Pages tagged: 'Research'
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Too Late for the Gold Rush ?
With smartphone sales stagnating and social media in the news for all the wrong reasons, it seems we’ve fallen out of love with technology. But isn’t innovation always in vogue?
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Quantum Supremacy
A few weeks ago Google announced that it was close to achieving “quantum supremacy”. Maybe the machines are about to take over. Actually, Google has just made the next stage quantum computing chip (called Bristlecone) that has 72 bits. John Martinis, who heads Google’s effort, says it’s “pretty likely” that the new chip can achieve “quantum supremacy.” But what does this mean?
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How Long is Long Enough?
In a couple of years’ time, the world will be marking the 50 years anniversary of the first moon landing. Arguably mankind’s greatest technological achievement, Apollo represented the pinnacle of societal endeavour and technical advancement. The legacy of the US’s ambitions spawned numerous technologies and a culture of can-do innovation. Many argue that we are now too short term in our outlook. But is this true for investors?
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ARMing for Innovation
Within weeks of the UK’s Brexit vote, Japan’s Softbank announced that it had agreed to acquire the darling of the UK tech scene – ARM Holdings - for £24bn. At a stroke, not only is this the largest purchase of British innovation but also removes the independence of the last of the UK’s “super unicorn” (i.e. >$10bn value) company. With the acquisition has the outlook improved – or worsened – for UK innovation?
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A Vintage Year?
The Business Insider publication has a bit of a reputation for putting together lists as well as choosing 14 as its favourite number. So this year we’ve had The 14 Trends that Will Make Someone Billions of Dollars and The 14 Best Companies and so on. But the latest list – The 14 Most Exciting Tech Launches in 2015 - are leaving some lukewarm and it seems that we’ll have to find the next big thing from elsewhere.
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Revealing more than you’d Like
When you press the Like button on Facebook, you may be revealing more than you thought. The Like button was first released in 2009 and since then well over 1 trillion Likes have been registered. According to work from Cambridge University and Microsoft Research, it turns out that what people choose to “Like” on Facebook can be used to determine a whole host of personal characteristics.
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Better Than Average
Are you better than average at spotting which are the best tech investments to make? Almost every tech investor believes that they have a particular insight or edge than make them better than the norm. In reality, believing you’re better than average is all psychology and not based in reality at all. However, more data from what really makes successful investors is starting to pop the self belief bubble.
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How Startups Can Avoid Failure
Startups and small companies are the engine room of the economy. In a report commissioned by Santander, SME’s also proved the most resilient during the recession and were by far the biggest job creators in the private sector, accounting for a full two-thirds of new UK employment. Yet, with so much replying on startups, why is it that 90% of tech startups fail? After years of work, real data is now becoming available.
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Connectivity and Contentment
Indonesia is the latest country to announce an ambitious Fibre To The Premises rollout, promising 10Gb down and 2.5Gb upload speeds. Even with a budget of $100bn, it’s a daunting task, particularly that Indonesia is targeting 20 million homes spread over 900 inhabited islands. Indonesia is also in the news as it has topped another poll for apparently being the happiest country to live in, according to a survey from Ipsos. Connectivity beings many benefits, but is contentment one of them?
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How Big Should Big Data Be?
Big Data is another one of those terms that’s been over hyped, but underneath the rhetoric, there are continual advances in pulling out ever more pertinent information from masses of data. Yet, how come one of the biggest record databases in the UK (the NHS Care.data, now delayed for a further 6 months due to user concerns) has got into such a mess? Has big data got too big for it’s boots?
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Complexity is the Hidden Killer
One of the great accomplishments of the technology sector is it’s ability to make increasingly complex systems easy to use. Whether you think of Windows, Skyboxes or iPhones, you are using multiple layers of technology to convert the simple things that we can do (swipe, tap, press) into fiendishly complex operations. But are we like the hungry caterpillar, gorging ourselves on each new temptation without thinking of the consequences?
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Being Fast Moving Does Not Mean “Proceed Directly to Go”
According to latest figures there is a record number of technology start-ups appearing not only in the UK, but in Europe, the US and Asia. As the economic crisis of the late noughties starts to ease there’s a sense of needing to take advantage of cheap money before recovery starts to edge up pressure on interest rates. But is there time to get a technology start-up going and proceed all the way to exit within this economic cycle?
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Cambridge secures £50M of innovation funding
Cambridge has long been a hotspot for innovative thinking (that was a Fenland apple that landed n Newton’s head) and was one of the first locations to realise the commercial potential of great ideas.
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