Justin Megawarne, managing partner of London-based technology consultancy Megaslice, lets the company’s 15 employees choose where to work – whether that be at home, the office or at a client site. “That extends out to how you control your head space,” he says. “If you want to turn all your notifications off for five hours, do it. Do whatever you have to do to make the client happy – sometimes that means being available for interruptions, sometimes it doesn’t.” The company discourages staff from using social media – given the toxicity of some discussions and their echo chamber tendency which can lessen diversity of thought – and encourages them to talk to each other, whether face to face or through a call. The company currently uses Google Chat but is considering a move to Twist, an asynchronous messaging app with fewer notifications and no presence indicator. Megawarne says that he does not see the appeal of gamification and other social media techniques. “If I see a tool and I think an intelligent person would baulk at this, I probably will not adopt it,” he says. “If it has all these shiny things going ‘ping!’ and I can’t see a thoughtful...

If the UK government is serious about supporting British innovation, it must reform its approach to public sector procurement, according to Justin Megaslice, managing partner of Megaslice, who has accused Whitehall of hiding behind rigid frameworks and "arbitrary scoring systems". Megwarn's comments follow a decision to give Fujitsu a place in the government framework worth up to £984 million, despite the company's central role in developing and supporting the Post Office Horizon IT system.