Elevate - for business leaders
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Culture
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
BBC,
Manchester,
Media City,
Pacific Quay,
Glasgow,
Monkey Tennis,
TV formats
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: There is a great game played by TV formats producers called Monkey Tennis. Look into it – the speed and creative invention, its similarity to the accelerated brutality of consumer demand – and you will see product development across any business in the shape-shifting 2010 economy.
Here’s how to play…
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Culture
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
recession,
entrepreneurs,
economy,
BBC,
future,
funding,
George Osborne,
trends,
public sector,
creative industries,
gigonomics,
profit analysis,
freelance,
Tina Brown
In a recession, everyone, and every company, has to become a freelance hustler, says Alex Connock, chief executive of Ten Alps PLC. Here he explains why…
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Friday, April 30, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Culture
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
management,
dreams,
House of Lords,
creative industries,
ideas,
zeitgeist,
profitability,
blame,
NESTA,
David Puttnam
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: Not everyone in the House of Lords is a boring old has-been looking to pick up a £200 a day attendance fee – as Lord Puttnam comprehensively proved yesterday [28 April 2010] in an inspirational speech to the NESTA creative business mentor network about the laws of creative business.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Culture
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
Ten Alps,
digital,
Facebook,
online,
social media,
Aston Martin,
Coca-Cola,
tool,
Google News,
monopoly,
Barclays Football,
Disney,
Ning
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: At last Sunday’s match between Manchester United and Liverpool, up flashed an advert on the hoardings for Barclays Football’s Facebook page. It runs competitions; it drives traffic to both Barclays’ premier league site and indeed www.barclays.com; and it has 97,541 fans. Sorry, 97,546 – five more came on in the two minutes I was on there.
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Monday, February 22, 2010
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
investment,
Digital Britain,
digital,
BBC,
Media City,
TV,
regional,
culture,
North,
Mark Thompson,
animation,
Northwest
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps, reports on the media industry for the Grant Thornton blog. This month, he looks at how media power is being redistributed outside London with certain cities and regions reinventing themselves as the UK’s new media hubs…
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Friday, January 22, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Finance
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
Ten Alps,
Bob Geldof,
CEO,
presentations,
Edinburgh,
Steve Jobs,
speech,
skills,
persuasion,
Apple,
speaking,
Channel4,
PowerPoint,
MacTaggart Lecture,
oratory,
Royal Television Society
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: Next Wednesday (27 January), Steve Jobs of Apple will stand up on stage in California and (we’re told) introduce the new Mac tablet computer. It’s easily the most anticipated electronic product event since the iPhone, which actually he launched, too.
Jobs will have no lectern, no notes or autocue, and a cinema-screen-sized presentation with barely one short phrase per slide. It will be as different as you can get from a boring man reading out a PowerPoint at a trade convention. It will be the CEO as orator.
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Finance
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
investment,
Ten Alps,
government,
tax,
PBR,
AIM,
tax relief,
Pre-Budget Report,
EIS,
funding,
television,
advertising,
Peter Mandelson,
film,
X Factor,
policy,
subsidies
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps reports on the media industry for the Grant Thornton blog. This month, he takes the pulse of the UK media sector and finds signs of life, but says the government is the key to unlocking more funds to help its development – through clever tax measures.
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Thursday, November 26, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
awards,
Ten Alps,
Facebook,
Manchester,
talent,
television,
RTS,
creative
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: Franklin D Roosevelt knew enough about financial success to rescue the US economy from the Great Depression. But he also said: ‘Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.’
That was confirmed to me three times last week…
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
Ros Simmons,
entrepreneurs,
links,
VIE at home,
Ten Alps,
diary,
VIE,
retail,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
This summer, the Elevate blog followed two leading UK entrepreneurs to find out what CEO life is like, especially during a recession. For three months, Alex Connock, chief executive of Ten Alps PLC, and Ros Simmons, head of VIE at home, posted a weekly Entrepreneur’s Diary. Now the diary is full, we look back over the highlights of their time and get an update following their summer of blogging…
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
Ten Alps,
ITV,
Audi,
Real Madrid,
Michael Mann,
Miami Vice,
Channel 4,
Manchester United,
search engine optimizers,
SEO,
content producers,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: On Saturday night we went to a Manchester United party – held in a golf club. It was quite like a normal golf club party any time from 1950 onwards, in that there were a lot of rich men making polite conversation, a glass of bubbly in hand and a dressed-up woman on their arm.
