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...
Call for Scottish campaign to champion female leaders
FOR MANY YEARS NOW, more girls than boys are going to university, and in some particularly traditional professions, such as law,...
The real culprits of the pensions crisis
WHEN I WAS RUNNING a start-up technology business in the 1980s we set up a pension scheme for our employees – it seemed the right thing...
Simplistic columns mislead on Brexit
WHEN WE last voted on our constitutional future here in Scotland, the SNP government provided a 648- page white paper describing in huge...
Education in Scotland heads backwards
WHEN MY late wife graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1973 with a first class honours degree in Mathematics and Natural...
A call to BT - the internet stage is set
BACK IN THE LATE 1990s I was invited to a BT evening event and over dinner I was seated next to the group managing director for BT UK. He...
'Blockchain' threatens back office jobs as the banks pile in
I WAS STRUCK RECENTLY when on the same day I met with two very different senior experts in their particular fields. One, an innovation...
Fuse box failure sparks technology revolution
ON A CHILLY NIGHT on 7th December 2002, at around 8pm, a faulty fuse box burst into flames in a building off Hastie’s Close in...
Computing sees a gender imbalance in reverse
ONCE UPON A TIME, women were relatively keen on a career in computing; in fact the world’s first computer, the ‘ENIAC’ was programmed by...
It's a sad day if C4 stops making a nuisance of itself
BACK IN 1999 I was interviewed by regulator Ofcom for a position as a non-executive director of Channel Four TV – and went on to the C4...
The 'Masters of the Universe' have moved west
RECENTLY I SPENT a couple of weeks in Silicon Valley, the urban sprawl between San Francisco and San Jose. This is the place where the...
What makes someone an exemplary entrepreneur?
A WHILE AGO I took part in a ‘Question Time’ event at a Scottish high school, and was identified on the panel as an entrepreneur. One of...
Impact of industry experience in academia must be recognised
HERE IN the UK we have some of the world's top Universities. Alongside the US we dominate all the league tables for high quality research...