Featured Futurist: Change the World, Dare to Leap with Cherwell

Featured Futurist: Change the World, Dare to Leap with Cherwell

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today there are still far too many companies that fail to see the enormous potential within their people, or provide them with the thinking, tools, and opportunities to unlock it.   Interested in the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Today, everyone has...

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The rise and rise of Entrepreneurs

The rise and rise of Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly empowered and the businesses they’re building are transforming industries. Last week a crowd of individuals came together to lift a double decker bus off of a trapped cyclist and it’s a stark reminder about how when enough people come together with a common purpose they can...

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Remaking the Financial Services industry

Remaking the Financial Services industry

The news that the UK Government is considering introducing legislation that force the Financial Services industry to develop common, publicly available Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) shouldn’t come as a surprise. Initiatives like Level 39, Finance Innovate and Fintech50 have helped position the UK as a Fintech powerhouse and the new...

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Disrupting banking is a team effort

Disrupting banking is a team effort

  Disrupting the banking experience can only be achieved through team work   In 2008 banks were considered to big to fail and sovereign Governments pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the system to save them but now, years after the events of 2008 conversations about how banking and...

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The banks guide to scouting Fintech

The banks guide to scouting Fintech

Four of Europe’s largest banks reveal their Fintech scouting strategies To an Entrepreneur attention is oxygen so imagine the electricity that flows through a room when you put thirty budding European Fintech Entrepreneurs in the same room as senior executives from some of the Europe’s largest banks. This was the...

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CIO’s your industry is being disrupted

CIO’s your industry is being disrupted

Survey says: “24% of CIO’s don’t believe their industries are facing disruption.” 24%. By anyone’s measure that’s a high number so it was with surprise that I read CIO UK Magazines 2015 CIO 100 summary that stated of all of the UK CIO’s they surveyed 24% “don’t think that their...

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The secrets behind building a Unicorn

The secrets behind building a Unicorn

Building a billion dollar Unicorn isn’t easy but Silicon Valley has cracked the code of how to build them For those want to be Entrepreneurs among you there are only three truths. You’ll fail – you’ll learn. You’ll stumble – you’ll regain your stride. You’ll fall – you’ll pick yourself up....

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CTO Innovation Series: Enterprise innovation fights back

CTO Innovation Series: Enterprise innovation fights back

With their organisations and industries under siege from hundreds of thousands of lean, digital start ups many industry leaders are starting to seed creative disruption initiatives within their own organisations in the bold hope of beating the waves of want to be disruptive entrepreneurs at their own game. I sat...

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Monetising the Internet of Everything

Monetising the Internet of Everything

Data is the new oil Over the next ten years the Internet of Everything – the ability to use an increasingly broad variety of sensors that can turn any dumb object, from jet engines and cars to cattle and crops into intelligent, interconnected devices on a network that can sense,...

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The rise of the Innovative CIO

The rise of the Innovative CIO

The CIO’s role is changing driven by Cloud and an increasing number of ‘as a Service’ solutions that progressively reduce the organisations dependency on maintaining a high number of specially skilled ICT staff. Under these new conditions organisations have two options – they can make their technology managers, architects and...

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The Internet of Everything is creating new empires

The Internet of Everything is creating new empires

Today few people realise that our society is on the cusp of creating a new Epoch, one where in 400 years’ time our descendants will look back on our Age and compare it in the same way that we compare our Age to the Stone Age. The Internet of Everything...

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Learn to Disrupt. Less Er-ntrepreneur, more Entrepreneur

Learn to Disrupt. Less Er-ntrepreneur, more Entrepreneur

At our Venture Capital days our we see pitch after pitch from aspiring Entrepreneurs but with so much Me-Too competition our teams need to quickly establish whether or not they believe a brand is clearly differentiated enough to be able to get a foothold in its chosen market. Most aspiring...

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Why Entrepreneurs need a channel strategy

Why Entrepreneurs need a channel strategy

Today we all know that organisations like IBM, Coca Cola, Royal Dutch Shell and McDonalds are heavily reliant on their downstream sales and distribution networks to help them conquer new markets and boost top line revenue growth. Often seen as the preserve of the multinational a well rounded channel strategy...

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8 things successful companies have in common

8 things successful companies have in common

Entrepreneurs aren’t immune from harsh reality but successful businesses have a number of things in common Always be qualifying There are millions of problems out in the world today that affect individuals, businesses, nation states and humanity as a whole and all of them have different impact levels. Problems can be as simple...

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Everyone can learn how to innovate

Everyone can learn how to innovate

In today’s world there are far too many people who feel that the creative spark is just that. Over the past few years I have worked with hundreds of individuals and teams who have all felt that even mild incremental secondary innovations are beyond their capabilities but I’ve found that...

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Innovation. Less brainstorming, more thinking

Innovation. Less brainstorming, more thinking

Most surveys today indicate that Research and Development executives are frequently disappointed in their ideation exercises and that they commonly complain that ideas aren’t actionable, aren’t relevant or simply aren’t economical. They also complain that ideas are insular, vague and can’t be scaled for the real world but ultimately it...

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When you can’t innovate copy

When you can’t innovate copy

Nothing breeds copycats like a successful business venture. When a new business idea is incubated and executed successfully, cloners naturally emerge and imitate. To mitigate the investing risks associated with eroding market opportunities due to copycats, investors always look for companies with strong competitive resilience or those that are operating...

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