We’re probably all aware of the concept of ‘six degrees of separation’. That we are all connected by six or fewer steps. From a human perspective, in a world of 7+ billion people it sounds far fetched, however, having completed a course on social and economic networks I’ve seen the mathematical proof and been forced…
How much impact do you have on the world around you? Have you ever stepped back and thought about how many of the ‘good ideas’ you have directly or indirectly turn into reality? If you haven’t then I’d suggest that you invest a couple of minutes in reading on to understand a couple of small…
Today is a big day in the UK with the Chancellor’s budget speech. Whilst he will be laying out what is a set of political policies, much of the proverbial ‘column inches’ will be focused on the underpinning economic facts, figures, and assumptions. In a recent post (‘Are you a ‘digital native’ – and how…
The term ‘digital native’ is increasingly being used to describe a set of skills that organisations look to have throughout their teams. But how many organisations have really thought through what they actually mean? Having asked a few people what they mean, my rough and ready research would lead me to believe that there is…
In the age of ‘big data’ we see supermarkets as being at the leading edge of harvesting consumer information in order to drive their business, but are they missing a trick? In the UK, Tesco says that there are over 15 million Clubcard users, and Nectar states that it has over 19 million users. In…
Increasingly we live in a society where we expect everything to be available instantly, 24/7/365. Yet often we take for granted the time and effort that it has taken to achieve this for each individual product or service. On another axis the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and therefore more complex. How many of us…
Whether you like it or not we are all contributors and users of crowdsourced data on a daily basis. Examples are all around us, whether it’s: voting on TV talent shows; product ratings on Amazon; or traffic on Google Maps; or mobile phone coverage maps collated by RootMetrics from user supplied data. Whilst the first…
We’re increasingly used to seeing articles in the press about the importance of cyber security. Thanks in part to some high profile cases, company boards are slowly waking up to the issue as a topic that they have to be involved in. However, a recent FT survey showed that only 3 in 20 said the…
In so many areas of life, being successful is about continually improving versus your previous best. The baseline is key. Outsourcing is no different, without a robust baseline it’s difficult to measure performance and apportion risk and reward in a sustainable and balanced way. The competition to take over the procurement of defence equipment for…