Some years ago, fourteen to be precise, I wrote a book called Authenticity. The subtitle was ‘Brands, fakes, spin and the lust for real life’, which had a kind of ring to it. I’ve since written more in a collection of essays called The Age to Come. I...
A conspiracy against the public – that’s what the pioneer economist Adam Smith called the process whereby suppliers get together and collude. I thought of that last week when I set off from Shoreham-by-Sea, my local station, to find that Southern Rail had been rushing...
Tuesday marks the moment of publication for the report of the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission, which is the culmination of a year’s work by the team led by Stephanie Flanders – and I was honoured to have been a member of it. Today saw the publication of a second...
Let’s call it Catch-23. It is when you load your old version of Word onto a new computer and you are told that Microsoft cannot verify the code online, and that it has to be done by phone (see numbers below). Then you find that telephone verification is no longer...
Why are large companies trying to distance themselves so much from their customers? Listen, starting at 20 minutes 28 seconds: the BBC World Business Report explores the Absent Corporation Our second ideas pamphlet, thanks to the Polden Puckham Foundation, identifies...
