Over seven months following the COVID-19 outbreak, when looking at the business landscape, organisations have certainly reacted fast to support workers’ health and safety and continue delivering services. Still uncertain, though, is the impact of COVID-19 on the long-term future digital and what measures will help businesses stay relevant to… Read More »Creating the Future Digital Workplace
The Coronavirus pandemic has shaken countries across the globe and has become the trigger to mobilise resources to cope with the virus. Digital technology is one of the resources that have been leveraged upon to transform healthcare. Whilst first reported in December 2019, COVID-19 hit the UK in March 2020.… Read More »Lockdown and Digital Health: Leadership Insights and Innovation from the Frontline
Digital technologies introduced the concept of virtual working to the business world decades ago. Equipped with laptops, smartphones and wi-fi, organisations started slowly adopting virtual teams in business practices to connect geographically dispersed organisational stakeholders in virtual space. Although the shift to virtual teams was driven by the need to… Read More »Peaks and Perils of Long Term Virtual Working: Leadership lessons from the front line.
Whilst companies continually look to improve productivity and drive greater efficiency, the use of new technologies continues to play an increasingly important role in shaping tomorrow’s businesses. Whilst much has been made in the media about the “high risk” of millions of jobs effectively being lost to technologies such as… Read More »Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s Workforce
At our previous Sphere Network discussion on the topic of the Future of Work, we focused predominantly on the extent to which human redundancy, ‘any time, any place’ working and participation in the gig economy are becoming the norm. We also spent time looking at PwC’s ‘four worlds of work… Read More »Digital Transformation: a multi-headed monster
There is a theory that any innovation follows a lifecycle that is shaped like an S-curve and goes through a number of distinct stages: ferment, takeoff, maturity, and discontinuity. There is another stage that comes between fermentation and takeoff, when the fence-sitters are still in the majority, and really aren’t… Read More »Blockchain and the Real World
There was a full house at Newcastle Arts Centre on a sunny but cold May evening where Sphere Network members were treated to a real insight into the present-day sci fi of augmented and virtual reality. We started with a bit of jargon busting from Hedgehog Lab‘s Shaun Allen, who… Read More »What’s bubbling in Augmented and Virtual Reality?
When a passenger recently tweeted @My_Metro to ask abut a service delay, the operator was concerned. “Have there been no announcements?” they asked. “I don’t know,” came the response. “I’ve got my headphones on.” The expectations of consumers increasingly involve spontaneous technical solutions, not simply in communication but in all… Read More »Travel and transport in a connected world
This event was the first in a series of sessions the Sphere Network will be holding to discuss the growth of IoT and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). Facilitated by Charles Sellers, and hosted by Northumbria University, the event was a sell out and we had a full house in… Read More »Internet of Things – Opportunity or Threat?
With a very diverse audience with expertise in many different sectors we gathered to look at different perspectives on the future of work and to explore our own vision & preferences for our future work too. The plan was to explore four perspectives: research and evidence being collected now; how… Read More »Exploring the Future of Work