Boards are not just for big companies – the knowledge and contacts that experienced board members bring can help small companies to fast track their growth.

As consumers become more sophisticated, tourism and leisure businesses are no longer simply providing a service but selling an experience. Now research is casting new light on what tourists really want and how to design experiences to meet their expectations.

Renowned business mentor John Bittleston has had a 60-year career in business. In the first of two interviews with Momentum, he recalls how he found his first mentor at the age of 13 when a ploughman taught him how to create a straight furrow across a field by fixing his eyes on a tree at the other end. He discusses his own approach to mentoring and the importance of helping people to find their own ‘tree’.

Team building can be challenging if the members are thousands of miles apart. However research has indicated ways to help virtual teams manage conflicts and become high performers.

What do businesses that grow fast have in common? If we knew that, we could bottle it.

850 million people are active on Facebook every month. 175 million tweets were sent in through Twitter every day in 2012. Our passionate affair with social media has not burned brightly then fizzled. It is developing all the characteristics of a relationship that is here for the long-haul.

Futurists meet a need. In the midst of relentless and constant change, CEOs are looking for tools to manage uncertainty and reduce risk. But that’s not all. Business leaders don’t simply want to prepare for change; they want to influence it.

“Innovation is imperative. But there’s no point being innovative just for the sake of it. You don’t want to re-invent the wheel. If you are doing something that works, keep doing it. But if you spot a gap, you get innovative.”

Big data is the ability to capture and mine data to advance knowledge, predict behaviour and to engage public health and spending issues. And there’s a whole heap of other uses for big data that haven’t been discovered yet. What is big data?