Theorists such as Yochai Benkler have suggested that the accessibility and inherently social nature of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking and wikis mean that we might expect them to enhance our democratic freedoms through the opening of new channels for debate and collaboration. Academic research suggests that such new opportunities have not [...]

Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to ‘quality’ news reporting, whilst the global recession has shown that the threatened failure of high quality local and regional media outlets was not a groundless fear. Whilst some of the most [...]

The concept of the “entrepreneurial university” first emerged in the US around the year 2000 and spread quickly to the UK and the rest of Europe. Today this idea has attained an almost mantra-like status

There’s no better way to kick off an entrepreneurship trek than by having breakfast with Joe DiNucci at Bucks of Woodside.   I first met Joe when Silicon Valley Came to Oxford (SVCO) back in November ‘08.  He’s the type of guy you wish you could have on speed-dial because his wisdom, experience and hilarious anecdotal [...]

We headed back to San Francisco this morning to visit the team at YouNoodle, a software company which uses an algorithm to predict the success of startups.  Bob Goodson, YouNoodle’s co-founder and CEO, shared his thoughts on entrepreneurship and experiences on running a startup.  What was particularly cool however was the candid Q&A session we [...]

For the past 8 years, the Said Business School has hosted some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs during its annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford (SVCO) event.  This flagship event, held every November, provides an opportunity for Oxford MBA’s and others to interact with Silicon Valley VIP’s through a full day of masterclasses, garage-style [...]

Tension, is the word that I would use to describe academic and practitioner perspectives on Africa.
A devotion to the obsessive pursuit of knowledge within a narrow and sharply defined area is one way to view academic research endeavours; in ‘The Bottom Billion’ Paul Collier describes research as an intense but very narrow beam of light. [...]

Today’s entrepreneurs are truly striking, particularly the Silicon Valley brand,  stylizing themselves as romantic cowboys –  roguish yet righteous and idealistic, riding into the sunset with a fist-full of dollars and a great idea.
Yet, anyone who knows anything about “how the West was won” and how fortunes were made and lost at “The Frontier” also [...]

Prof Sue Dopson’s presentation for the Medical Innovation lecture series (‘Why is Innovation in the NHS often hard to achieve?’ – 11th February 2009) effectively unpacked the shared, common conceptualisation of innovation in large healthcare organizations as a predominantly rational, linear and planned process. Presenting her research on Evidence-based change in the NHS several important [...]

Oliver Bernath’s lecture ‘How do you make a good idea successful?’ (4th February) was a candid look at the entrepreneurial spirit and how to capture it. Based on his own experiences, some positive and some negative, Oliver showed that being a successful innovator has much less to do with the idea, and more to do [...]