Recent posts
Is there any value to values?
Unless your principles are memorable, demonstrable and authentic you’re probably better off without them.
What ‘Death Cigarettes’ teach us about Facebook
Tough regulation might benefit consumers. It will certainly benefit platforms “I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators.” Thus wrote Mark Zuckerberg in his blog and Washington Post op-ed at the weekend. He goes on to identify four areas in which he says
Is knowing yourself the key to the right swipe?
I saw this T-shirt in a shop in Oxford Street yesterday and it got me thinking. Apparently membership of dating apps goes up by 40% between the 25th December and the 14th February. It seems that the combination of a dismal Christmas, New Year’s optimism and Valentine’s
Cocktails and paradox of choice
On Saturday afternoon, as part of my birthday present I was treated to tea at Dandelyan at the Mondrian Hotel on Bankside. The menu promised a calorific romp through finger sandwiches, pastries and patisserie paired with an array of botanical cocktails. Our waitress explained the ethos of
Socks and the gentle art of persuasion.
Today another pair arrived in the post. They are the fourth pair of socks I’ve received. The first, turquoise with a magenta trim, were delightfully soft, cosy-warm and skinny enough to wear under smart work boots. The second arrived about six months later. More sporty, thicker, reinforced
Sharing equity with employees? Not so fast.
It’s an accepted norm in technology and many other businesses that some form of equity sharing is useful, and often essential to the recruitment and retention of talent. Many smaller companies embark on it in good faith only, it seems, to find it becoming a severe management
Can “good companies” be run by fools?
I am an unabashed fan of Terry Smith, ex-CEO of city dealers Tullet Prebon and founder of the hugely successful Fundsmith investment firm*. As well as the fact that he’s straight-talking and a keen cyclist – both admirable traits, we can surely agree – he also avoids
Preferring Humans to AI
There will be many jobs AI can do better than humans. We might want humans to carry on doing them anyway Ask a lawyer about their biggest frustrations and, as long as the conversation’s private, one of them will be the inconsistency of judges; or, more specifically,
To be big, aim to be good.
In March 1998 the late, great David Abbott of the advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers, sent round a memo to the company staff. The first few lines read: “When Peter, Adrian and I set up Abbott Mead Vickers in 1981, we had no ambition to be the
“Competing to zero”
Interview with media futurist Gerd Leonhard “We are in the final throes of the complete convergence of telecoms and media”, according to futurist Gerd Leonhard. He calls this “telemedia”, and it has profound implications for telcos. “Companies competing through ever faster data and higher performing infrastructure will