Election is time to wring fiscal concessions from the Treasury
IT IS A UNIVERSAL TRUTH that Scotland leads the pack in scientific development and innovation. Scots research universities competitively...
Learning from two contrasting big growth economies
THIS IS A TALE of two countries: China and India. Both are nations of well over one billion people each and both have been growing...
Learning to say ‘no’ and the ABCs of global management
FOR MANAGERS in technology businesses this is the season for thinking internationally. Scottish Enterprise held the inaugural Globalscot...
It takes quality and quantity to stay world beaters, Scotty
THIS IS REALLY WORRYING. Scotland might be running out of engineers. The country has a fine tradition of scientists and engineers from...
Flying’s no angel, but there are bigger C02 criminals
OF ALL THE ACTIVITIES demonised by society up there with foxhunting, harpooning whales and clubbing baby seals to death, now comes the...
Active rivalry is the lifeblood of the media
IN THE DOG-EAT-DOG world of the British media one of the great untouchables, apparently immune from all criticism, seems to be BBC Radio...
Cheap, fast and connected — the kids are in touch with the future
A DEBATE WAS HELD in the House of Lords recently, proposed by Baroness Susan Greenfield, in which their lordships worried about the...
Is the end nigh for the cheap universal internet?
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL TECHNOLOGY adopted in the last 50 years has undoubtedly been the internet. The mid 60s co-operative project between...
To sloganise: a substitute for reasoned discussion (dict)
IF YOU AGREE a slogan for a company or an enterprise, you are inevitably setting yourself up to be measured against it. So when Google...
Clash over ownership makes for start-up stalemate
ONE OF THE ENDURING mysteries about the Scottish economy is the chronic mismatch between the level of innovation in our universities,...
Wannabe entrepreneurs are being suckered by ‘reality’ TV
THERE HAS BEEN a recent glut in television programmes dedicated to entrepreneurial activities. Donald Trump’s Apprentice in the USA...
If Google is the Mother of Invention, then what can’t it do?
SILICON VALLEY, just south of San Francisco, is the most inventive strip of land on the planet. Companies such as Sun, Cisco,...
Scotland loses out in the digital switch-over chaos
THE BRITISH TELEVISION industry today is a bit like the proverbial swan — it may all look smooth and controlled on the top, but...
The just get it from IBM attitude is bad and lazy - let’s shop local
A POPULAR working definition of an expert is “someone who lives 5000 miles away”. When I ran a software company with headquarters in...
The vision of freedom has become one of repression
IN 1994 I invited Tim Berners-Lee, then a fairly obscure technical geek, to deliver the closing keynote speech at an international...
For richer or poorer, property rights transform lives
I HAVE OFTEN wondered if there is some kind of systemic difference between the western world, where wealth creation seems to be able to...
Famous faces can’t guarantee sales – they’re only human
TRICKY THINGS — celebrities. Being flesh and blood and having minds of their own can have drawbacks, particularly if you have hired them...