By Richard Copland Clients often ask which technologies to watch out for over the next few years.  The typical ask centres around the medium term, a time frame of the next two to three years and not the immediate near term.  Previous conventions and arrangements that constitute businesses sense of management time frames no [...]

By Richard Copland. Without giving all the details away this piece called out the comments of Barack Obama in his final presidential address and the impact of the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle-class jobs redundant. Across this and a series posts, I’ll unpack this technology challenge and the [...]

  By Richard Copland. Robots and Artificial Intelligence have been part of our everyday lives for some time, be it with our smartphones or a laundry folding application.  The latter recently attracted a cool $60 million-dollar investment from Panasonic Technologies in Japan. Humans seem to find a mechanical helping hand irresistible and there will [...]

By Richard Copland This week 20 years ago IBM's Deep Blue defeats Gary Kasparov in a game of chess. Deep Blue’s victory against Kasparov represented a major milestone in the history of AI. But its win was more a testament to the brilliance of its team of programmers and grandmasters, as well as to [...]

Why is it that six months down the line of launching a new “innovation initiative” in the organisation, reality kicks in and excitement starts to wane? One can almost compare it to the initial rush of being head over heels in love… Innovation was the best thing since sliced bread remember, everything is going to [...]

By Henra Mayer Yes, it’s like motherhood and apple pie. New value cannot be created if it is not getting to market timeously. The SA Innovation League 2016 results, to be released on 8 December at Milpark Business School, makes it abundantly clear that innovation leadership gets the message on the importance of innovation and [...]

Winning with Global Innovation Creating value through innovation is a global conversation. In today’s competitive world, both developed and developing countries need to come up with joint innovative solutions to counter global challenges; and they need to do this while simul­taneously addressing the pressing needs of their respective populations. In this context South Africa needs [...]

The world of business has changed for CEO’s With transformation, the speed of change is creating a reality that is becoming more difficult to anticipate and manage. The importance of innovation is cited by many as a do or die strategic decision. How leadership reacts and how they view this scale of change is an [...]

By Richard Copland, July 2016. Over the last few years, we’ve seen new and exciting experiments in direct democracy emerge: the Open Ministry – Crowdsourcing legislation site in the Finish Parliament; the Icelandic e-democracy and participatory budgeting website Better Reykjavik; Podemos, the new decentralised Spanish political movement and the municipal citizen-led coalitions Barcelona en Comu [...]