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...
'Big Data' is useful but caution is still needed when drawing conclusions
OVER 30 YEARS AGO, in the early days of the personal computer, I worked on the commercialisation of a machine intelligence algorithm from...
The internet is not as green as we imagine
THE INTERNET MAKES a major contribution to reducing global warming, we all know that, don’t we? As we travel less to attend meetings and...
Tech success story propels Edinburgh into the global 'unicorn' league
THE COVER OF the February 1st issue of Fortune magazine features a striking illustration of a unicorn wearing a hoodie, making it look...
EU and Scottish Government missing out on expert advice
A WHILE AGO I bumped into Professor Anne Glover, the then Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) to the President of the European Union at a...
Regional banks' traditional sterling banknotes defeat their purpose
I DON’T KNOW about you, but for the last few years I have chosen to carry Bank of England (BoE) banknotes rather than the notes supplied...
Public funds are instrumental in the prosperity of private enterprises
EVERY NOW AND AGAIN somebody writes a book that breaks out of the narrow field of innovation policy for which it was intended and gains a...