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: Success
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.
Five years ago today I featured in the North East Times magazine when I worked as the Chief Technology and Information Officer at Sage.
I rediscovered this article yesterday when I was cleaning up my PC and spent a little time reflecting on some of the comments:
I picked up this story from UpperEdge on social media today about the billion dollar law suit between WIPRO and National Grid over a failed SAP implementation, which is well worth taking a few minutes to read. There was one sentence that jumped off the page for me : “Shortly after the start of the project, […]
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 […]
For almost two decades, until retiring recently from corporate life, I worked for Sage Group where I held the position of Chief Product & Delivery Officer. You will all have heard of Sage. Three million customers across 27 countries, 13,000 employees, and a FTSE100 Tech Company with its spiritual home in Newcastle upon Tyne. Also, […]
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 […]
I’m attending a Dynamo North East board meeting at Newcastle College. Due to work and travel commitments, it’s the first board meeting I could attend for a while. The Dynamo board meeting is very rare blend of around 20 professionals from public sector organisations, professionals from the education sector, business owners, and professionals from many […]
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.
