Read our insights

Why we should all be concerned by falling productivity rates and how businesses should respond Improvements in productivity have driven global growth for decades. Technological advances, new ways of working, and improvements to transport and infrastructure, have all made businesses more efficient and more profitable. At the same time, rising birth rates meant that there were more young people to do the work and relatively fewer old people to draw down pensions. Worldwide, that resulted in people being better off; over the past half-century global incomes almost tripled and millions have been lifted out of poverty. It seemed as if it could go on forever.

Cyber-attacks are set to grow in their number and nature; those companies that embed security measures into their culture will be most successful at fending them off Type ‘cyber-crime’ into any search engine and you’ll get an array of pictures of shady-looking young men in hoodies, hunched over laptops in dark corners. Today, that stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth.

Video case study: UK company Berry White used crowdfunding platform CrowdCube to scale up internationally. Here's how they did it.

Efficiency and cost savings are big business in hospitality and tourism. It's hard to think of another sector which was such an early adopter of environmentally-friendly business practices.

Outsourcing remains widely utilized by businesses across both sides of the Atlantic. The UK is seeing increasing utilization of outsourcing services across a number of industries, including the IT, HR, tax, and finance and accounting (F&A) functions within companies. And a recent survey shows that this continues to be attractive to companies within the USA, UK and EU.

We launched our annual M&A report – ‘Dynamic businesses at the forefront of M&A optimism’ – in Hong Kong last week. The report has provoked a good deal of debate and I just wanted to share two highlights from the data.

GrowthiQ: Insights to help your business grow

I read a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal the other day which suggested that my region could broadly be thought of as two separate entities.

According to our Global Dynamism Index (GDI) 2013, Australia is the economy businesses should be looking at. It climbed to the top of the ranking of 60 of the largest economies in the world this year, up from seventh place in 2012.

Today, it can be more or less instantaneous – creating a new set of opportunities and threats. Digital platforms allow companies to build and scale using teams based anywhere in the world. As a result tech companies are going global from day one. A new wave of support services is also helping tech firms expand across borders. For example in order to manage the complexity of operating across borders, tech companies are increasingly outsourcing back office functions such as tax, compliance, legal, and HR. Tech companies can simply 'switch-on' a back-office team as they enter new jurisdictions.

Depending on their level of business maturity, the challenge for tech companies is slightly different – but the principles remain same: grow or die. To be the next billion-dollar technology brand, CEOs need to figure out how to scale and normalise faster than their rivals – without compromising the DNA of their rivals Protecting the core The good news is that cloud and on-demand enterprise servies are making expansion cheaper and less complex that ever before. Scaling tech companies can use systematising tools like Jira to track issues and manage dispersed software builds. Meanwhile, collaboration tools like Yammer, Skype and Base camp allow for close teamwork between decentralised teams.

Having been Managing Partner of Grant Thornton Ireland for 9 years, I was naturally drawn to the mixed views of Irish businesses in our 2013 Future of Europe report which we released this week. The report revealed much support for what the euro has achieved, but very little appetite for further integration.

Our annual look at M&A sentiment around the world shows that the shift in acquisitive focus amongst businesses uncovered last year – from domestic to cross-border – is becoming increasingly popular as a key strategy for companies looking to facilitate growth.