Jonathan Robinson, co-founder and executive director of The Hub, a not-for-profit business that rents out work and networking space to innovators and entrepreneurs, began his masterclass with a confession: “Finance, management and scale are not the things I do well. In fact, I hate those words. But they are vital to success, so we need to reclaim and redefine them.”

Jonathan’s mission is all about redefining what a business is and how it should work. Inspired by the concept of an “upside-down multinational” that has global ambitions but is owned by its members and investor stakeholders, he set up the first Hub in London in 2005. Housed in a derelict warehouse Jonathan envisaged it as a place for “meeting, learning, working and innovating”.

But “first and foremost the Hub is a community of people motivated to make the world a better place. It’s a sort of human eco-system.”

He told delegates five inspirational stories illustrating the attitude and approach he was hoping to replicate and foster within the Hub network, which now has over 20 sites throughout the world. For example, two bloggers – Hopeman and Peaceman – crossed the physical divide between Gaza and Israel and set up a meeting place – ‘the village square’ - at the Everest Hotel which happens to straddle the two countries. Peoples who rarely met or even spoke met and shared their anger, fears and hopes. And out of that process came practical co-operative projects, such as the marketing of Gazan olive oil in Israel.

Jonathan’s point is that providing opportunities and venues in which similarly-minded creative and innovative people can meet often leads to exciting, totally unexpected outcomes.

In another example, he described how Luke Nicholson, a technologist who wanted to help combat climate change, had developed a ‘smart meter’ that measures domestic energy usage. But it was by meeting the right people at The Hub that he was able to develop the concept into a successful business. He then let those who could run businesses better than him get on with it so he could get on with what he does best – inventing.

“Sometimes to scale your enterprise it means letting go”, he said.

In the Q&A session delegates were interested to find out how Jonathan funded and structured the business and what mistakes he’d made along the way. Trying to grow too fast was one major mistake Jonathan admitted to. While he and his colleagues were off in the US trying to set up Hubs there, staff back in the UK were becoming disgruntled because management systems weren’t sufficiently stable and robust yet. “We forgot to consolidate”, he said.

Another mistake was to accept lots of financing in the form of debt, the repayment of which then distracted from the development of the business. “If you’re concentrating on repaying debt it can kill some of the riskier innovation that is essential” he said, “so we had to restructure.”