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

We all know that planning is essential ... it allows us to create structure and efficiency. We plan at various levels - from detailed production or marketing plans for our company to personal ToDo lists. However, the other day I felt my own ToDo list was so long that it was starting to make me

The UK looks to be doing a little better than most people thought. Rather than contracting - and leading the UK into a further recession - growth has been positive, based on improved service sector activity. Is this a good sign? Well, its probably better than the alternative ... but reading too much into short

Small businesses often use 'involuntary IT mangers' (IITMs) .... non-technical, untrained staff who, by accident or through organisational prompting, take on the role of managing IT operations.According to a recent small business survey commissioned by Microsoft, this costs the US about $24 billion in lost productivity, largely because these staff are taken away from their