The MGS Blog

Friday, March 20, 2015

Telecoms improvements draw distant cities nearer (FT article - access/registration needed)

From the FT Big Read article http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb7b77d8-c347-11e4-ac3d-00144feab7de.html

{Hertshten Group, has quietly broken into the top ranks of traders on global derivatives bourses in Chicago, London and Frankfurt. Yet few of its 700 employees live anywhere near these financial centres. Most are in emerging and frontier markets such as India, China, Kenya and Mauritius, as well as Israel. Most still execute orders with a manual mouse click even as rivals are investing millions to shave microseconds off trades... 
Its success shows how the offshoring that began with manufacturing and services is now encroaching on the diehard capitalists of the western trading industry. “Jobs that are disappearing in Chicago are appearing in Nairobi,” says a US-based trading executive.}
(link)

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Research project tips

Some tips for your research project when gathering data.
  • Remember to keep your eyes open to implications of digital, virtual, digitally mediated processes.
  • Innovation also takes many forms, a business process, an understanding, a perspective, or something you discover by looking a contrasts or finding something you didn't expect to see.
  • Changes are particularly illuminating particularly if unexpected. But so too are continuities and stability, particularly if they're unexpected too (like avoiding or resisting change or "innovation" for some reason).