Category Archives: Blog

Blog

Good governance is good entrepreneurship

Over the last five years we have learnt how entrepreneurship can lead us down the wrong road. Having entrepreneurial bankers risking our saving is not a good place to be. I also watched Manchester United lose at home in the champions league and it was expected given the events of the last five years. Football lacks good governance, everyone knows this from the top (who enjoy great wealth from the game) to the bottom whereby fans get to see there teams spend every more money in creating spectacular entertainment. The same is in in many religions.

As an entrepreneur, having to report to a group of people who may or may not agree with you is a major issue which you will try to tactically eliminate. However it is important to hear the truth, however hard from those who you trust and not from the fans, shareholders and voters. These three groups will never ever be pleased and therefore if you are pleasing them now, you are in about to fall. The independence  of others ensures your success, this is why mentors are so worth their weight in gold.

This is one of the reasons I agree with more woman on the boards of companies, also diverse educational mixes. It reduces the group think and ensures a healthy debate occurs on all subjects before moving to a consensus. This is one of the major parts of good goverance, a diverse range of views who provide guidence, knowledge and thought behind every decision you make.

The banks have failed to engage diverse educational background into there management stuctures which led to no one pointing out the obvious. i.e. Should we be investing in this at this time?

The NHS have failed in Staffordshire becuse of the same reason. Everyone was happy to get their wage and not question, why are these people dying and how can be make this better?

The same happens in government, small businesses and multi-national businesses. Its common as people like people who like them. We don’t like people to question us, we like people from our tribe (university, ethic group, gender or golf club), if we and everyone else is happy why should we ask for change?

The fact is we all have to be entrepreneurs, and this is what entrepreneurs do, look at the system and say, I’ m going to make this better. It may be painful, risky and I am not going to be liked for saying this, but the world is going to be a better place after i have done this.

And once I have done this, I willl ensure others have the opportunity to question me and make me continue on this path, never ever giving up because I have won this one battle. Afterall being an entreprenur is a war against complacency.

Blog

A few ways to look at phone hacking

If you know anything about me, its I  just love mobile phones, your don’t spend three years of your life doing a PhD in the subject without a little bit of passion. So when I read about the Phone Hacking, three questions come to mind when I think about this subject. So as an engineer, geek and entrepreneur.

  1. Why did the technology fail?
  2. Was it designed this way for a reason?
  3. How do I make money from this?

Voice mail is a very profitable part of the mobile operators portfolio the best being SMS. So stopping customer, in fact anyone accessing it is never going to be an option. One of the core problems with profitable businesses is that they tend not to innovate around these big revenue areas. You see this in many tech businesses especially in the mobile industry, look at Motorola in 1G, Nokia in 2G and someone with drop the ball in 3G. Its the old frog in the boiling pan story.

Voice mail has been the same for fifteen years with little innovation or business model development across the entire global industry. I am sure the technology has changed but not the service or the business model. Its just waiting to happen with billions of users across the globe this is a truly unified service, its voice mail.

Even after the event we the consumers are not told how to protect and keep this private. Why hasn’t there been adverts on TV telling us, the public how to stop anyone hacking into our voice mail and putting every message in the open press.

Is it because no one wants to know who leaves a message on my voice mail system or is it designed this way?

Even since Turin proved knowing what people are keeping in their message box, helps you win wars. There is no government on the planet who would want a secure voice mail system.  It just wouldn’t make not sense to make it secure. Just think of how you could use voice mail message to set off all sorts of nasty stuff, only unlocked and decode by single voice recognition activation at a time and place set by the sender. 007 would be busy for months.

However, there is always a profit to be made from every situation. So what is it?

– Security audits for famous people. £10,000 and we will check all you voice mail systems on weekly basis against your phone records to ensure date and time of login matched your phone records.

– A secure ISO 27001 rated voice mail system which is accessed via a secure app on the phone. Voice mail is send and received via secure encrypted channel. All messages are activated by finger print and voice recognition and co-geolocated by the phone.

– An apps which logs into voice mail when messaged and downloads to a phone within five minutes. Therefore no messages are stored for more than five minutes.

The possibilities are endless and with a billion customers, so are the profits…

 

Blog

Its great to be nice – A rant!

We don’t get a lot of stories where the nice guy gets the girl, the car and all the money. If he’s nice to start with then he has to get mad first, which defeats the object. Even Peter Parker has a dark side. Bruce Wayne, well enough said.

OK, There is one thing I DON”T like and that bullies! It’s a red rag to a bull. So Game On!!!

So over the last few months I have noticed people in business who should know better treating young people (who are trying to enter the work place through work placements, graduate schemes for the first time) in a way that someone who has been in industry for some years would have sat them down and provided them with a few treats of colour and wisdom.

