Economy and governance series
Beyond the Crisis:
Debating the role of innovation
> Took place
2 March 2009
> At
Hub Kings Cross, 34b York Way, London N1 9AB
3 March 2009 Initial event documentation can be found in the Documentation section. The names, affiliations and Web site links for those participants who pre-registered can be found on booking page. Paul Massey announced the forthcoming launch of the we20.org initiative. Please see Future events for notes on the TED report back and the Web at 20 event. We are grateful to Hub Kings Cross for hosting this event. Please contact Dermot Egan with if you want to enquire about Hub membership or use.
> Outline
There may never have been a better time, or a greater need, for profound innovation. And we want you to present your ideas about how we got here and how we might progress.
During and after the economic downturn, innovation and transformational change will be more important than ever. The sooner far sighted strategies are developed and implemented by government, business and other agencies the better life will be for ordinary people – in the UK and beyond. But to date most discussion has focused on fixing the failings in the financial system in the short term. But this is not the cause, only a symptom of underlying economic stagnation. Rather, we should be laying the foundations for a new economy for the long term.
There appears to be no rational basis to the crisis. As Samuel Brittan
At this Innovation Forum we will ask some profound questions: about the roots of the crisis, the need for ambition, the role of (and barriers to) innovation, the role of the network, and the potential of new areas of thinking. And we want your responses to these questions: responses that are big, bold, original and thought provoking. (And if you want to disagree with the analysis presented here, please go ahead!)
The authors of the best responses will be invited to give a 3–4 minute ‘stump’ speech at the event, to stimulate discussion and debate. The event continue with an open and frank discussion, with the ideas and debates visualised.
Notes
Notes taken by Nico Macdonald at the event are available (InnovationBeyondCrisis.txt) but are not to be cited. A number of people at the event were live journaling (via Twitter) and this feed can be reviewed by doing a Twitter search for InnovationBeyondCrisis
Key ideas
- There is more openness to innovation in recession
- Government should set an example in innovation and citizen-centred design
- There is a cult of managerialism: we need more creative space
- We increasingly demand outcomes of R&D ‘before you have even put your coat on’
- Don’t regulate: free people up
- Start with demand or an unmet need, do product design, and you will create things people want
- We need connective innovation with multiple stakeholders
- Design can help make the invisible visible
- Are we limiting our imagination by unconsciously suppressing ideas that don’t fit?
- Great design and innovation create things we didn’t expect
- Create inclusive innovation that takes account of everybody
Participants
The names, affiliations and Web site links for those participants who pre-registered can be found on booking page.
Pictures
If you want to share photos taken at the event via Flickr, please tag a public Flickr photo with: upcoming:event=1863118
| www.flickr.com |
Keep your responses concise, clear and snappy, and include references to supporting material where appropriate,
Themes
The questions we want you to address include:
- How can we explain the causes of the crisis: Financial system failure? Greed? Lack of productive locations for investment?
- To what extent is the crisis a product of lack of innovation?
- Where and how is value created today?
- What role can government play in facilitating innovation and value creation (or getting out of the way)?
- Does fundamental research need to be championed?
- Where do ordinary people’s interests fit into debates about the future?
- Is the crisis a basis for taking on more ambitious challenges?
- Are networked tools a key to dealing with the recession?
- What are the contemporary barriers to innovation?
- Is there untapped potential in the design and creative industries?
Flagging your response
We would like you to publish a response to one or a number of the event themes online, as a blog post, an article, a letter to a newspaper, a video. To alert us to your response you can either:
- Post a link to it in a comment on the related event post on the Technology and Society journal
- Tag it ‘InnovationBeyondCrisis’ [See current tagged material on Technorati]
- (If your response is posted on a Weblog) Include a trackback to the related event post
Responses
A sample of responses from event participants follows:
Mark Stringer of Agile Lab notes that "with the credit crunch, there is a real danger that clinging to old old stories can prevent us from making any real sense of new data that we need new models and new stories to understand" (Agile Lab: Innovation and the Credit Crunch: tell me a new, new story)
Rob Killick, CEO of cScape, argues that "governments should lead. A big problem with our government is that it is often not prepared to take bold action, for example in pushing ahead the nuclear power station building programme, because it is afraid to face down the opposition" (UK After The Recession: Innovation island?). (See also his white paper The UK After The Recession [PDF].)
