The future belongs to businesses that embrace change

What’s changing most in your industry right now?

Harry: The marriage of automation, AI, and big data in biology is opening up huge possibilities. Researchers are generating enormous amounts of biological data, and AI is the perfect tool to help make sense of it.

We’ve been working on AI-driven image analysis for quite a few years now, so we’re a bit ahead of the game. Increasingly, people are coming to us saying, “We need an AI-powered tool to help understand what’s happening in these biological samples,” or, “Can you help clinicians diagnose diseases more effectively?”

Traditional image processing methods just can’t compete with modern AI models. It’s a really exciting space to be in.
We’ve recently secured government funding to expand some of our AI projects, and we’ll continue building those capabilities into our robots to help our customers do amazing biology.

What do you think your business will look like in five years?

Harry: We have a clear vision, but I usually see it as a failure if you ever completely achieve your vision! Because the reality is, the market changes. Technology changes. New information appears.

So I expect us to pivot.

I think it’s really important to expect change, embrace change, and build a team that isn’t afraid to try new things or change tack when needed. We’re gearing ourselves up for uncertainty, because I believe resilient businesses have to.

Has that resilience been tested recently?

Harry: Absolutely.

The Chinese market went from being our biggest single market to effectively zero overnight. We didn’t see that coming.
Luckily we’re a global company, so we thought, “North America has got our backs.” Then funding cuts in the US hit a lot of our customers and suddenly that market slowed dramatically too.

Almost overnight we went from firing on three cylinders to firing on one.

At that point you’ve got a choice – you can complain, or you can get creative. We got creative. We asked ourselves: what else are we brilliant at?

We’re world-class at building products, so we started offering product development as a service. Before we’d even created a proper shop window for it, major companies were approaching us about opportunities in clinical diagnostics and healthcare.

Sometimes getting creative and having to adapt opens doors you didn’t even know existed.

What allows your team to adapt so quickly?

Harry: Our culture. It helps to have a team with a huge growth mindset and a healthy attitude towards taking risks.

Process is definitely important – without it, growth is limited. But too much process can become limiting.

Some of our best people don’t ask permission to try something, they just do it. If it doesn’t work, they learn from it. If it does work, brilliant!

That’s where innovation comes from.

What skills do you think will matter most in the future?

Harry: AI skills are definitely important. Not just prompting tools, but understanding how models work, how data flows, and having some cloud expertise.

But honestly? I’ll recruit for attitude over skills any day of the week. It’s much harder to teach mindset than it is to teach technology.

If someone is bright, humble, willing to make mistakes, own them and try again, I’ll choose them over an arrogant superstar every time.

The technology will keep changing, but the people who thrive will be the ones who keep learning.

What’s exciting you most right now?

Harry: We’ve just launched what we believe is the best microbial colony picker in the world. It can pick 3,000 colonies an hour, using cameras and AI to analyse biology in real time.

You can tell it, “Find me the smallest organisms that glow red,” press go, and it’ll do all the repetitive science that somebody would otherwise have to do manually with a toothpick.

It’s incredibly powerful – and it’s really fun to watch.

We’re a small UK company competing against some enormous global businesses, and customers are choosing our products.

That’s really exciting.