Many FE colleges require their student learners to gain experience and these students try calling, writing and emailing local businesses to gain this experience. The response they get is just shocking.

So we all have to start somewhere and in those first steps into employment we will (hopefully) make a few mistakes and learn to be better people. Young people need the support to grow, its obvious, but our small businesses need to engage to make this happen. Small businesses are afraid of young people, they are not sure of their skills, ability, work ethic or how they will fit in with existing staff. So there are major risks in employing young people. Thus, apprentices. They see them are needing lots of support (and a minority do) which will drain their business

UK SMEs employed 14.1 million people and had a combined turnover of £1,500 billion. Youth employment would not wiped out if the 4.6 million SME businesses employed just one more person each.

We should have a national “Take on a Work Experience Day” whereby small companies with less than 10 people (which is 95% of all businesses) should take just one person on for two months.

After all there are just three ways to deal with bullies, (1)get everyone in the room and get them to find common ground, (2)take the bully over the playing field with all your mates, their friends and some tools and sort it out once and for all, or (3)ban the bullies. So lets try the first option!!!

 

Blog, Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets

Winter Wonder Land

Not everyone likes business, not everyone wants to pay taxes and working long hours is just the pits.

So in Britain a little snow means you don’t need to go to school. This educates everyone to understand that they don’t need to go to work when it snows. The entire country closes down because we have been educated to stay at home. Education is a powerful tool for social engineering.

Its also very hard as a parent to go to work when you have to look after children at home.

After all, it just takes one day off (e.g. A royal Wedding) and we are all in recession!

So if we wanted to end this recession we would understand that work helps increase the economy. The work ethic of the German’s ensures their success. Everyone has to play their part. Every little helps!  So why do we let notification of recession or even a little cold weather let us fail.

 

Every entrepreneurs needs an stable environment which enables business.

We can see new freedoms in some countries has meant economic failure as the system is broken down and people can not rely on others. We take so much for granted, yet in many countries they can even rely on others to provide the products or services which keep them in business. We have such a stable system which allows us to succeed.

If the UK was open for business every day of the year, we would not be in recession.

 

Business needs a positive press

If the media is telling you that Africa, Middle East, South America…etc is so bad. Our business people will not go there and do business. The majority of companies in this country are small, we don’t have large sales and market research departments. We look for opportunities based on the limited amount of knowledge and time we have available. So if the all TV stations are telling us these countries are bad, our economy is going to stay out of them.

If our SME’s increased their sales by 10% to international customers, we would not be in recession.

 

Every Business needs a global financial system

Even the smallest business can sell to the global market. Put up a web site and just wait for the global orders to come in. However, once those orders come in, there is just one thing we need, that’s the money in our bank account. Without a global financial system, which ensure we can move and receive money, our opportunities are very limited.

If London was the banking capital of the world, we would not be in recession.

Blog

Virtual Enterprise saves Christmas

Virtual Enterprise saves Christmas

When I read the news that online retail is the winner for Christmas 2012

“According to research from e-commerce software company ChannelAdvisor, eBay sales were up 36.6 per cent year-on-year on Christmas Day 2012, while Amazon UK sales increased by 27.7 per cent.

On Boxing Day, eBay saw sales rise by 49.3 per cent year-on-year and Amazon recorded an increase of 44.7 per cent.”

I come to the following conclusions,

The small retailer won in 2012 with the small virtual companies in the UK wining over the larger stores. So Tesco increased by 18% and ebay sales by 36.6%.

“Tesco : Online sales increased 18 per cent driven by multichannel initiatives such as click and collect and grocery ‘drive thru’ that lets customers order online and pick up shopping from the local store at a chosen time.“

The high street has become an leisure experience centre, where buying is just one small aspect, an not the most important one. The first reason to go into the high street during Christmas was to see the lights, have some mulled wine with friends and family.

The small virtual businesses in the UK is more efficient than any physical shop.

  • They don’t have fixed overheads, which those cementing their business on the high street do. The high street provide little or no flexibility for a business.  Those providing leases (pension funds and equity) want too much and base their revenue on increased property value.
  • They don’t pay massive business rates which are just another tax on property and makes the high street a none starter for the majority of business.
  • They don’t have to pay business electricity, gas and high insurance for a high street property.
  • They don’t’ worry about security or riots which occurred in the UK a few years ago. Ebay and Amazon look after all the security.
  • They have a worldwide market, which ensures you have a global reach and not just your local town.

They are on trend and therefore it’s a good time to start a business selling your products and services in 2013.  Take a look at http://virtualent.co.uk/ which is a conference for those considering or have started a virtual business.