Future

Few of us can forget the terrible attack on Paris in November.  When the Paris attacks took place at the end of last year, I was lucky enough to visit Paris a couple of days later for the annual CARTES conference event. Some firms had pulled out last minute for fear of further attacks, but…

So I just got back from Hong Kong having keynoted at the NextBank FF16 Fintech Finals conference which ran Monday and Tuesday, in partnership with StartmeupHK. A highlight of the week was a fireside chat with Elon Musk, who appeared before a sold out invitation-only audience which I felt lucky to be invited along to,…

I’ve been wondering how this year would start and so far the answer seems badly.  What with David Bowie’s death on the same day as I catch man-flu, could it get any worse?  Well yes.  I wake up to the headline: Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists.  NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!! Royal Bank of…

I’ve been asked the same question twice this week in two separate conferences (one in Vienna, the other in San Francisco): “how will we deal with the corruptive forces when we are all on the net?” The second questioner clarified what she meant by referencing the film Enemy of the State, where Will Smith gets…

We think we’ve come a long way with technology, but we haven’t really.  Sure we can now ping a message between a router in Hong Kong and London at the rate of 0.239 seconds speed; we can wear a watch that not only tells the time but takes photos, keeps our diary and tells us…

Sticking with the future predictions, I usually quote the great American baseball player Yogi Berra: “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”.  He had quite a few comments of that ilk: “the future isn’t what it used to be”, and it is certainly true. It is particularly true when we look at the…

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about corporate treasury lately and the supply chain, and wondered what would happen if and when 3D printing really took off. By way of example, you can now 3D print your own car or house if you want, and that means that the whole supply chain collapses, as does…