How can Nick Clegg be the right man to clean up Facebook's image?
WHEN BROADCASTING was first introduced around the world - radio from the 1920s and television from the late 1940s – governments...
It makes sense that a company could work better if it's owned by its own employees
GOVERNMENTS, political parties and economists have recently been revisiting an old issue - who actually owns businesses, and maybe...
If we don't tackle the injustice at the web's heart its streams of content will simply dry u
THE LAST 20 years have not been kind to those creative types who originate new content. Advertising income which used to financially...
Amazon helps put workers on Skid Row - so why does our government do so much to help them?
THE CITY OF SEATTLE at the top left hand corner of the United States has become famous for successful global businesses such as Boeing,...
Why not ask public businesses with a proven track record to run the East Coast rail line
WHENEVER I AM OBLIGED to join the ranks of the WILLIEs – that’s the name for people who ‘Work In London, Live In Edinburgh’ – I usually...
'Elite' Scottish Universities paper over education cracks
LET'S FACE IT – Scotland doesn’t really lead the world in anything much. Our sports teams are mediocre, we have almost no globally...
Awards' international female role models beg a question
BACK IN 1989, I was chairman of the Scottish Software Federation, the then nascent trade association for the Scottish software industry....
Brexit casts huge shadow over funding of tech start-ups
NOW THAT THE Brexit negotiations are limping into action it is becoming very clear that this is going to be far from a simple process. We...
Code clubs can inspire our children to become digital natives
AS WE ALL KNOW, today’s world is increasingly a digital one. It is pretty much impossible to think of a modern activity that doesn’t, in...
EU stands alone against US digital major's market dominance
THE FIVE MOST VALUABLE companies in the world today are all digital businesses from the west coast of the USA: Apple, Google, Microsoft,...
Scotland needs ignored by 'little Englander' Prime Minister
BY THE TIME you read this our ‘supreme leader’ Theresa May will have won her huge majority which empowers her to do anything she wants to...
Do the numbers add up for merry BrewDog?
AS A REGULAR INVESTOR in early-stage companies, and a beer drinker, you might think that I would have been tempted to invest in BrewDog –...
Why not all start-ups are of equal value
A FEW YEARS AGO I was invited to join a new programme run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was called the Regional...
Are we happy to lead on extreme surveillance?
WHEN I HOSTED a major international conference in Edinburgh in September 1994 I invited Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide...
Now is the time to address alarming IT teaching gap
AS WE ALL KNOW, our world is increasingly a digital one. Whether it is web publishing, online commerce and banking, driverless cars, or...
Fracking could transform our economic performance
HOWEVER YOU LOOK AT IT, the Scottish economy is currently a basket case. Our deficit, were we a separate economy, would be running at...