This Is Where It All Began

The decision to move towards research came from two places. The first was practical: I wanted to create a serious plan for the next stage of my life. The second was much older and more personal: I had always carried the feeling that I wanted to learn, explain and understand more deeply.

For many years, my career was built around action. I worked in emergency care, operational environments, public service, transport and business. These roles taught me to make decisions, communicate with different people, solve immediate problems and take responsibility when circumstances were not simple.

Later, studying Cloud Computing and International Business gave me a new language for experiences I already had. Technology helped me understand systems. Business helped me understand organisations. Research began to show me how the two could be connected through questions that mattered.

The first part was building a future.

I knew I wanted a direction that would not end with one more qualification. I wanted something that could grow over many years: research, teaching, writing and eventually contributing knowledge of my own.

I had already discovered that I enjoyed presenting ideas, leading meetings and helping others understand complex information. Teaching began to feel like a realistic future rather than a distant idea. Research became the route that could make that future credible.

I was not looking only for another course. I was trying to build the person I wanted to become next.

The second part had been there much longer.

Even as a child, I wanted to continue learning. My path was not always academically straightforward, and life often required practical choices first. But the wish to understand, improve and achieve more never disappeared.

Returning to higher education later in life was therefore not a sudden reinvention. It was a continuation. Completing a First Class degree in Cloud Computing, followed by an MBA with Distinction, proved to me that I could do more than return to education—I could perform at a high level and enjoy the challenge.

Then the research question started to form.

At first, I was interested in artificial intelligence because of its potential. But the more I read and observed, the less satisfied I became with the usual discussion about adoption.

The important question did not seem to be simply whether a business used AI. It was why the same technology created useful, sustainable value in one organisation while remaining fragmented, experimental or disappointing in another.

That question connected everything: technology, leadership, learning, organisational readiness, innovation and the practical reality of small and medium-sized businesses.

The technology may be available to everyone. The capability to create value from it is not.

I had already started before I felt ready.

I began developing a research proposal, mapping concepts and reading across different areas of management and information systems. I created an early conceptual model. I started shaping a working paper. I opened an ORCID record and a Google Scholar profile before I had a publication to add.

Some of that may appear premature. To me, it was commitment. I wanted to behave like someone moving towards research, not only someone talking about it.

There were also setbacks. Applications did not always lead where I hoped. Supervisory fit and capacity mattered. Rejection was disappointing, especially after the time invested in building a proposal. But it did not change the direction. It made the direction more deliberate.

This journal begins here.

I am still learning. I am not presenting myself as a finished academic. That is exactly why I want to document this stage.

The purpose of this journal is to record the development honestly: how the question changes, how the model improves, how feedback reshapes the work, and how a professional background can gradually become a research identity.

This is where it all began—not with certainty, and not with a publication, but with a clear decision to take the next step seriously.