Welcome to my page
Welcome to my new page about the changes that the business world is caught up in, and how bold entrepreneurs are grasping unique opportunities to disrupt the way things work.
I should warn you that my starting point is a sceptical one.
I always say that I report on technology, but I don't do it. I hate phones - fixed line, mobile and smart. I don't watch television, don't use tablets, don't drive and I still send cheques. I can't abide games of any kind and I cannot grasp the appeal of social networking. (I do ride a bike, but that's got horribly trendy in recent years.)
All that negativity ought to undermine my credibility as a reporter on business trends, driven as they have become by computers, connectivity, social updating and rapid change.
But maybe not. Even in journalism, there is room for standing back and staring.
That, anyway, is the beat I have been lucky enough to be given by the BBC. After years of chasing the hourly headlines, the exchange rates and the share prices on the screens, I have been relieved of that particular duty.
The programmes I report for are fortunate enough to be absolved of topicality and news reaction. What we hope that many of them will do is to gaze just over the horizon and pick up significant factors affecting business, work and life as a whole - just before they become common knowledge and jump into the daily headlines.
We can't do that all the time, of course. But it may be a useful compass point by which to steer the programmes.
And that future-leaning eclecticism is also the beat I hope to tread in this commentary - trying to pick up the trends that seem significant and sort them out from the chaff that makes the daily business headlines.
I cannot promise to be right much of the time, but I can certainly promise to be wrong. The observations themselves won't necessarily be big ones. But they may join together in significant and complex ways, if you stay with me.
Meanwhile, I am quite convinced that something rather large is happening to the way business has worked in the world for the past century.
The era of mass production that dominated most of our lives for most of the 20th Century is now being replaced by something yet to be defined but much more individualised, personalised, interactive.
Just as the introduction of printing into Europe 500 years ago laid the foundation for the modern world, so the coming of the internet is redefining almost everything we've become familiar with all over again. And nobody knows where it will lead.
It's a big change for business, and I am not sure that many conventional corporations have woken up to its implications for them, their customers and the world in general.
These considerations mean that there probably will not be a lot about great big business in this column. Big companies are perfectly well covered everywhere else. It is on the periphery of business where the most interesting and disruptive things are happening.
Whatever the economic climate, these are thrilling times for entrepreneurs seeking to transform the way the world works, and for start-ups who see opportunities where established companies can get excited only about brand extensions.
That's the theme I hope to be exploring in this space: an unabashed traditionalist all at sea in a world of change. Hoping against hope that all this uncertainty may eventually make things just a little bit better.