My family and I recently moved back to New York from London entailing the usual house office and school changes. As much as I was dreading the hassle associated with forwarding mail changing bank accounts and packing boxes I have to say it is a very healthy thing to do. Over the last 20-odd years Read More

What goes on in Sun Valley stays in Sun Valley. Those are the ground rules and I may be one of the few attendees of this the best organized and most rewarding business conference to respect the wishes of our hosts. However without revealing the "who said what " I set forth below my very Read More

Some of the readers of this blog have asked me why I do not write more about business issues that directly affect my work at Thomson Reuters. This is a very fair question especially since I find the issues raised by the digital content markets we serve among the most interesting business topics of our Read More

British Airways which is probably the company I know best as a customer after my various broadband providers recently went through a period of pretty savage attacks in the UK media for their serious operational problems opening Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Some of this was deserved as for several years the answer to all service Read More

I have been reading an excellent book I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter which represents a rare departure for me from the land of good fiction. Hofstadter who is a Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University achieved fame in the weird circles I frequent for his first major book Read More

The well-worn advice that polite guests should avoid politics and religion at the dinner table surely must apply with renewed vigor to the chief executive of an information company which prides itself upon and is constitutionally bound to maintain its independence and freedom from bias. The polite and editorially-minded shall not be disappointed in me. Read More

This year my friend and internet ad pioneer Stephen Klein did not come to the Chelsea Flower Show. This was a shame not only because I like to spend time with Steve but also because it reduced by 50 percent the number of attendees at the Show’s opening night who actually care about flowers. Fortunately Read More

This post responds to a couple of comments on prior entries. First there was a request to comment upon emerging markets in general and Brazil’s Vasco da Gama football club in particular; second another reader pointed out that the Thomson Reuters concept of "intelligent information" requires engagement with people and questioned how we would seek Read More

I thought I’d share with the readers of this blog a brief thought-piece I wrote explaining why Thomson Reuters is focused on providing what we call "intelligent information." The subject is a bit closer to my "day" job than I usually like to write about on this blog but these days my day job is Read More

As has probably been evident I have been pretty busy over the past few weeks attending to the birth of an extraodinary new company. OKAY I am partial and the company is not exactly "new" as Thomson Reuters is the offspring of two proud parents with long corporate histories. I usually try to avoid talking Read More

I was not long in the workforce before I started hearing a lot about a certain mythic state of equipoise called the "work-life balance." The core message seemed to be that "work" was something odious to be minimized because the only worthwhile "living" occurred out of work hours. Indeed the data certainly support the claim Read More

I continue to learn interesting lessons observing my kids playing with technology and new media. My son Walter age 8 has suddenly woken up to the joy of sports for young boys. He plays soccer and tennis skis and swims well and in general seems quite athletic. This pleases his aging athlete dad no end. Read More

According to a recent book The Geography of Bliss by former New York Times reporter Eric Weiner the British rank among the least happy people on earth. Weiner writes: "In Britain the happy are few and suspect. For the British happiness is a transatlantic import. And by transatlantic they mean American. And by American they Read More

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen explained why it is so difficult for large, successful companies to innovate and grow new businesses. Professor Christensen’s insightful analysis is no longer controversial.  We understand why a large computer company like IBM needed to separate and ring-fence its entry into the personal computer market, and conversely, why so Read More

I gave the follwing speech this week at the Software Information Industry Association. I chose to be intentionally provocative setting out an argument that traditional consumer media companies (newspapers broadcast TV etc) should not be publicly owned because the public equity markets do not have the patience to support a company through the transition to Read More

The third party service that hosts my blog has been down for a couple of days so I am only now posting items from last week’s Annual Meeting in Davos. The mood was a bit somber despite sunny weather in the Alps. One commentator observed that the Fat Cats who attend Davos are always in Read More

It has become fashionable to deride the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos as an endless talkfest or worse a secret cabal of evil tyrants bent on controlling the world. For several years violent protesters sought to disrupt the Meeting as if breaking the windows of McDonalds on the Promenade could turn back the Read More

I have been lucky over the year-end holidays to spend a lot of time with my eight- and nine- year olds. The single best part of vacation for me is not to be bound by a rigid schedule and not to have the Blackberry’s vibrating syncopations set the rhythm of my day.    Over the weekend, Read More

Much has been written about how the music business is in terminal decline and how there is no longer any money to be made in identifying nurturing and recording talented musicians and then distributing and otherwise commercializing their music. Things have certainly been tough in the business for the past several years but I am Read More

Over the past several years some in the British media have suggested that I should have better things to do than spend my time on Facebook or other social networking or web services. I would certainly agree with them if this amounted to more than an hour or two a week or occurred mostly during Read More

I am a big Facebook fan. I like the simplicity of the model; I admire the openness of the platform; and I think Mark Zuckerberg really grasped the natural tendency of humans to affiliate themselves in groups academic professional or social. However when I hear rumors of a $10-15 billion valuation I am immediately reminded Read More

This morning Reuters hosted a very timely and important discussion on the impact of the ongoing credit/liquidity crisis on the financial stability of major economies. After a warm introduction by Prime Minister Gordon Brown Alan Greenspan former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve shared his thoughts on the crisis. These remarks have been well reported Read More

For those of us who are life-long Mets fans it has been painful to see them self-destruct in September. However the eternal optimist in me is not yet thinking of next season. Instead I am already enjoying the thought of a calm month of October not spent staying up late in London hunched over my Read More

Innovation through the application of leading edge technologies has always played an important part in Reuters business and it remains for me a cornerstone of business strategy in the digital information market. I have often said that Reuters has proven itself "light and agile on its technology feet" by reinventing its value proposition each generation Read More

Some of you have noticed that I have not posted in a long time. I am not dead nor is there a conspiracy by the Reuters PR or Legal Departments to silence me. The truth is that I have been very busy working on the Thomson-Reuters acquisition and when not at work playing with my Read More