Author: Peter

Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Strategy

What do screwdrivers, MacBook Air, and Bob Dylan have in common?

They say that pretty much everything can be analysed into a Boston Four Square, although BCG only uses it to look at the positioning of companies in a market. I have to admit to using it relentlessly, myself, but I’m starting to think there may be a Law of Three for entrepreneurs. Recent events here…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation

Why we make yesterday’s decisions tomorrow

Wasn’t it Sterling Moss who said: “If you think you’ve just about got things under control, you’re not going nearly fast enough”?  So too, today’s business leaders. There aren’t many sectors that have escaped disruptive change. Most areas of business seem like a mad scramble to stay ahead, get ahead, or merely survive. The rate…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Investors, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Data seems to matter to everyone but people

So Norway is joining the space community and launching two satellites to deliver broadband to its northern regions up near the Arctic. The ground stations will be government run, they say it’s so that they remain in control, and the satellites are going to be carrying the latest defensive technologies like anti-jamming and protection against…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management

At last I see some certainty about start-ups

There was a time when a start-up was really early stage, typically pre-revenue, but the last five years or so have changed all that. Search the Financial Times for the phrase, for example, and you get results for seemingly all stages of ventures from IP spinouts from Universities to things like WeWork, Uber, Oyo, and…
Digitalisation, Executing, Investors, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Scarlett O’Hara and what’s around the corner for tech infrastructure

The direction of travel: The thing about trends is that it’s never certain where they’re going to end up. If it was they would be journeys, not trends. Trends suggest a direction, like the road ahead on a murky day. Even then trends don’t necessarily tell the whole story about what might be just around…
Digitalisation, Investors, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Why the world is battling over 5G

Handsets, Speed and Money I never thought I’d feel nostalgic for 3G, but those were the heady days when handsets were starting to be about more than making calls and talking to people, and the UK Government raised a whopping £22.5bn from five mobile operators in a world beating spectrum auction. That was early 2000,…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Strategy

737Max, WeWork, and how tech can deceive

It looks as though the crew on the flight deck of the Lion Air 737Max that crashed, killing all 189 on board, behaved very differently from the crew that flew the same plane successfully the day before. The accounts of the final crash report point to a faulty sensor that convinced the plane’s software to…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation

Pre-flight checks for business

Before you get airborne I used to fly helicopters, and we always used to say: “I’d rather be down here wishing I was up there, than up there wishing I was down here!”. Pre-flight checks are more important than flying: you could do one without the other, but never the other without the one. Those…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management

These conditions require skillful driving

Is it just me? I don’t remember a time when so much was out of the ordinary. Is it just me or is everything more bonkers than usual? For a business decision maker it’s like driving into a blizzard. It’s hard to know what to concentrate on and what to ignore. Fortunately, most of us…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management

Make Believe Startups

A suspense account is an account used temporarily or permanently to carry doubtful entries and discrepancies pending their analysis and permanent classification. I stumbled on a definition of Suspense Account this week. It wasn’t what I was looking for but it started me thinking how many startups ought to go into a suspense account somewhere….
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management

Are we nearly there yet?

Executing: Sales as you go to market Nuances of progress are not seen and understood by everyone on the journey to market, which can lead to frustration and misjudgements. Boardroom frustrations My kids disliked car journeys like most do, and we became all too familiar with that most difficult of questions: “Are we nearly there…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation

Experience is not what it used to be

As parents, we’re delighted when our new infants finally manage to match the shape with the shaped hole in the learning toy. We show them pictures of fish, cats, dogs, lions, and play the same “what’s this?” game that’s been played by parents and grandparents for decades. Humans are good at this pattern matching and…