Entrepreneurs

Covid-19, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

The angry mob of Covid issues coming in 2021

We will look back on 2020 with some nostalgia as a year when life was challenging but simple. The strategy was Hope and Cope, and this would all be over soon.  That myth will evaporate in 2021. At one level, the twelve months ahead looks like a straightforward journey with obvious steps to take in…
Covid-19, Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Organisation, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Everything is normal again

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, or at least it used to be. There was a time when we looked forward to more of everything we hoped for and had a good chance of it arriving. Or that was what we thought. We were planners, full of ideas about the things we were going to do,…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Navigation aids for decision makers in a Covid World

For a few months in the Spring of 2020 it was hard to see what any sort of future looked like. Business decision making was strictly about securing survival and, as they say in Formula One: “If you want to finish first, first you’ve got to finish”.  Often, the amount of time this survival effort…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Is Cloud deployment a Slam Dunk?

It’s never been easier to spin up Cloud infrastructure and get going. The obvious brands are, well, obvious – the Hyper-scalers, as they’re known – and they grease the on-ramp with free credits for start-ups; uploading and storing data is free; firing up a few instances is so simple. What could go wrong? Three trends…
Covid-19, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Management, Trend Spotting

How Covid-19 caused an IT support issue

The jury’s in, and it’s good news for tech: Coronavirus gave everyone a great big shove and now everyone’s online for almost everything. It was always going to happen eventually, but Covid-19 made the transition of the next five years happen In five weeks. Consumers and business, Enterprise and SMEs, commercial and public sector. It…
Entrepreneurs, Investors, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

Certainties for decision makers in the wreckage of C19

Anyone with responsibilities for the future must look past the chaos and wreckage of Covid-19 and largely ignore anything in the rear view mirror. There will be lots of debate and argument about what happened and how different it should have been, but decision-makers have to avoid that distraction because their focus must be on…
Digitalisation, Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Strategy

The days of getting online are over

Robert Mason described it well. He said that when his flying instructor first gave him control of the pedals, the machine started swinging about wildly, and he hadn’t done anything! So true. You’d think that flying can’t be that much of a challenge, but it is, especially helicopters. My instructor gave me a stern talking…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Organisation

Everything’s going to be different in 2020

It was the sight of the old computer board that caught my eye and led me to watch a tv programme first aired over forty years ago. It was nostalgic to see Philip Hughes again, and those green screen word processors. It quite took me back to Logica’s Newman Street offices and gentleman farmer Hector…
Entrepreneurs, Executing, Investors, Management, Strategy, Trend Spotting

2020 looks pretty much a done deal

Who needs another set of forecasts when 2020 looks like it’s largely a done deal? Like most decision makers, I’m sure, I’ve already got a plan for much of 2020, so we’re now into executing plans and forecasts are a bit late.  I don’t find many of them are that helpful, either, what with one…
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…