It's all change in Government technology circles. The various changes that have happened at the top of the Government Digital Service and elsewhere in recent days signify something, although I'm not entirely sure what. Derek du Preez makes a good stab of it here. All this change got me thinking. For a while now I've been … Continue reading Change leadership
Category: Management
Throughout my career it's struck me that technology has provided two forms of service: the dull stuff and the fun stuff. The dull stuff are the information systems, the databases, the business process automations. Generally the things that treat humans as little more than data and processing modules from whom information is to be extracted … Continue reading The art of play
Imagine the scenarios: The first, an errant piece of paper gets caught on a paperclip at the back of a bundle of documents. The documents are a contract to be signed as part of a negotiation. The errant piece of paper shows some workings that make parts of the deal transparent. The deal, as a … Continue reading Irreversible mistakes
A debate at this week's wonderful Names Not Numbers event has crystallised something that has been bouncing around my head for a while. I'm done with the idea of industry-specific software platforms. Here's why: 1. Platforms automate out humanity Part of yesterday's debate was agreeing where the boundaries of machine and human lie in our … Continue reading I’m done with the platform economy
And so, some five years since I suggested it, Microsoft have at last bought LinkedIn. During my interview process for my ill-fated spell at the Redmond giant's UK branch, I was asked which Cloud-based company Microsoft should buy. My response was LinkedIn - for years I've regarded it as the only Enterprise Social Network, and it seemed … Continue reading The acquisition thing…
“Can you just knock me up a couple of slides on that?” are words that I dread. If you've ever seen me present you'll know I'm of the “seemingly random series of images” school of PowerPoint, and I'm pretty certain that someone asking me for a couple of slides isn't looking for a collection of … Continue reading Knocking up PowerPoint
I'm a couple of months into looking at the role of digital in the transformation of professional services organizations, and whilst I wouldn't be as naive to say that the fog is rising, I'm at least starting to make sense of some shapes and patterns in the murk. There are many companies that say that … Continue reading Building a business of makers
I spent some time last night globetrotting from the comfort of my sofa. Wearing the Oculus Gear headset, and exploring Google Streetview VR through the power of my voice I was able to teleport across the world. At one level this is incredible. I remember fondly back to the Domesday Project of the 1980s and … Continue reading What the Butler Saw
There is a great deal of hubbub in the legal tech community around a well-PRed artificial intelligence system called Ross. Aside from the cute trick of anthropomorphizing the inanimate object with a clever acronym, Ross is the sort of machine automation that many have been warning will herald an existential crisis in middle-class professions in … Continue reading Black Boxes
I spent a day recently working with colleagues at the Leading Edge Forum, helping the board of an NHS clinical commissioning group to think about the impact and the potential of Digital in their context. I had done quite a bit a research into case studies that might help to ground the more conceptual stuff … Continue reading Unleashing the innovation monster
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