Business school academics and authors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones could see the limitations of the approach. Which is why their new book is entitled simply Clever (Harvard Business Press, £19.99). The word "talent" had become "boring and tired", while another buzz phrase of recent times, "knowledge management" ? for the process by which organisations seek to systemise the stuff their employees know ? is just "boring", they say.

"Clever" is not without its own problems. Not least in the United ( Read more... )
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In another new book, Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge, many of the innovations featured stemmed from scientists working alone or in small teams. Some were in large organisations but others were in garage start-ups, continuing the heritage of that granddaddy of such organisations, Hewlett-Packard. Google started life in a room at Stanford University, while RIM came from nowhere to develop the Blackberry.

Even Apple is a smallish company by computer industry standards. But it has ( Read more... )
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Likely to wow oversees clients with its Britishness, a Fortnum's hamper reminds recipients business is good.

Classic Christmas Hamper, £150 (020-7973 5602; www.fortnum andmason.com/corporate)

ENVY EXPERIENCE VOUCHERS

Redeemable for 500-plus experiences including sky diving and a spa day.

From £25. (0800 678 3158; www.envyexperiences.co.uk) ( Read more... )
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Fruit For The Office was ground-breaking when Ox started it through placing stickers on his father's stall in London's Piccadilly 10 years ago, and its success made him a finalist in the mobile phone company O2's recent X awards for entrepreneurs. But he feels that the new service could do even better.

Ox, 29, is not exactly following the career his parents would have chosen for him. Tom and Lesley Ox struggled to send him and his brother to a good school in the hope that ( Read more... )
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"GlycoForm is a small company with only 10 scientists," says Scales. "But that team is the best in the world at what it does ? and the reason I wanted to lead the business." Since joining, Scales has set about refocusing the company's scientific projects and has raised additional finance ? no mean feat in the current funding climate. Although in common with other companies that operate high-tech laboratories, running costs are high. "We don't have the buying power of ( Read more... )
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Britain?s independent businesses are poised to lead the country out of recession with a mixture of innovation, a readiness to take calculated risks and a determination to succeed. Although there is tentative talk of ?green shoots? in the economy as a whole, the sector that includes 99 per cent of all businesses and which accounts for more than half of UK jobs and sales is especially confident, according to research carried out for The Independent by CultureMap, a think-tank ( Read more... )
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The company, which was set up in 1989 and spun out of the city's Queen's University, develops, designs and manufactures the cameras in Northern Ireland and employs 190 people in 15 offices around the world. The company, which enjoyed a turnover of £24.7m last year, has a portfolio of 70 products and sells to 10,000 customers in 55 countries.

However, sales director Aislinn Rice says that the Chinese side of the business has expanded especially fast as a result ( Read more... )
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A. Government support for small business is co-ordinated by Business Link, so you should speak to one of its advisers. Their advice is free. Different grant schemes (sometimes including access to loans and investment finance) are offered within the Regional Development Agency (RDA) areas of England in addition to national initiatives. You can find a local Business Link adviser by entering your postcode on the home page of their website (www.businesslink.gov.uk ( Read more... )
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There may be fierce infighting and even the threat of court battles between the two former Woolworths directors vying for the defunct retailer?s crown this Christmas. But when it comes to predicting a rosy future for the independent high street retailing sector, Andy Latham, whose Alworths chain opens for business in Didcot, Oxfordshire next month, and Tony Page, former commercial director at Woolworths and until recently Latham?s partner, are consulting the same crystal ball. ( Read more... )
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It?s easy for businesses to be sceptical about social media ? corporate blogs have, in the past, been hyped and many remain stale and dull. Meanwhile, the likes of Twitter and Facebook are regularly criticised as passing fads. But as people continue to flock to them (a recent OfCom report found nearly one in four Brits use Facebook for an average of six hours a month, up four hours from this time last year, while Twitter has gone from 0.1m users to 2.6m in the last year) and ( Read more... )
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Chances are you have heard friends or business colleagues talking about ?cloud computing?. You may even have been on the receiving end of a call attempting to sell it. Butwhat exactly is it? It appears that even those who might be expected to know all about it are a little confused.

According to research from the electronic document management software company VersionOne published in late June, 41 per cent of senior IT professionals admitted they didn?t know; of the remainder, ( Read more... )
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It is certainly true that a company needs to be profitable over the long run if it is to survive, but this is something of academic point if the business is not generating sufficient cash to pay its way on a day-to- day basis, and there is no known business law that states that the profitable company is also a cash-generative one.

The fact is that there are seriously different factors affecting profitability and cash and there is no reason why they should be consistent. Profit is the net ( Read more... )
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The scheme, aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds starting their own businesses, has this year undergone a relaunch. Among the new initiatives is a monthly cash award that will allow up to five aspiring entrepreneurs to receive £1,000 to help them get their business ideas started. This is in addition to the well-established Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, now worth £10,000 to the winner.

Moreover, the scheme also includes a package of resources aimed at providing the enterprising ( Read more... )
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This, explains Simon Duffy, is how Bulldog ? the UK's first natural grooming brand for men ? was born. Both Duffy and his business partner, co-founder Rohdri Ferrier, were living in New York, where they had met and become friends, when they came up with the idea in 2005. "We were both starting to think more about natural products when it came to eating and drinking, but we were struck by all the natural grooming products being for women only. It was that frustration that sparked ( Read more... )
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After moving to Thornbridge Hall in Derbyshire, Harrison decided that he wanted to apply his marketing skills to the sale of re-branded, high-quality beer bought in from an outside micro-brewery. "The market for beer is very fragmented and micro-breweries seem poor at marketing," explains Harrison. "This looked like a real opportunity."

Indeed the market is fragmented with 31 micro-breweries in Derbyshire alone and some 84 across the East Midlands. ( Read more... )
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However, it is not just the credit crunch that is behind H&T’s apparent growth: yes, there is some truth in reports that hard up (mostly former) City financiers are flogging off the Rolex in order to meet Little Johnny’s public school fees, but the inflated price of gold, H&T’s particular favourite, is also helping the company.

Investors that back the group largely do so because they are comfortable in the knowledge that the group is ( Read more... )
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Mind you, Hobson had his own doubts at the time – not about the validity of his idea, but because he feared someone else would beat him to it. "I wrote my business plan on the Tube on the way to work. It must have taken about 10 weeks and I can remember walking into my office every morning expecting to read in the press that someone else had got there first," he recalls. But they didn't and today Photobox is the UK's number one online photography brand and a £30m business that is rapidly ( Read more... )
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Dr Moneeb Awan, co-founder, explains that the key to securing this sort of contract has been meeting people on equal terms. "One of the fundamentals of what we do is network – we go to events organised by the Chamber of Commerce and other organisations like that. Through that networking we meet directors who are turning over hundreds of millions, on an equal level." Remembering that just because your service or product might cover thousands of people, you don't need thousands to develop ( Read more... )
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Undoubtedly, the ending of what has been an essentially benign environment for business will create more than a few casualties. And smaller businesses – since they tend to be lower down the food chain with fewer reserves to call on in an hour of need – are likely to bear the brunt of the damage. Moreover, they may be more vulnerable to banks tightening their lending criteria. Equally, though, smaller businesses can be more fleet-footed and responsive than their larger ( Read more... )
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