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Monday, September 28, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
diary,
BBC,
Manchester,
Media City,
Diary,
creativity,
Entrepreneur’s
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: Manchester doesn’t just have a spectacular new Media City. It has a new branding too – ‘original modern.’
Nice catchphrase: but how to deliver?
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Tuesday, September 08, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
Ten Alps,
diary,
retirement,
TV,
work-life balance,
Peter Reid,
Ryan Giggs,
Kevin Keegan,
exercise,
football,
Peter Fincham,
famil,
sport,
Entrepreneur’s Diary,
entrepreneurs,
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: ALDERLEY EDGE, CHESHIRE – Ryan Giggs is next to us in the trendy Gusto Italian restaurant, plus entourage. I bet he doesn’t worry about work-life balance, or count if the work he does for Man United falls within the European 36.5 weekly hours working directive.
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
diary,
Edinburgh TV Festival,
James Murdoch,
web presence,
BBC, multi-platform,
Ten Alps, Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps : EDINBURGH – This was always going to be a TV festival in turmoil, with Big Brother on the way out (two years too late), Google capturing ad revenues from commercial broadcasting, and so much more to discuss.
But James Murdoch’s keynote MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International TV Festival really was incendiary, achieving exactly what it was supposed to. It was bold and well delivered – and it split the audience right down the middle.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
recession,
entrepreneurs,
Ten Alps,
diary,
free,
content,
Hollywood,
internet,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: LOS ANGELES – This week, many of the people around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a bellwether of American showbusiness even before The Eagles put it on the cover of Hotel California, seem to be North London property developers. One I know said there was so little business at home that he had taken his family on a six-week tour of America. That’s the way to play it.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: business,
Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
investment,
research,
Digital Britain,
Ten Alps,
diary,
content,
accounting rules,
Creative,
TV production,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: A key element of Britain’s strategy to emerge from recession is Digital Britain and its expensive, taxation-funded digital pipework. Filling that capacity – which otherwise is a waste of taxpayers’ money – is about content creation: sites for people to use, programmes for them to watch and hear. Which is fine, except for certain accounting rules…
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Friday, July 31, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
entrepreneurs,
Digital Britain,
statistics,
Ten Alps,
diary,
Bob Geldof,
annual report,
Rachel Johnson,
Toby Young,
Companies Act,
business development,
David Steel,
Michael Lyons,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps : Development, development. This week – to paraphrase the Fast Show – I have mainly been doing business development. In the year of a Plc with March year-end, May is about results, June is roadshow, but July and August are free to just really grow the business. It’s the steak of entrepreneurship with no fries, it’s hard work and it’s fun.
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
video-rich online magazine,
business contract publishing,
customer publishing,
diary,
TV production company,
dbda,
Ten Alps,
Newton TV,
Teachers TV,
trade media,
Kent TV ,
Digital Britain ,
entrepreneurs ,
Business Today,
Bob Geldof,
online publishing,
multiplatform contract publishing,
Link2,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
It’s the halfway point in our Entrepreneur’s Diary series, which follows two leading CEOs behind the scenes of their work. Inspired by Grant Thornton’s My Big Decision podcasts, we’re asking them what has been the biggest decision of their career so far.
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps : I’ve made a lot of big decisions, though perhaps not the same number of great ones…
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
Ten Alps,
diary,
Michael Jackson,
Bob Geldof,
Donald Trump,
Roger Graef,
networking,
Live Aid,
Murder Mansion,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: During the Great Depression, a director of Jimmy Cagney movies called Raoul Walsh had dinner at newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon mansion. The guests: J Edgar Hoover, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, General MacArthur, Howard Hughes, Somerset Maugham and many of Hollywood’s most beautiful actresses.
Now that’s how you build a media empire!
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
Ten Alps,
diary,
competition,
dbda,
Dawn Boyfield,
niche,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
Alex Connock, CEO, Ten Alps: Churchill – the wartime prime minister and holder of nude bathtub meetings, not Churchill insurance or Vic Reeves’s dog – once said: “No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account.” Dead right.
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Entrepreneur's Diary,
Business
| Tags: Alex Connock,
media,
entrepreneurs,
Digital Britain,
Ten Alps,
diary,
Bob Geldof,
Accountancy TV,
Entrepreneur’s Diary
For 12 weeks, two CEOs – one male, one female – will be writing a behind-the-scenes of business diary for us. VIE at home’s Ros Simmons kicked off the series. Now Alex Connock of Ten Alps, a multiplatform factual media company he co-founded with Bob Geldof, joins in. First up, a quick Q&A…
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