Category: Advice for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses
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Avoiding and managing a “Iwan Thomas” in your workplace
Every so often I get snared by popular TV and, shamefully, this month I’ve been glued to watching Bear Grylls’ Celebrity Island. This extraordinary exposé of cringe-worthy team dynamics, painful character flaws and conflict has been riveting with the most entertainment undoubtedly coming from Iwan Thomas, former Olympic athlete, whose ‘self-appointed’ leadership caused pretty […]
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The NHS can do more to help SME HealthTech
The overall theme of the UK e-health conference (3 – 4 May 2017) was the use of data, IT and tech to transform health and care. It was great to see the energy and activity going on in this space and, undeniably, there is more emphasis and interest in health-tech in the NHS than ever before. […]
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Equity allocations. How do you keep it fair?
The allocation of equity in start-ups and scale-ups is fraught with issues and so I was interested to read Mike Moyer’s book ‘Slicing Pie’ to find out his take on this thorny problem. Mike’s philosophy that is “a person’s % share of the rewards should always equal that person’s % share of what’s put at risk […]
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The Greatness of Price
How good are you at pricing? How often do you think about how you are pricing your goods and services? Probably not often enough and certainly not as often as is best practice. If you haven’t noticed, pricing has got a whole lot more sophisticated and moved on immeasurably from the relative simplicity of train […]
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International Women’s Day
As part of their International Women’s Day theme, The Digital Catapult (http://www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk) asked for my thoughts on the following questions: Has the landscape changed since you first started in your career? In my career, I have seen a significant change for the better in the opportunities afforded to women. The big difference since I started […]
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Are you an effective NonExec Director?
Do you have what it takes to manage a CEO like Camila Batmanghelidjh? The article in today’s Guardian,”Camila’s Kids Company: The Inside Story review – both damning and vindicatory” by Sam Wollaston accurately summarises my feelings on watching the fascinating BBC programme last evening about Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company. It was a extraordinary exposé and […]
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David Bowie: the Great Innovator. Should businesses follow his example?
Looking back at David Bowie’s career I’m struck by his astonishing ability to be constantly and consistently ahead of trends. It isn’t always clear if he was the cause of certain trends or just an early adopter thereof, but what we do know is he made genres of music, used technologies and wore fashions before […]