Innovation Forum 'Economy and governance' series: Beyond the Crisis: Debating the role of innovation asked some profound questions March 2, 2009. 1900-2100 Session chair: Nico Macdonald For information on the event see: http://innovationforum.spy.co.uk/BeyondCrisis/ Edit 1.1 These note are for reference only, and should give a general sense of the ideas discussed. Please don't cite panelists or audience contributors directly without their approval. Audience contributors have been identified by name as well as possible. However, this information is of low reliability. Stump speech: Alan Patrick of Broadsight - - - - * There is more openness to innovation in recession * Differentiate incremental vs [qualitative] innovation * See 30s examples of seeing arbitrage and finding new markets * Value of 30s infrastructure development in US: rode roughshod over objections * Welfare state gave people a sense of a future * Recommendations: # Let small businesses thrive: relax regulation # Push back on vested interests # Innovation in new forms of provisioning social services: digital government dividend * Mamading Ceesay: welfare state is new: local community economics * Alex Gollner: make government more efficient and innovative Stump speech: Tobi Schneidler of Maoworks - - - - * Not that some rivial innovation is trivial, eg: super toilets on airlines, paying for toilets on Ryan Air. * Examples and ideas: # Google Mashups and unpaid people [?] [Key] # Salesforce.com: ecology of services [Key] # Better Place in Israel: electric cars that are also storage facilities. Design used to communicate concept. [Key] * We need connective innovation with multiple stakeholders * Martyn Perks: does all innovation have to be sustainable? * Ken Beatson: sustainability is part of longer term [missed] * [Discussion on sustainability] * Nico Macdonald: are we limiting our imagination by unconsciously suppressing ideas that don't fit with sustainability? [paraphrased] * Mitchell Sava: don't ignore value of smaller pieces of incremental innovation * Nico: what 10 recommendations do we want to make, to ourselves, our organisations, government * Naomi Gornick: [are we worrying too much?] small companies are kind of sorting it out * Priya Prakash: designers make the invisible visible * Carmen Marrero: collapse of trust. We are tired of just meeting online. We need a 'national Hub' of big ideas, etc. [Key] * Nico Macdonald: Nico Macdonald: [notes academic Andrew Calcutt comment on lack of faith in financial system as a parallel with lack of faith that led to the end of Communism]. Capitalism needs trust, and it is all banks have as their products are intangible. * Mamading Ceesay: failure of governance, and of broader capitalist system, similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall [and end of Communism] * Victor Keegan: potential of mobile operators/networks to support new forms of currency, etc. [Key] * Alexander Grunsteidl: we arrived in the network society but didn't realise it! [Key] Products are now good enough so we don't need to upgrade. We also have comparison aggregators, that undermine investment in services as companies have no money [profit] left. Where are our visions of the future? [Key] We look the same as we did 10 years ago. Need to create a vision of where we might be heading: dystopian, going down in style, romantic (green). Are there others? * David Simoes-Brown: start with demand/unmet need, do product design, and you will create things people want [Key] * Eleanor Lisney: I am tired of online, I want to do real world things. See Cabinet Office Innovation Exchange. If you want to panic, we need to think about people whose services will be cut (and that might mean having help going to the toilet)! * Mark Nicholson: we have schemas or mental filters that fit what we want Stump speech: Martyn Perks of Thinking Apart - - - - We have a cult of managerialism, killing innovation and creativity. Need more creative space to think. We 'shift deckchairs' (count ROI) rather than [be ambitious]. And we are therapeutic: digital dashboards tempt you to keep things as they are. We demand outcomes of R&D before you have even put your coat on'. [Key] See Pointcarre on working two hours in the morning/evening leaving me enough time to think. Need this to find new sources of value. Need to be creating things * Nico Macdonald: is that the root of the current problems? * Martyn: we tend to regulate rather than freeing people up [Key] * Matthew Solle: contractual structures are inflexible and limit innovation * Nico Macdonald: the cost of contracts and costs associated with risk elements are not inconsiderable * Richard Eisermann: [story of the _worst_ people following the _best_ people out of the company] Those clamouring for innovation are least able to deliver it. How can we collectively judge best ideas? * Dale Russell: fear, and the _fear of the fear_. Not trying [missed] * Gerred Blyth: I am quite excited by the news of big companies lostin value. We are decadent. Some people have lower paid jobs. Are mashups really what we want? Or purple spouting broccoli? We can look after ourselves, we don't need the welfare state. What is important is that social capital _is increasing_. See Rock Corps: gives kids access to live music in return for voluntary work. * David Simoes-Brown: [to Martyn Perks] Innovation _is a good idea that makes it_. And we need good managers for that. To Richard Eisermann: see the Open Ventures Challenge we run, focused on Cancer Research UK. Stump speech: Mark Stringer of Agile Lab - - - - We have the wrong stories. And [to Gerred Blyth) decadence is an _old_ story. Design is about showing off, not sustainability. Is the _problem_ designers making thing sustainable? Design is about maintaining the species, not the planet, and they are incompatible. * Ken Bateson: role of design: banks are black box unlike supermarket biscuits * Victor Keegan: banks gave our money away. Shouldn't we have had a say in that? There is no lack of places to invest. * Priya Prakash: nature designs best. Necessity is the mother of invention. We don't have necessity now. * Nico Macdonald: we do! I drove through the Aylesbury Estate in South London yesterday and there is necessity there. * Mark Stringer: nature isn't best * Ken Bateson [?]: great design and innovation create things we didn't expect