Management Thinking

Contributor profile

Denis McCauley

Denis is our senior technology editor and writes extensively on the impact technology has on people, work and society. He appears regularly in the media on channels such as the BBC and CNBC or in publications like the FT. Denis has worked all over the world and once spent an extended period in Siberia where the temperatures averaged -20 degrees. Still sporting the beard he grew whilst living there, it is a sure sign that all fashion trends eventually come around again.

Doctor-patient-computer relationships

When technology is only as good as the humans operating it

January 18th 2013

When a computer diagnoses a patient or prescribes a treatment, who’s to blame if the diagnosis or treatment proves incorrect? The scenario of computer-generated diagnosis in health care is not the distant future. IBM Watson, the supercomputer which famously defeated the all-time champions of the American quiz show Jeopardy a couple of years back, is part of pilot programmes under way at a handful of hospitals, including the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

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Is your IT department listening?

Perceptions of IT's openness to new ideas are changing

January 10th 2013

When it comes to technology drivers of competitiveness, all things mobile are the centre of gravity in businesses today. Rank and file employees, rather than senior management, are the reason for this. The more that we use our smartphones and tablets for everyday work activities, and the more untethered we become from our desktops, the more interested we are becoming in enabling truly efficient mobile working. And because we are also someone else's customers, we understand the need for companies to make it easier to engage with us.

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The secrets of Asia's education success

Can one region's recipes be replicated elsewhere?

December 7th 2012

In our recently published global education index – one component of The Learning Curve programme of research – three Asian nations (South Korea, Japan and Singapore) and one territory (Hong Kong) take four of the top five places. (Finland occupies the pole position.) Why, we ask in an accompanying article, are Asian nations such strong education performers?

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