For three days in October 2007, the computerized reservations system of the MGM Mirage hotel and casino chain was “radically crashing”, making it impossible to manage their more than 15,400 hotel rooms. No guests could check in or out. When an inspector from the American Automobile Association (AAA) could not check-in at the Bellagio the hotel’s five-diamond AAA rating was put at risk: only 113 hotels of the 31,000 hotels across the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean have this rating. “Heroic” staff saved the day by working more than 12 hours a day and on days off to check guests in and out manually in order to achieve some level of business continuity. (more…)

In this talk Professor Angell describes creativity and the process of innovation, focusing on what goes into making the next “greatest thing since sliced bread”. Apart from saying what innovation is, he will also talk about what it is not! He will stress that creativity is not about a few lone thinkers on individual journeys to their own personal “light bulb” moments. (more…)

Professor Angell sets out his warning to the unsuspecting and thus unprotected High Net-worth Individuals that governments are about to “squeeze them until their pips squeak”. (more…)

In this talk Professor Angell will give an overview of his latest book Science’s First Mistake: Delusions in pursuit of Theory, written jointly with his colleague Dr. Dionysios Demetis. He will point out the conceit of modernism that is grounded in the arrogance of scientific certainty. It is only human vanity that deludes us into believing that with scientific method, our intelligence would show us the truth about things: that we could be indisputable masters of all we survey. (more…)

Many managers are suffering from the madness of our age: ‘obsessive compulsive neurosis.’ These ‘methodolics’ believe that the world can be made into a tidy place when approached with tidy methods, implemented by tidy minds, using the icon of tidiness, the computer. So says Professor Ian Angell, who for the past twenty years has become increasingly concerned with the way computers are perceived in business, and in society in general. He has come to agree with Pablo Picasso, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers;” and answers are simply not enough. (more…)

Professor Angell gives his forecasts for the effect of computerization and global communication networks on both political and commercial governance. He relates this to the central position of information systems within the whole spectrum of management, to consider ‘the nature of work’ in ‘the office of the future’ and the ‘enterprise of the future’. Angell finishes by initiating a debate on the likely impact of these emergent technologies on governmental and organizational strategies. He is adamant that all the institutions of the Age of the Machine will have to mutate in the Information Age or die! (more…)

In his talk Professor Angell takes a long hard look at the present state of the relationship between business (particularly banking) and the anti-money laundering (A-ML) regulations. The International Monetary Fund estimates the global scale of money laundering as somewhere between $600 billion and $1.5 trillion annually. Now that’s a lot of money! (more…)