
Philip Colligan
One of our products in Pico, we manufacture there. So, yeah, it's. They're both incredible places. That's the international footprint for now. And as I said, how many young.
- [42:31]
James Reed
People have you reached so far, do you think? Around.
- [42:33]
Philip Colligan
So I don't have a total number. This is one of the things I agonize over slightly. So last year, I know that we reached over a million young people in India.
- [42:41]
James Reed
In India alone.
- [42:42]
Philip Colligan
In India alone.
- [42:43]
James Reed
Right.
- [42:44]
Philip Colligan
Code Club, in its first 10 years, reached 2 million young people across the world. But one of the reasons why it's hard to give an answer to that is a lot of what we do is provide curriculum and training to teachers.
- [42:55]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Philip Colligan
And then who know, you know, who knows how many kids they go on to work with? I mean, teachers will work with hundreds of young people every year. And so it scales quite significantly.
- [43:06]
James Reed
That's a good way of doing it for that reason.
- [43:07]
Philip Colligan
Yeah, it's a lot. And we've trained. My impact team are very good at holding me to account on the numbers, so I shouldn't give you hyperbolic numbers, but I think they would reliably say. We've trained over a quarter of a million teachers through our online Courses and in person activation.
- [43:22]
James Reed
And this is all to go back to where we began, really. Supported by the profits and dividends from the business.
- [43:29]
Philip Colligan
About 50. So the other thing, you remember that half and half. And that's.
- [43:34]
James Reed
That's amazing. That's such an amazing.
- [43:36]
Philip Colligan
It's incredible.
- [43:37]
James Reed
Wonderful model, I think.
- [43:38]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [43:38]
James Reed
And I'm really keen that other businesses think about this and maybe do the same thing.
- [43:44]
Philip Colligan
Well, an entrepreneur. So when you're setting up, I mean, Eben will often say this, he said, you know, entrepreneurs setting up their businesses have a think about whether or not you should set it up under a charity.
- [43:53]
James Reed
Yeah.
- [43:53]
Philip Colligan
Actually, I know that's different to your usual.
- [43:56]
James Reed
It is, it is different, but it's related. Created.
- [43:59]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [43:59]
James Reed
And. Or an entrepreneur sitting on business makes a portion of it. A foundation.
- [44:04]
Philip Colligan
That's right.
- [44:05]
James Reed
Or gives a portion of the shares because I mean it brings so much to the organization, to the company and. And vice versa.
- [44:15]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [44:15]
James Reed
And from an entrepreneur's point of view, you know, you get a great legacy, your business becomes much more sustainable and, and performs better. I mean, that's discipline. And you said right at the beginning, $35. I mean, that was a brilliant insight idea that made Raspberry PI the success it is. In part.
- [44:35]
Philip Colligan
It absolutely did. Absolutely did. And the other thing for us, and I think this isn't true of all Philco models, but certainly for us, this idea that we have a very shared mission, but that you can pursue it in different ways. And so for the company, making low cost computers available for every, everyone, everywhere, whether that's in industry or entrepreneurs or education. And for us, you know, democratizing access to skills, helping young people develop mindsets, particularly focus on educational, disadvantaged young people who don't normally have those opportunities. But not only on Raspberry PI computers, you know, our view is whatever computer you've got will help you learn.
- [45:17]
James Reed
No, they're highly complimentary.
- [45:18]
Philip Colligan
Yeah.
- [45:19]
James Reed
Now I want to say congratulations, actually. I think you've done an amazing thing and I think it's a great story and, and super inspiring and I hope you can carry on doing this wonderful work for many, many years to come.
- [45:29]
Philip Colligan
Thank you. Me too.
- [45:30]
James Reed
Thanks so much for coming and talk to me.
- [45:32]
Philip Colligan
Appreciate it.
- [45:32]
James Reed
Really enjoyed that. I'm gonna ask you two questions.
- [45:35]
Philip Colligan
Okay.
- [45:35]
James Reed
I ask all my guests. The first one, there's a clue on the wall, is what gets you up on a Monday morning?
- [45:43]
Philip Colligan
I mean, do you mean practically or.
- [45:46]
James Reed
Well, I don't mean what time is your awesome alarm clock you got? I suppose, but.
- [45:50]
Philip Colligan
Well, it's Radio 4 6.
- [45:51]
James Reed
Radio 4 and 6.
- [45:53]
Philip Colligan
20S, it's always Radio 4 and 6.
- [45:58]
James Reed
I'm up for that usually as well.
- [46:00]
Philip Colligan
So what gets me up on a Monday morning? I mean, look, this is gonna sound corny. It's not corny. The thing that I love about my job is meeting the kids and the teachers too, but particularly the kids. And seeing we have this thing called Coolest Projects, which is like a showcase of kids who built cool things with tech. One of my favorite things is kids come back year after year and you get to meet them and learn their stories and get to know them. And you know, I have written a few recommendation letters for kids who come from backgrounds where this wouldn't normally happen. I've written their recommendations to MIT and Stanford. And these are kids who got inspired to a code club who learned using our technology or some of our resources. And they're now training to be the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists.
- [46:42]
James Reed
I just hope they come back to the UK from those great American institutions. We need all the brains in this corner. And my, my last question, and this is from my interview book, why you? 101 interview questions you'll never fear again is where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
- [47:00]
Philip Colligan
Myself or the organization?
- [47:02]
James Reed
Yourself. Yeah.
- [47:03]
Philip Colligan
Well, so I, I'm trying to build the welcome for Education.
- [47:07]
James Reed
Okay.
- [47:07]
Philip Colligan
You know, that's what I wanted to do when I joined Raspberry PI. The welcome Trust is one of the world's most significant health foundations and I have always thought we could do that for education. So I shall be beavering away at that.
- [47:18]
James Reed
You're going to be busy, Philip, and I wish you every success with that. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming. Thank you, Philip, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reid or Raspberry PI foundation, all links are in the show notes. See you next time.