In 1993, in the spring of my final year at university, I stood for election to become the President of the Student Union at Loughborough. On election night, with a turn out of around 1,000 votes, I lost by a margin of about seven. I've never stood in a popular ballot since then. I learned … Continue reading Elected
Category: Themes
There is an analysis of the US railroad industry that explains their demise in terms of too narrow a focus. The railroad companies, who had been a major part of the expansion of the USA across the continent of North America, became of the view that what they did was to provide trains. When air … Continue reading Pushing boundaries
There's an old joke that is along the lines of asking a stranger directions to somewhere and the stranger responding "Well, I wouldn't start from here." Yesterday I shared some of my Going Mobile experiences (where I spent a week with nothing but a mobile phone on which to work) with a group of people … Continue reading I wouldn’t start from here…
I have realised that I talk a lot about commodities, and particularly about the concept of commodity IT. But I'm starting to wonder if that is quite the right term, or if it underplays the connection that people have with the technology that they use. A pure commodity is something that is generally under processed … Continue reading Commodities
Since the summer of 2013 I've been doing a regular investigation into the social networking habits of the FTSE100 companies, and in particular of their CEOs. Next week will see the publication of the sixth edition, and some of the highlights coming from the analysis so far include: 33 CEOs now have LinkedIn profiles of … Continue reading #socialCEO January 2015
So amongst a flurry of new product announcements yesterday, Microsoft announced that with Windows 10, the "voice assistant" Cortana will become part of the desktop and laptop experience. Putting aside that Cortana conjures up images for me of the 1960s Ford, this has got me wondering: in the age of Siri and OK Google and … Continue reading Don’t talk to me
Over the past few years I've toyed with the idea of writing a book. I'm writing pretty much constantly, so pulling together some focus on the themes to produce a coherent tome couldn't be that hard, could it? And a book would give me credibility that a mere blog doesn't have. Would give me something to talk … Continue reading What is a book?
I'm generally not that patriotic. I was born in Northern Ireland in 1970, both of my parents the children of mixed English/Irish background, on one side Catholic on the other Protestant. Before I was three years old Mum and Dad moved back to the South East of England - they'd been in Belfast for a … Continue reading National pride
I've an interesting challenge at the moment with one of my clients. I have a group of people who don't come from an IT background who need to get up to speed pretty quickly with what IT in organisations is all about. And there doesn't seem to be much out there in the way of … Continue reading What is IT? A brief guide for non-IT people
This morning there was an interesting idea tweeted by author Ian Leslie about how to make a distinction between what is a game of skill and what is a game of chance or luck: It got me thinking. It got me thinking specifically about the deterministic role that people and organisations have on the world around … Continue reading Attributing success
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