The office must now sing for its supper: making the workplace about the individual, not the collective March 8, 2021 One striking feature of the pandemic has been the volume of ink spilled debating the future of the office. The huge and rapid shift to working from home for large sectors of the economy made not only individual employees but companies as well look around themselves and say, “This seems to work: should we have [...]
Mastercard vice chair: We can’t let Covid crisis hold back female entrepreneurs March 8, 2021 In Q3 of 2020, venture funding for female founders hit its lowest quarterly total in three years. Whilst the current Covid-19 pandemic stands as one of the greatest disruptors to our way of life in living memory, when we have disruption and crisis we also have opportunity to do more, and to do better. There [...]
Brits must ditch ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality to tackle climate change March 7, 2021 People are full of contradictions. We find ourselves wrestling with competing views held simultaneously. We sometimes act in ways out-of-step step with our best intentions. This matters because the small choices that we make every day impact the future of our fragile planet. The British public need to shed their ‘do as I say, not [...]
Electric cars will lead to a design transformation on the scale of iPhones & Apple laptops March 6, 2021 There was a golden age of car design that ran from the mid 1950’s to early 1970’s. Cars like the Jaguar e-type, Ferrari Dino, or Pontiac Firebird emerged; they were not only engineering miracles, but objets d’art. During this time, the imagination of the auto industry was running wild, setting out ambitious visions of the [...]
Finance need an overhaul to price in climate change risk and push green agenda forward March 6, 2021 Why did the credit and wider financial system only take off in the last 400 years? Despite money and lending being around for millennia, financial services only truly got going alongside the Enlightenment. According to the writer Yuval Noah Harari, the fundamental shift was to be found in humanity’s belief about the future. In previous [...]
Businesses of all stripes have stepped up to the Covid-19 challenge March 6, 2021 The private sector has already played a crucial role in the fight against Covid-19. Not only have some of the world’s largest companies developed crucial vaccines and life-saving treatments, but the private sector more broadly has also played a more indirect – yet still highly important – role in supporting the public sector as it [...]
Apple’s new privacy features may finally trigger a more transparent tech ecosystem March 6, 2021 A new feature in Apple’s operating system has received relatively little attention in the wider media recently, yet it is set to kick start a new era of transparency in the tech industry and hopefully instil more respect for consumer and enterprise privacy. With the launch of iOS 14, Apple introduced a privacy information section [...]
Fight for the high street: Sunak’s Budget will stop the bleeding, but we must look long-term March 5, 2021 For London’s struggling retailers and leisure operators, Rishi Sunak’s budget provided some welcome respite. The three month extension to the business rates holiday, the £5 billion Restart Grant scheme and the extension to the furlough initiative should enable some of the brands on the high street to survive, at least until they have the opportunity [...]
WeWork: Vaccine rollout must herald a phased return to offices before June March 5, 2021 Following the news the highly effective coronavirus vaccines would begin to be rolled out in Britain, the stock market surged on a wave of optimism and the hope a return to normal, and by extension, the workplace, was within our grasp. Alongside the roadmap out of lockdown, we can now see a light at the [...]
Screenshot: Will nightclubs really reopen in June? March 5, 2021 This week: **Media Moment of the Week: Telly’s still got welly **Will nightclubs really reopen on 21 June? **The BBC turns back time Media Moment of the Week: Telly’s still got welly In the age of Silicon Valley streaming giants and relentless references to “content” and “eyeballs”, it’s easy to forget that TV can, sometimes, [...]