One of my new colleagues recently asked me what my greatest achievement had been through my career. It was a very simple question, and with a tech career spanning more than 30 years, you’d expect it should have been easy to answer, but I have to admit that I found it quite difficult. I could […]
Category: Innovation
Over the past twenty years I’ve worked with numerous scale-up businesses and regardless of sector, there are some common things that successful scale-ups do really well, and as you might expect there are some common challenges that most if not all scale-ups have had to overcome.
Apple Card Coming Soon
Interesting #fintech development coming soon from #Apple apple.com/apple-card/ … super cool user experience (similar in many ways to #Revolut which is a great service especially if you travel) and “no fees” <cough> apart from all your enriched payment data which shows what you buy, where you bought it, how much you paid, how many times […]
Like many across the region it comes as a shock and a hint of sadness to hear news of the closure of Newcastle’s Campus North co-working space. However, I also feel it’s a time for celebration of the achievements of Campus North and what it has done for Newcastle start-ups and for the region. In […]
An excellent article from Marcel Schwantes on the 6 Things Bad Bosses Always Fear (but Great Leaders Always Do) which I completely agree with and I’d summarise as “Highly effective execution is a team sport and culture is the key ingredient.” Peter Drucker famously said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The quote was actually attributed […]
I took the opportunity to attend the Newcastle Scale-up Summit recently and apart from being a fantastic networking event I found it highly informative and energising. Having worked with hundreds of start-up and scale-up businesses for many years I love hearing the stories of their success, and I’m intrigued to discover what makes some businesses […]
IphoneX
Who would have thought that one day we would talk about how nice a phone felt to hold … I’ve always thought #apple excelled at ergonomic design and build quality (which was copied by many) and the iPhoneX is no exception … if not a wee bit on the pricey side.
Why “why” is the most important question every business should ask themselves! If you have 20mins grab a coffee and watch this excellent TED talk.
This is a copy of a great article that one of my guys had published today. Sage, the only FTSE 100 technology company is now 32 years old, and with over six million customers is the third largest business software company worldwide. In 1981 it was just another North East tech start-up with a feverish ambition to […]
You need to hire for Innovation
Innovation is a topic very close to my heart and a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending an excellent workshop delivered by Dr Anne Stevens the VP of Design at Kone elevators. The session was hugely insightful and very educational… and whilst I’m not going to share the details verbatim, I thought […]