Features

The logical place to start when launching a new product is to understand who your customer is and to get inside their heads. What drives them? What excites them or makes their life easier? Where do they hang out, online or in the physical world? What frustrates them?

Entrepreneurs spot gaps and opportunities. What sets them aside is that they have the drive, energy and ambition to turn those opportunities into successful business ideas. What they often lack is the right guidance and expertise to make it happen.

business mix Limited does two things; we help large organisations operationalise their innovation strategy and, more importantly here, we support startup and SME sized companies with their operational growth. But the sizzle to our sausage is that collaboration is absolutely at the heart of everything we do. We deliver first class services to our clients yes, but we’re a community and network fundamentally. 

UK businesses have been doing it tough in 2020 and with the recent announcement of the UK’s unemployment rate jumping to 4.8%, as 314,000 people lose their jobs, there is no denying many companies will be facing an economic downturn.

The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled numerous aspects of our lives, and quickly escalated into one of the most profound healthcare crises’ the world has faced to date. Whilst the health impact has been widely reported across the globe, we are also seeing alarming ripple effects of the pandemic in other areas, which are going unnoticed.

When it comes down to managing one’s personal health, small changes can lead to significant improvements, according to Sarah Bolt, the founder and CEO of Forth, a digital healthcare service in the UK. Self-improvement starts from within, and Sarah is the ambassador of this belief; Sarah is championing the innovation of personalised biomarker profiling to help others with self-improved health. Forth’s biomarker profiling starts with an at-home blood testing kit that is sent back to the lab where it is analysed for over 50 key internal biomarkers integral to good health. By reporting the results to an app, it shows users how the body is performing, allowing them to optimise their lifestyles to reach their personal best.

Halloween may have just passed, but it feels like this whole year has featured lots of tricks and very few treats. Before January 1st rolls around, we’ll have experienced two national lockdowns, a huge cultural shift to working from home on a mass scale, and many will have felt enormous mental and emotional strain as a result.

Having the ability to work from anywhere, on a device that’s secure and appropriate for your workload is now more critical than ever, as we embrace working away from crowded offices for the foreseeable future.

Simply put, working in a team means collaborating with other people to achieve a common goal. This, of course, presents several benefits. For starters, working together in a project ensures that work is completed on time, hitting deadlines much easily. What’s more, a team pulls together people with different talents and skills, making problem-solving easier and enhancing creativity and innovation.

Heather Monro, an executive coach, leadership consultant and speaker at Impact International here reflects on the higher-stage leadership that is called for in these uncertain times.

COVID-19 has changed the way we work forever, with limited in-office hours and lockdown 2.0 seeing hundreds of businesses going back to 100% remote work, there has been a dramatic rise in demand for surveillance software that monitors employee activity.

We are failing to meet our CO2 emission goals, seeing widespread overexploitation, and entering a sixth mass extinction event. This doesn’t bode well for a strong economic future. The science screams for urgent action, yet society seems to be slumped, dragging its feet towards a more sustainable future.

The word ‘disruption’ has long been a buzzword in startups and small businesses looking to take on larger rivals, often with a reputation for doing things a certain – old fashioned – way. The global energy market has been flooded with ‘disruptors’ while the multi-billion pound FinTech industry has long revelled in its ‘challenger’ moniker.

It was 2am on a cold December morning when I attempted to get a ride home after a rather disappointing Christmas party. I pulled out my phone and opened up Bolt. At that time of night drivers were few and far between. I was matched with a driver on the other side of the Thames to myself with an estimated arrival time of 27 minutes.

$6tn in the next five years, this is how much the world will spend through contactless payments, according to analyst firm Juniper Research. For many of us who have discovered and since relied heavily on contactless payments since its introduction in 2007, either through card, phone, or watch, or those of us who have taken a stroll down a COVID-era high-street to see shop windows adorned with ‘card payment only’ signs, this is hardly a surprise.

COVID-19 has driven a period of rapid adoption for digital technologies amid a climate of business contraction and job losses, but I encourage you to try to look behind the headlines for something more positive. I believe that this can be found in the statement: “The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated changes already occurring in society.”