Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Latest: My new book 'The Greatest Force', is now available on Amazon Books, initially in e-book form to make the 200,000-word/650-reference volume affordable. It proves RAF Bomber Command was almost certainly the No.1 factor in Germany's defeat in the West. You can get the e-book version here: www.rafbook.co.uk Likely to be the most controversial war book of 2025, it shows how the RAF destroyed German industry in many more ways than thought previously. It diverted huge resources away from frontlines. Bomber Command also laid the ground for Allied armies, D-Day invasion, and Royal Navy hugely. The book overturns the myths, criticisms and fabrications levelled since 1945. For example, there were few refugees in Dresden, a city with 140 important factories. The Present: I'm a director at London-based Gibson Index Ltd - UK's No.1 dataset of the UK's top 70,000 smaller companies, profiled, rated and researched - www.gibson-index.com. Used widely by UK Government agencies and elite institutions, still the UK research leader in 2021. Clients : BEIS?DBT/DTI, Shell, BP, Unilever, MoD, MetroBank. 2023, and 2021: Mapping reports for DBT, plus profiling 180 SMEs able to best help in the Covid Pandemic. Ongoing assistance as part-time director to some of the UK's best regular SMEs; articles in 'Research Fortnight'. The Past: ex-FT research journalist and columnist, The European, BBC R4 Summaries and Bulletins. Forty years in research, writing and editing. - Authoring Two Recent Books: 1) May 2020: 'Brexit Boom': Full unreported facts of the UK's current economic explosion since 2016, most of all in the English regions and Wales. Significant fact: If the UK's services exports were properly added to the national GDP stats - the UK economy would be the same size as Germany's. Yes, really. www.civitas.org.uk/publications/britains-export-boom. 2) Nov 2019: 'Britain's Most High Potential Companies'. Our pick of the UK's best SMEs - and since publication the 12 firms profiled have seen sharp rises in share prices and trade volumes. www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-Most-Potential-Small-Companies/dp/1695113306 ARTICLE: March 2020: Article in 'The Telegraph' on "Brexit Day": https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/31/economys-brexit-boom-may-come-important-brexit-day Additionals: Twice the main speaker at Oxford Union debates, on Brexit, global warming; at the Royal Society, university events. Event organised by Royal Society of Chemistry in 2023 cancelled at last minute! Ask them why!
We supply what is now the largest dedicated database of British smaller companies - often little-known, but a vital part of the UK economy. Now 70,000 SMEs in total - across 56 tech sectors, UK wide. The dataset is full of fascinating innovators, tech breakthroughs, clever products and pioneers of all kinds. Access is by subscription and contract. Users include many Universities in the UK (UCL, Birmingham, Queen Mary, UoL, Greenwich, Bedfordshire, Kingston, Coventry University in London), QinetiQ and P&G, Deloitte, Queen's Awards for Enterprise Office, UKTI ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games. The UK's collection of tech SMEs is world class - a national asset - second only in size, versatility and integrity to those of the US. Our search facility is among the quickest of any online service: once you have selected your search parameters (size, location, type of company, tech sector, etc), the software will deliver up to 250 companies in only four seconds. The data can be of crucial importance to corporate librarians and company information desks within a large organisations. Researchers monitor new startup company arrivals at some 930 business centres, trading estates, and science parks across the UK. The database also has an interesting historical aspect as it also contains all SMEs that have received UK R&D grants since 1984, including virtually all of the firms in the past decades of Smart, Spur, TCS (now KTP), EPSRC, STFC, FP6/FP7 programmes, etc, as well as Queen's Awards, Deloitte Fast 50, E&Y Entrepreneur, awards, as far back as 1982. Significantly, in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the UK Dept for Business utilised the database to organise several thousand business appointments between UK SMEs and the many senior overseas business visitors who had been invited by UKTI to attend the festivities. Back in 2004 UKTI used the database to create – for example - their ‘Software Stars’ initiative, to find the SMEs with potential.
