Blogs

Worldpay takeover just the start of a sea change for the cashless society

The Telegraph – Worldpay takeover just the start of a sea change for the cashless society Lucy Burton – 8 July 2017 IT IS hardly a household name, in fact few people will have ever heard of Worldpay. Yet, the...

More than rules: why the Conservative manifesto could be right on data | Liz Brandt, CEO

This election has been one of the most turbulent in memory. For the Conservative party, it has been dominated by furore around the ‘dementia tax’, Theresa May’s abstention from the debates and repeated claims of strength and stability – not...

GDPR, one year out: Ctrl-Shift calls on businesses to act now or become tomorrow’s Yahoo | Press release

25th May 2017: Ctrl-Shift, a consultancy that helps businesses grow and innovate in the digital economy, has today warned that no big business will be fully ready for GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which will come into force one year from...

Our personal data is being manipulated for political gain – we need to take control of it

Politics has long been a dirty game. Way back in 1828, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson fought in what is considered the dirtiest election ever, where the mudslinging Jackson accused Adams of providing a young virgin for the Tsar...

A view from an ICO soapbox | Will Kemble-Clarkson, Ctrl-Shift

A couple of weeks back, I was invited by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to come and give a ten-minute soapbox at their annual conference, a few folk have asked me to share what was said; it went something like...

Who dares wins | Liz Brandt, CEO

Last week, America’s House of Representatives made a landmark decision on consumer privacy. The House repealed Obama-era rules put in place by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), rules which govern Internet Service Providers (ISPs) access to and use of consumers’...

Me2B makes waves at Mobile World Congress ’17 | Liz Brandt, CEO

This week has seen Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 deliver the latest and greatest new technology, new services and initiatives, from the biggest and most successful brands – the great and good, from telco, social, banking and more. What is...

GDPR: spend it and sink it or spend it and grow it | Liz Brandt, CEO

The General Data Protection Act (GDPR) is the initial regulatory response to a fundamental shift happening at the heart of our economy: the digital (and data) revolution. Digital has irrevocably changed, and will continue to change, the way in which...

The Personal Information Economy – Making It Happen

On Thursday 29 September delegates from over 400 big businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators, investors, policy makers and regulators gathered for Ctrl-Shift’s 2016 Personal Information Economy conference on Achieving Growth Through Trust. Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s new Information Commissioner, summed up...

Addressing fundamental shifts in value

This Thursday September 29 over 400 delegates will gather to learn about and share insights on how to achieve growth through trust in the personal information economy. A wide range of organisations will attend from all sectors. They include AA,...

Dollars and sense in the Me2B economy | eWise

Financial services are the epicentre of the Me2B economy. What end-users buy, sell, save, borrow, and when, are finger-print unique. For this data to be valuable it must be intuitive, scalable, predictive, and completely inclusive of the consumer’s entire financial...

Shifting from B2C to Me2B

Next week, we (Ctrl-Shift) hold our annual Personal Information Economy (PIE) conference on Achieving Growth Through Trust. We talk about the Personal Information Economy (PIE) because we are in the midst of a fundamental shift in the way our economy...

A new organising principle

When steam power began to make way to electricity, factory owners would rip out the steam engines at the heart of their factory and replace them with electric engines instead. It took a while for them to realise that electricity...

The revolution in identity | Ctrl-Shift

Millions of people every day have to do identify themselves to service providers and reassure these providers that it really is them. They do so to varying degrees of assurance: sometimes an email address and password is enough. Sometimes, they...

The ad-blocking crisis – and beyond

The recent spat between AdBlock Plus and Facebook exemplifies a challenge – and opportunity – now facing the entire online advertising industry, which is struggling with a simple but profound dilemma that goes like this: People love free services (like...

The rise of trusted agents

In last week’s blog we talked about the consumer decision-making revolution that’s transforming relationships between customers and companies. Decision-support is becoming a service in its own right, we said. A service that adds tremendous value (if done well, in a...

The decision making revolution hits home

Last week British Gas reported that it had lost 400,000 customers over the year, leading to a drop in profits. It’s not alone amongst the ‘Big Six’ energy providers. The week before SSE announced it had lost 370,000 customers. Why...

Unpeeling the layers of trust

For two years now we (Ctrl-Shift) have organized conferences that focus on the importance of trust. Why are we banging this drum so much? The simple is that we think many companies are not seeing, never mind addressing, fundamental...

What does leadership in the new economy look like?

What does it take to make a sustainable, trust-based, innovative data driven economy? Two things stuck out from our (Ctrl-Shift’s)recent global consultation exercise for Facebook on this subject, launched in Amsterdam two weeks ago. The first is that trade-off thinking...

Facebook: a new paradigm for personal data?

For the last eighteen months we (Ctrl-Shift) have been working with Facebook on a global consultation exercise to discover what needs to be done to create a sustainable, trust-driven data economy. We’ve talked to privacy experts, lawyers, consumer advocates, regulators,...

When Walled Gardens are a good idea

Guest blog by Nick Lambert, Chief Operating Officer, MaidSafe Although we complain about our loss of privacy, daily intrusion from unwanted ads and accusations of “Big Brother” laws most consumers believe the current “Interweb” is good enough. It offers “just enough”...