Raising your first round
As any founder will tell you, raising money is hard work. Having worked on fundraising at all stages, I believe that the hardest money to raise is your first seed round. This is for three reasons: this is your firstRead more
A nightmare in store
I’ve been working recently on a review on buy online, pick up in store implementations in the UK market. The results make pretty grim reading. Despite the fact that footfall is the lifeblood for brick and mortar retailers, hardly anyRead more
Missing the omni-point
An interesting fact about the top 20 retailers in the 2015 UK Omnichannel Retail Index (ORI) is that most of them are now struggling or gone completely. Indeed the number 1 spot in that year was taken by Mothercare, theRead more
Big data … little data … cardboard box
An old friend and colleague reminded me that I have been remiss in not posting recently, for which I apologise. In my defense, I’ve spent most of the last year with early-stage technology companies. And of course, I’ve posted previously onRead more
Lessons from Startups
I’m joining a session in a few week’s time looking at the lessons that large firms can learn from Startups. It reminds me of a talk I did in 2013 to technology professionals in Higher Education. The focus of theRead more
What can we learn from first-wave digital transformations?
As many businesses move from the peak of inflated expectations down into the trough of disillusionment with their first forays into digital transformation, what learnings can we draw out on the dos and don’ts of digital? In a previous post, I said that it’s aRead more
Will digital disruption send large corporates the way of the dinosaurs?
I should start by saying that it’s not an easy time to be a large, established, publicly-quoted business. But there came a time when it was not an easy time being a dinosaur either. In the 1960’s and 70’s, beingRead more
Cloud-ed thinking
I joined an excellent workshop this week looking at how organisations think about their journey to the cloud. There is a need to move beyond a simplistic “everyone else is doing it” rationale. But to create a compelling case forRead more
Wagile
While working on a project recently, I heard the term wagile. It describes where many organisations have landed in their digital transformations. Technology teams have moved from projects to products, and from waterfall to agile. But we’ve embedded all theseRead more
Breaking the re-platforming cycle
I’m still surprised how many organisations are stuck in a cycle of re-platforming their internal systems. Not that these systems aren’t important, they’re as critical as the steel frame in a building. It’s just that, like the steel frame inRead more