Full List of Publications and Projects are on my website: www.marcusgibson.com 2005-present: Editor of ‘Gibson Index Newsletter', the only comprehensive publication which each month profiles dozens of active and emerging UK SMEs. Successor to 'Free Radicals, 2002-2004, a print publication on UK technology SMEs, innovation, and academic enterprise. - 2000 - founder of Friends of Imperial College's Lecture Series, probably the best attended events of their type in London, now ably run by the Friends. www.friendsofimperial.org.uk. - 1999-2002: UK University Lecture Series – ‘UK academic innovation – a national treasure’: speeches delivered at lunches and dinners at British Universities and trade associations. - 1993-96: Proof-reader/’stone sub-editor’: Friday and Saturday, Mail on Sunday newspaper, London. - 1986: writer of documentary on British political system and regulation for NHK TV, Tokyo (in wake of Japan's ‘Recruit’ scandal). - In 1984 I co-edited the ‘Dictionary of the British Heritage’, for Cambridge University Press, which continued in print up to its 12th edition. - 1976: Lumberjack, Island Lake Lumber Co, northern Ontario, Canada. Great fun, bears everywhere, No.1 victim of local black flies. - From the age of five I travelled extensively in the Middle and Near East with my parents, (Mrs Thelma Gibson and Dr Ronald Gibson, head of cardiology dept, Royal Brompton Hospital), who started a cardiology practice in central London and Athens, Greece, and who frequently toured the Middle East visiting patients with critical conditions. Together they made certain that London would be the No.1 centre for private healthcare sector from international patients, especially the Middle East.
Technology Correspondent at The Financial Times, around 300 articles and a Monthly Column, focusing on world-class new technology, small hi-tech companies, clusters and the whole process of and innovation: (Sections: News Section; Inside Track, Weekend Section, FT-IT, and supplements). Events reported: Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Olympics, etc; World IT Congress, Adelaide; - Columnist, ADSL user, central London. What is it like to have your web speed increased four fold? Wrote monthly column on the transformational experience. - Articles on defence/military matters included profiles of SAIC Inc., Rolls-Royce engines, nanotechnology, QinetiQ/DERA; world-leading SMEs such as Subacoustech Ltd in Southampton; Memex Technology Ltd in Scotland; Richard Farleigh, entrepreneur, investor in 80 SMEs - hitherto unknown; Oxford, Leeds, Glasgow, Southampton spinout profiles; CEOs of Xerox Inc, SAIC, EMC, Siemens, ABB, etc. - Wrote FT article in 1998 that correctly predicted the explosive rise in the Photonics Industry worldwide, and in 2001, the rise of the 'Natural Products' sector. Plus.. Special Reports editor: - 1997: Report for 'Universities UK' into first wave of British academic spinout companies - excellent publication that has lasted the test of time. - ‘Whither NZ?’, Bank of New Zealand commissioned report into the nation's path for 'future national innovation', 1997. Went nocturnal for a month in order to interview most of the best thinkers, dreamers and futurists in NZ, including government ministers, financiers, entrepreneurs, and Maori VIPs. - NESTA – Report on UK Inventors and Innovation, 2000. - Universities UK report into the Creative Industries, 2001. UK Business Promotion Activities: - 1999-2004: Advisory Board, Cross-Atlantic Capital Partners, London, with luminaries such as Sir Tommy MacPherson and Mel Bergstein. - Organised 'Britain's Most Innovative University' competition: 350 guests at presentation, 1999.
Firstly, Senior Sub-Editor on newsdesk, then from 1992, a Features Reporter for the features and business desks, London. Assignments undertaken, and projects covered include features from Bosnia's slow recovery, Atlanta Olympics, Siberia, space launches, high speed trains, numerous tech fairs: Comdex in Las Vegas; CeBiT, Hannover; Anuga, Koln; Frankfurt Book Fair; M'soft launch, Moscow; big infrastructure projects; Hannover 2000 Fair; defence matters; fast-growth SMEs across Europe, the EU's Eureka programme for SMEs and annual tech fest (Istanbul, Prague, Copenhagen, Lisbon), technology and innovation subjects. News stories include 'asbestos in the Bundesbank', in spite of their total denials; Sinking of 'Estonia', Europe's worst peacetime marine disaster in which 800+ drowned. Downbeat travel tours of Baltics, southern Spain, USA.
Here I learned the art of crafting and dictating stories for broadcast in a matter of minutes. No medium has deadlines as fierce as those in radio: frequently broke the land speed record between the newsroom and studio 3C in Broadcasting House. Hilarious Intranet established there. Served me very well in future. In addition, my research outline was chosen as one of the blueprints for the BBC’s Domesday Project in 1986, a national electronic media research concept in pre-Internet times. I also wrote the programme script for the BBC Radio programme commemorating the 40th anniversary of the unsuccessful 20th July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.