Sector

In their book Business Model Generation, authors Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur explore the power of asking “what if” questions. This is illustrated by the example of furniture giant IKEA. In 1960, it asked: What if customers bought furniture in...

Five years after the 11 March 2011 Fukushima accident, which put Japan’s nuclear power industry under intense scrutiny, official policy is still a shambles. In June 2011, the then prime minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan was phasing out nuclear...

The US-led petrodollar era is being surpassed by a multipolar oil age in the Middle East. The transition is permeated by fundamental change and financial speculation that is penalizing the roles of the US and China in the region.           ...

What if I told you that there was a period in history where oil demand declined by 5 million barrels per day and non-OPEC supply increased by 5 million barrels per day, yet oil price rallied more than 50 percent?...

If the UK government’s ability to deliver its childhood obesity strategy reflected the significance of the issue, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was not a big deal. Quite the opposite. As a health select committee report reminds us: Treating...

Back in the early 1980s, when I started researching the field of careers, the notion of “work-life balance” was decidedly embryonic. It certainly had almost no resonance among women, who were still expected to work both at work and at...

This is a financial cold war—nothing more, nothing less. While there are billions of reasons to cut output, and every major producing country is reeling from the loss of revenues, some are weathering the current bust better than others are,...

Plans have been afoot for a new sports newspaper for Scotland. The proposed paper would be weekly and big names such as tennis coach Judy Murray and football pundit Pat Nevin signed up as columnists. All it requires is £50,000...

We will soon get a much closer look at the gender pay gap in Britain. Around 8,000 companies with more than 250 employees will have to publish details of salaries received by men and women by 2018. However, will this...

The focus of debates about social media is increasingly about the risks involved with its use. This is particularly true when it comes to large companies. Combined with the use of smartphones, social media is, for many, blurring the lines...

Apple has been ordered to help FBI investigators access data on the phone belonging to San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook. The technical solution proposed by the FBI appears to undermine Apple’s earlier claim that they would be unable to...

Slowing growth in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) – the world’s second largest economy – is grabbing the headlines with some suggesting a third wave of the 2008 global financial crisis. While this topic deserves attention because of its...

For many cities, tech hubs have been a key to jump starting economic growth in the wake of the global financial crisis. In an era of uncertainty, tech-sector growth is proving to be a driving force for nations attempting to...

The ubiquitous barcode has revolutionised the retail industry since its arrival on a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum in 1974. The black and white striped sticker encodes information about the product that can be easily scanned, speeding up checkout and...

Accidents will happen – and as far as innovation is concerned, that’s a good thing. While much of any businessperson’s attention is focused on bringing new ideas to market or making systematic and strategically targeted changes, there are some occasions...