…. it’s what you don’t that can be both an opportunity and a threat. When postcodes were rolled out in the UK back in the early 70’s they were primarily designed with the aim of helping sort and deliver mail better. Today, they are much more than this, and affect almost all of us on…
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…
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…
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…
In an interview for CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ program, Bill Gates talked about his relationship with Steve Jobs. In it he talks about tablets, “We did tablets – lots of tablet – well before Apple did” he states, before conceding “they put the pieces together in a different way that succeeded.” In the world of tablets,…
In one of my sessions at the recent IACCM EMEA conference which looked at contracting skills I posed the question that whilst we would rarely let a product get to market without some form of testing or prototyping, how many commercial or contract management professionals consider testing their contracting structures or agreements? If we look…
The Ubiquity of Apps – An Opportunity in Education (via innov8-Ed) It’s difficult to think about a world without apps, however, it is only five years since the launch of the iTunes App Store. In this time apps have become ubiquitous and found across all platforms and not just the Apple iOS. Over the past…
Almost every organisation has somewhere in its values a statement that equates to “people are our greatest asset” yet from experience, many employees read such a statement with cynicism and many employers don’t truly mean it. Interestingly both are probably right in their views of such a sweeping statement, yet a good match between employees and employer…
I was recommended to a TED lecture called ‘use data to build better schools’ given by Andreas Schleicher. Andreas is from an OECD funded organisation called PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). It was a great use of 15 mins and gave some great insights into the difference between access to education and equality of…
In a business world where companies are adjusting their business model to outsource all but the business critical and core activities, in the consumer world we seem to be increasingly insourcing more and more to meet our value for money aspirations. A good example of this is the way in which many of us plan…