Tobi Schneidler of Maoworks argues for "whole new era of enlightenment that connects the global financial, industrial and environmental challenges into one forward looking vision, sparking a wave of innovation not seen since World War II" (Maoworks Department of InformationThe blue ocean has dried up. Who will do the refill?).
Kevin McCullagh notes that in design world has celebrated superficiality, but "the bring-on-the-slump crowd are equally self-indulgent". He believes that their "sense of shame is not based on a clear analysis of the benefits people gain from stuff relative to overblown problems like landfill. The self-doubt instead stems from the intellectually paralysing effect of sustainability ideas". (Design and the depression, Kevin McCullagh, Blueprint, April 2009)
Mark Nicholson of Interactive Investor (writing in a personal capacity) argues that the crisis “may actually be down to innovation” [our italics] in the financial sector. “Value is created in solving customers’ real needs profitably [and] through continuous improvement” he notes. “We now need to apply the same approaches that have worked so well in manufacturing to the knowledge economy.” He argues that government “must support education and lifelong learning”, and he advocates fundamental research “but not at the expensive of more beneficial areas such as championing continuous improvement”. On people’s needs he notes that “[w]e should not bring in anything which will harm the ability of people to fulfil their needs”. He believes we should take on “basic challenges before we move onto ambitious”. On the network he argues that our tools “are not sufficient for collaborative working which will be vital in creating new products that will thrive in the recessionary times”. And he believes creative industries need to “combine their innate creativity with critical thinking”. (technology @ iii.co.uk: Beyond the Crisis: Debating the role of innovation. Also at Dwell Upon: Response to Beyond the Crisis: Debating the role of innovation)
Books and Reports
Manufacturing and the Knowledge Economy, Ian Brinkley, The Work Foundation, February 2009. The paper argues that manufacturing remains highly important to the UK’s economic performance and that it is as deserving of government support to help it through the recession as the financial service industries.
A special report on the future of finance ‘Greed – and fear’, Economist, Jan 22nd 2009
Attacking the recession, Charles Leadbeater and James Meadway, NESTA, December 2008. [See commentary on TechCrunch.]
Reframing Recession: Lessons from the Potato by James Moed (IDEO/Criticaleye Review, 2009)
[Download PDF from IDEO Publications]
Reports on and recordings of related events
April 2, 2009 London Summit 2009: Growth, jobs and stability (London)
March 25, 2009 Crunch IT in 2009: The Role of IT in a Recession (BCS, 1st floor, 5 Southampton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2)
March 24, 2009 The Finance Crisis & Rescue: What Went Wrong? Why? What Lessons Can Be Learned? (Swissotel The Howard Hotel, London)
March 2, 2009 Is this the end for free market capitalism? (Kings Place, London N1 9GU)
February 26, 2009 Editorial Intelligence: The 3 Rs: Recession, Real Economy and Recovery (Cass Business School, London)
January 22, 2009 UPA: User Experience and the Credit Crunch – What You Need To Know (LBi, London)
January 28, 2009 Design London STIR: Financial meltdown? What’s the Big Issue? (Imperial College, London)
January 19, 2009 Designing Policies for Growth: Professor Philippe Aghion (LSE, London)
December 16, 2008 The Political Significance of the Economic Crisis (LSE, London)
December 4, 2008 NESTA: Innovation in an Economic Downturn (NESTA, London)
November 5, 2008 Demos: After the Apocalypse (Demos, London)
See Upcoming.org events tagged InnovationBeyondCrisis
Articles
Rollover for article summaries. Source shared bookmarks tagged InnovationBeyondCrisis on Delicious. See also shared bookmarks tagged
financial+crisis on Delicious.
If you have queries about the event please email Nico Macdonald
The Innovation Forum is intended to facilitate progress by bringing together researchers and academics, technologists and designers, business people and marketers, policy makers and administrators to share knowledge about their skills and current insights and projects. It supports the free exchange of ideas towards the end of improving people’s lives at home, at work and in society.