The IMF recently called on Sri Lanka to increase government spending on education and healthcare saying it would lead to increased labour productivity. However for a government under real pressure, increasing public spending is a brave decision.... and a signifiant act of faith. Will it really increase productivity? And when? And by how much? And

Both the US and the UK are experiencing a mini-revival in manufacturing with firms re-locating manufacturing processes from offshore to back home. Well, that's what the media - and the companies involved - would have us believe. However in most cases, 'manufacturing' means 'assembly'. The production - or sourcing - of components is still outsourced

The recent revelations that Western Governments (particularly the US and UK?) are involved in widespread monitoring of digital communications challenges what many think of as the' right' to privacy. Many of us are moderately happy to give up data to Google and Facebook in return for free services. What do we get from the government

The EU is one of the world's largest trading blocs - yet too often we view it as a collection of nation states, in competition with each other rather than collaborating with each other to create a truly competitive European economy. Europe generally has very liberal and progressive attitudes to social partnership, to health and

We know there are some big questions to ask (and answer) to solve some of the current world problems - poverty, food security, energy capacity and so on. It seems however, that we have known about these problems for quite s while. The energy issue is being addressed by companies who have a vested (financial)

The financial crisis of the last few years led to the eurozone crisis. Recently, there have been signs that the EU - and the Eurozone itself - is making progress in terms of solving some of the underlying problems. Certainly in those countries that have received 'bailouts' the conditions of the financial aid have forced

Do you know which factors of your business are important? What, if it changed, would have the biggest impact? A 5% reduction in your material costs, your energy bill,your wage bill, or ...? If you know which are important, you know where to focus attention and improvement activity. If you don't, then who is managing

Many people think that raising productivity means doing more things ... but sometimes, it means doing fewer things more effectively. Some even think the more things they have to do, the more important they are. However, at a personal level, if people concentrated and focused more they might avoid endless 'email tennis' and cut the

Recently, US Vice President Joe Biden claimed that U.S. workers “are three times as productive as any worker in the world.” Of course he was currying favour but it does no good in the longer-term to pretend other than the truth. The US is a highly productive nation - but much of that is down

The world population will rise to 9 billion by 2040 (from the current 7 billion). This has massive implications for all sorts of human activity and human well-being ... perhaps first and foremost being the questions about how we feed and water that population. There are all sorts of answers we need if the world