The Portfolio Executives

I started out as a Portfolio Executive as I wanted to help businesses to reach their true potential and growth, and generate profits and employment by sharing my decades of experience in commercialising disruptive technologies.

My career started in telecommunications in Liverpool as a graduate trainee, working for Plessey in the international sales department to develop export opportunities for System X.

I left Plessey to join GEC to work on the launch of an innovative modular desktop office computer system called the NGen, which was built like “Lego” bricks which we branded Mosaic. I developed the concept to launch the “Mosaic” on a 6-city roadshow to highlight how people in an office could work together to create a document with our integrated word processing, graphics and spreadsheet package. This was the first office computer system with a “windows” interface and “office” productivity tool and mouse!!

Along the way I have learnt to never assume anything, be honest, straightforward and approachable. Always test your idea to ensure that what you see and feel is what your market and customer sees and wants. Don’t ignore the feedback, however much you want to, because it will lead to failure not success. Tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.

This works for me as people know I’m honest and straightforward, so they trust my opinion and insights and expect me to challenge them.

Going forward I hope to continue to help people and businesses become successful and world-beating businesses.