We live in a world of unparalleled change, much of it good (think of the benefits of mobile communications, the internet and advances in food production that have led to a steady reduction in global poverty), but alongside these benefits come real problems (from the changes needed to address climate change through to the more immediate struggle with cyber-security). As leaders, we all know the dangers of ignoring the changes […]
“Nation Of Shopkeepers” – But can we be productive too?
The phrase a “nation of shopkeepers” is often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte and it’s generally assumed he used it in a negative sense. In reality, there is very little evidence that Napoleon ever said this and, if he did, he would have probably been meant it positively; echoing Adam Smith who used the expression in “The Wealth Of Nations” to describe the extent to which trading […]
Sustainability – Getting The Economics Right
“The trick is to get the economics right too” – The Economist magazine The past few weeks have been a real roller-coaster in terms of news about sustainability… It was only a few weeks ago that I had the pleasure of attending The Planet Mark Awards for sustainability at the Saddlers Wells theatre in London. […]
How to survive the data tsunami
A KEY tech challenge that firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon master superbly – but many fail to handle – are the problems brought by the sheer volume of modern data. Only 50 years ago, most people’s lives were summed up by a tin box on top of the wardrobe into which they carefully tucked […]
How GDPR rules will prise away your customers
IF you rate customer data as merely ‘important’ to your firm you are probably just about to go out of business. That’s because new draconian EU regulations come into force on 25 May next year which completely reverse the power relationship between a customer and a firm. By now customer data should have already moved […]
A quantum leap in computing would turn our world upside down
I’VE spent decades building tech businesses based on computer power – often in areas such as security and encryption. Until now all of the hardware has been what we call ‘classical computers’, that is machines that see everything in numbers made up of 0s and 1s. This binary processing makes things easy for machines by […]
It’s time we augmented our human rationality – with robots and AI
HUMAN beings used to be just a part of the natural world of Earth. In quite low numbers. We were a sort of clever chimpanzee – but with more space for reasoning and language. Our numbers grew and we did very well, even if our newly-grown cortex brain was hamstrung by the way evolution kept […]
Disappearing jobs and our ‘lumpy’ future
FOR the last few years all we have heard about is how many jobs are going to disappear as the robots take over. Oxford, Ernst & Young, McKinsey, the World Bank and the rest are all telling us that any repetitive job is vulnerable and about 30% of actual jobs across 60% of fields are […]
How data from Space satellites will change our world
Revolutions always turn things on their heads. That’s why they are called revolutions. It’s like this: we see something new happening – like the Space Age – and we imagine it will be all about rocket cars in which we can go shopping, a Space Academy for our kids, and a Star Trek quest to […]
What big rockets (and tiny microchips) teach us about progress
In July 1969 I and millions of other young people – and quite a few adults – looked up at the night sky and imagined we could see with our own eyes the NASA astronauts on their way to the Moon landing. ‘Honky Tonk Women’ was on the transistor radio and the grown-up world, including […]
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