Miles Roberts has transformed DS Smith since becoming chief executive in 2010 and made cardboard boxes interesting. Today, DS Smith is a FTSE 100 company that makes recyclable packaging and paper, spanning 34 countries with 30,000 staff, including 36 sites and 4,300 employees in the UK.

In the latest episode of Business Studies, Roberts, the sixth longest-serving boss in the FTSE 100, explains why packaging is way more interesting than you might think, how DS Smith got caught-up in the chaos around Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget, how he became a FTSE 100 chief executive after leaving school at 16 and why longevity is an underrated asset at the top of a business.

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Rishi Khosla, the co-founder and chief executive of OakNorth, tells the story of how OakNorth bid for Silicon Valley Bank UK during a frantic weekend in March 2023 and why the eventual deal with HSBC could be bad for innovation and start-ups.

Aside from recent events, Khosla talks about building OakNorth into the most valuable fintech in the UK, the challenges it has faced since then, and his concerns about listing in London. Finally, the OakNorth boss sets the record straight on whether he is a donor to the Conservative Party or not…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Not so long ago Waitrose and John Lewis were lauded as model retailers. They had enjoyed years of rising sales and profits and, as part of the John Lewis Partnership, were owned by their employees. But now Waitrose is battling to turnaround falling sales and the partnership is losing money. Is being owned by staff part of the problem? Has it meant that Waitrose has been too slow to react to changes in how we shop? James Bailey, the boss of Waitrose, addresses those questions in the latest episode of Business Studies. It is an issue that is even more important after reports emerged following the interview that the John Lewis Partnership could sell a minority stake to an external investor and dilute its ownership model. Bailey also discusses the status of the Waitrose brand, the future of food, what he learned from his mentor Mike Coupe, and why he nearly got fired by Sainsbury’s for promoting flexible working…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Andre Lacroix thinks that just about every major crisis in the 21st century was caused by a failure of leadership. He is so concerned about the quality of leadership that he has written a book about it - Leadership with Soul. Why is understanding risk so important for leaders? What can be learned from Ayrton Senna? Why is Toyota such an incredible organisation? Why did Lacroix go from wanting to being a surgeon to wanting to be a CEO? And why is London still the perfect place to base an international business? Find out all of that and more in the last episode of Business Studies as we speak to Lacroix, who has been chief executive of FTSE 100 company Intertek since 2015 and before that was at car dealer Inchcape, Disneyland Paris, Burger King and PepsiCo.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Does Northern Gritstone, an organisation investing in promising start-ups coming out of Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, hold the key to levelling up the UK economy?

In this episode of Business Studies we speak to Duncan Johnson, chief executive of Northern Gritstone, about his ambitions to build a new Silicon Valley in northern England, why businesses in the north haven’t been supported enough, the terrible state of the transport network, and how to spot a promising business…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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“Who holds back the electric car?” sang the Stonecutters in a 1995 Simpsons episode. You could ask the same question in 2023 Britain. The electric car revolution still feels a long way off for many people - cars are too expensive and it is difficult to find a working point charging point.

But in this episode of Business Studies, Erik Fairbairn, the founder and chief executive of Pod Point, one of the largest providers of electric car charging points in the UK, explains why we all be buying electric vehicles by 2030, why criticism about the reliability and lack of charging points is unfair, and how he created the business more than a decade ago when the prospect of any electric vehicles on the road was just a dream.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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James Daunt founded his own independent book shop and then rescued two nationwide chains that were heading for oblivion - Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the United States. He has arguably done more than anyone else to ensure the survival of the local bookshop despite the rise of Amazon and e-reading. He is also one of the few business leaders to have enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. In this episode of Business Studies Daunt explains with remarkable clarity how he did it and why he quit a successful career in banking to run bookshops.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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The UK has world-leading universities. It is one area where the country really can claim to be world-leading. But Britain’s universities have not been as good as their international rivals at turning brilliant ideas into brilliant businesses. That may be about to change though. The University of Oxford is thinking more than ever before about how to turn its ideas and research into businesses. In this episode of Business Studies we look at how. We speak to three people at the centre of a collaboration between the university and the private sector. They are: Professor Chas Bountra, pro vice-chancellor for innovation at the University of Oxford, Baroness Nicola Blackwood, previously the minister for innovation and now chair of Oxford University Innovation, which manages the university’s intellectual property portfolio, and Alexis Dormandy, the chief executive of Oxford Science Enterprises, which invests in ideas spun out of the university and helps turn them into businesses…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Roger Madelin led the transformation of King’s Cross in London over the last 20 years, one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe. An area once renowned for crime, prostitution and an ageing train station has been transformed into a modern, vibrant ecosystem that is home to offices, shops, bars, restaurants and families. It is a project with lessons for the rest of the UK as the country looks to boost areas that have been deprived of investment for years. How does a project like this happen? What was the vision at the heart of the scheme? Why was London 2012 so important? What were the big challenges? Why was luck so important? And why is Madelin now so excited about Canada Water? Find out all of that and more in the latest episode of Business Studies as we speak to Madelin…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Is there a different way to do business? Is how we measure success all wrong? Richard Tang, the founder of Zen Internet, suggests there might be. After founding the internet service provider in 1995, Tang has never sold any shares in Zen and has said he never will. His leadership-style is inspired by the King of Bhutan. Zen has won a string of awards for the quality of its service and is exactly the sort of business the UK needs more of - a northern-based tech business that is the largest employer in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Zen has ambitious plans for the future, but Tang is worried about something else - what will happen to the company when he dies?

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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