The event, hosted by my good friend Malcolm Scovil (co-founder of Calmworks), and Belinda Raynes (partner at Forgather) explored how companies like Google, EY (and many others) reaped the benefits of implementing mindfulness (a practice of drawing your attention to the present moment whilst acknowledging and accepting your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations) in their organisations.
The many speakers, which included Michael Acton Smith (founder of Moshi Monsters), Dr. Tamara Russell (neuroscientist and clinical psychologist), Peter Read (Google Ventures) and his daughter Jade Read (Entrepreneur First) told us their stories.
It may not come as a surprise that many fashion companies have focussed heavily on the front-end of their e-commerce operations; the quality of consumer-facing interfaces is essential when it comes to branding, aesthetics, and UX – all extremely important when your consumers associate your organisation with creativity, style, and chic.
But are fashion companies doing enough when it comes to their back-end systems?
A billion-plus dollar pre-IPO tech start-up (or unicorn) was, only a few years ago, something of a myth.
Now, however, unicorns seem to be popping up everywhere including fashion (Farfetch has just raised $86 million valuing the company at $1 billion).
In 2013 there were 38 tech unicorns is total, today there are more than 80!
But some have voiced concerns that the growing number of unicorns may be indicative of a second dot-com bubble – especially since a fairly high percentage of them are yet to generate revenue, yet alone profit.
So why are there so many of them? And should we be worried?
