• Question: If you could be the owner of any company (such as apple, samsung, sony, Microsoft, etc.) which would you choose? and once you've made your choice, what would be the first thing you do with the company?

    Asked by This Guy to Frank, Ian, Isabel, Jared, Zena on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Isabel Pires

      Isabel Pires answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      Tricky!
      I guess I would like to own a small, independent company, probably making patterns for knitting or sewing, or selling locally sourced materials.
      If I HAD to own a big company, I would probably go for something like Penguin books. I would then have a sort of programme making a key classic book available for free every 6 moths or so 🙂

    • Photo: Zena Hadjivasiliou

      Zena Hadjivasiliou answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      Hello:). I’ve been thinking about your question and finding it really challenging! I think the truth is that I am not really a business mind! I find that a lot of big companies are more interested in maximising their profits than coming up with cool inventions or making their products widely accessible. If I did own apple though I’d force them to stop changing their phone chargers every six months ;). I am sure it wouldn’t be to the best interest of the company in terms of profits but it would make a lot of customers happy!!!!

    • Photo: Frank Longford

      Frank Longford answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      This is a difficult question because like Zena I’m not really business minded either. Actually I think many scientists would feel the same.

      At first I thought it would be cool to own Google because it supposedly has a similar relaxed attitude to success and failure amongst its research department and promotes a very creative work ethic. Also as head of Google I could try and work towards a fair system in internet privacy laws, which is going to be a huge issue in the next 10-20 years. But actually I don’t have a solution to internet privacy, and it would be difficult to be under pressure from so many governments around the work, so I’m not sure how useful I’d be.

      Maybe it would be best to own a computer games company and research virtual reality simulators so I could create my own world if the real one starts becoming a bit crazy!

    • Photo: Ian Sandal

      Ian Sandal answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Like the others I don’t really have any big business ambitions which as Frank says not many scientists have.

      But to answer your question I think I would also like to own Google. This provides a tool which allows anybody with an internet connection to find out the answer to almost any question. I think this is a massively powerful tool and if it could be only used to increase knowledge and understanding without any commercial undertaking it could help make the world a much better place.

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