commentary

Balancing work and childcare Test

Keep-On-Keep-Up, Clintouch, Give Me Tap, 4Lunch, The Ash Company, Invisible Manchester and Bundlee. These are just some of the social enterprise businesses that the University of Manchester and Alliance MBS have been supporting in recent years. We are not alone. Indeed today social enterprises contribute more than £50bn a year to the UK economy, often

Companies need to think about both positive and negative consumer perceptions when launching greener products, says Jonatan Pinkse. The fact that global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) have risen sharply over the past year is a good example of how consumers are becoming ever keener to buy green products. But despite this rise the share

Whether it’s the huge impact of the pandemic, or the recent blocking of the Suez Canal, the risk of disturbances to global supply chains has never been so under the spotlight, says Fahian Huq. Driven by globalisation, rapidly changing markets and emerging technologies, supply chains have become increasingly complex in recent decades. At the same

Now is the time for businesses to look again at their funding options, says Ian Hardman. Ian is one of our guest speakers at our forthcoming Scale-up Forum on April 29th on how to secure external finance to meet growth ambitions. As we gradually come out of this third lockdown much has changed since the

As part of its emergency planning efforts, the UK government identifies and develops capabilities and resources that can be deployed in the event of a civil emergency or disruptive event. Anything from mass evacuation and shelter to telecoms is factored into emergency planning as part of the immediate response to a crisis, but thought is

Sustainability transitions are not yet unfolding at sufficient scale and speed, says Frank Geels. I recently had the pleasure to contribute to the first Nobel Prize Summit entitled Our Planet-Our Future, which used its convening power to draw attention to the need for major sustainability transitions. It was organised by the Nobel Foundation and other

As digitisation accelerates it becomes even more essential to ensure information systems are safe, says Richard Allmendinger. As we have all witnessed first-hand, the pandemic has accelerated by several years the adoption of digital technologies across virtually every sector, from business and government to education. What is clear is that many of these technologies are

Emerging technologies have a key role to play in assessing our future disease risks, says Marzena Nieroda. As an academic I have always been very interested in initiatives that promote wellbeing across all ages. In this regard a huge trend that is sweeping the healthcare industry, and one I have been specifically researching in recent

Organisations can gain more business value from advanced analytics by recognising and overcoming a number of common obstacles, says Mayur Joshi. Rhetoric around the potential of emerging technologies––and the professions coalesced around those technologies––is often accompanied by as many myths. The evolution of data science coalesced around artificial intelligence (AI) and other intelligent technologies is