Business and Economics

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor “It all began as an inspired accident”, says Duncan James,  a designer for a leading Clerkenwell-based advertising agency. “Doodling is a creative sanctuary for all graphic artists, but during one particularly tedious client briefing, something fascinating started to happen. A cartoon character, began to emerge from my idle scribbling.” From that day on clunkydoodles was born, out of sheer boredom. After months of development Duncan posted his results on Instagram and the response was overwhelming,...

  By Magnus Alm, CMO, Palringo There are more than 1,000,000 apps in the App Store and the same goes for Google PLAY. Needless to say, there is a discoverability issue for developers. A few lucky ones are able to get that global hit which turns into a viral phenomenon, such as Flappy Bird. But what about the rest? Millions, if not billions, of funds are invested into developing mobile games each year. There is good reason for that. Apple...

 By Dr. Emma Mardlin and John Clayton, Trainers and Practioners of Mind Body Medicine, clinical psychotherapy, NLP, health and well-being. Workplace stress is an increasingly prevalent and serious issue that eats away at profits, dramatically reduces efficiency and makes good staff hand in their notice, something most employers are no doubt familiar with. However this isn’t something we should just accept as ‘part and parcel’ of work because ‘stress’ is just the beginning of a very negative cycle in terms...

  By Gemma Johnson CEO of MyFamilyClub.co.uk Everyone from Angelina Jolie to Alan Sugar seems to have strong opinions about working mums – but new research from Microsoft has underlined the vital role we play in the workplace. Over 500 British businesses and 2,000 mums were recently surveyed by Microsoft, and the key findings highlighted what us mums have known all along: we’re valuable assets to any business. Nearly a third of bosses surveyed said mothers managed their time better,...

By Mark Edwards, General Manager at www.rocketlawer.co.uk, an online legal service providing businesses and families with easy-to-use, professional legal documents and affordable help from specialist lawyers. The world around us is changing and the way we do things has transformed over the past few years. Thanks to the internet, we are now able to access almost anything we need or want and almost without any geographical boundaries. Many service industries, from high-street shopping to travel have modernised in the process...

By Guy Dorrell Every turn of the economic cycle seems to bring another fad; 2007, just before the crash, saw food miles as the ‘must talk about’ subject of the moment. The idea that seafood should be fished from Scottish waters, shipped to Thailand for processing and then shipped back to Scotland for sale appeared absurd, because it was. Then came the economic downturn, with the first run on a bank in 200 years, and food miles slipped down everyone’s...

By Haridos Apostolides, US Correspondent The end of April saw the proposed federal minimum wage increase to $10.10 per hour defeated by a Republican-led filibuster in the United States’ Senate, all because it is claimed not to be the job of the federal government to decide salaries. The vote, however, wasn’t about giving millions of working Americans a pay raise but rather to decide if the Senate should merely discuss whether they deserve one. Democrats and Republicans live for divisive, partisan...

By Paul Johnson The government has lauded the recent economic recovery and ‘rebalancing the economy’ has been one of the popular phrases of the Coalition. But 80 per cent of new private sector jobs are in London (Centre for Cities, 2014) and many people in the North are not feeling the effects of the recent economic recovery. One of the reasons the pre-2008 model of economic growth failed is that the UK relied too heavily on public and private borrowing...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic  “I'm going to start a revolution from my bed” – Noel Gallagher Greece is the birthplace of most good ideas. From science to technology, athletics to democracy, it has long nurtured great minds and great concepts, and it was a Greek sunset in early July last year that set in motion ideas that would become The London Economic. The plan was to make a digital newspaper that would become a platform for...