Innovation and stuff

Are we a nation of innovators? What is the UK for and how does it win its place in the world? Those were questions addressed in an event I was lucky enough to attend yesterday at Nesta [http://www.nesta.org.uk/] on innovation where Charlie Leadbeater [http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/home.aspx] was giving a ‘provocation’.

Emerging, from torrential rain into this breakfast meeting I found myself dazed and disoriented, blinking into the reality of some 1960’s envisioned future – all columns, lights and mirrors. Obviously a home for innovation.

Charlie Leadbeater was arguing that the UK should position itself “as a society of mass innovation, a place where creativity and innovation are everyday activities, practised in my settings, by many people.” While China is characterised as ‘the world’s fastest growing economy’ and the US is known as ‘the home of high-tech and Hollywood’, the UK doesn’t really have a one-line pitch to the world. Instead, a discussion with students in China revealed an image of this country as about Premiership football, rain, island isolationism and Mr Bean. (This, the country that produced Newton, Shakespeare, Darwin, Dickens, the Beatles and Britart). Leadbeater proposes ‘ten habits of mass innovation’, but at this event he focussed on three.

He suggested we need a debate about what education is for. Up to know the debate has mainly been about process – what type of teaching, systems standards and testing do we want. But what is the education for? “Learning should develop every child’s capacity for independent critical thinking and collaborative problem solving.”

How can we promote citizen innovation? Innovation isn’t something which should be done by elite specialists in a special place (though as one participant pointed out, this discussion was being had by elite specialists in a special place). This will include the challenge, in an ageing society, of how to live healthy and worthwhile lives in our 90s.

Can we donate some of our unused knowledge for the benefit of developing countries? Do we have any discarded intellectual property hanging around which we don’t use any more which we can put in a recycling skip to help towards dealing with aids, clean water etc.?

Other points that came up:

Most of the other countries that are steaming ahead have some sort of ‘burning platform’ that is driving them forward (particularly small states fearing bigger ones) what is ours? My answer (though I didn’t have chance to mention it in this august gathering) was that we have a rotting platform. We have relatively well-off lives and the threat of climate change or the Chinese and Indian impact on the global economy seem very distant. Our productivity and niche economic advantages are gradually disappearing, but the platform doesn’t look too bad. A few bits are crumbling at the edges, but the extent of rot is not enough to galvanise us into action.

What about the public sector? The problems identified were government’s excessive centralism, distrust and departmentalism. Also the performance metric driven approach and entrenched interests, resistant to anything threatening the tick box approach to control.

An IBM survey [http://www-5.ibm.com/e-business/uk/innovation/channel/html/revitalize/BTI.0004.html] had found that unlike the private sector, public sector respondents rarely mentioned employees and customers as having an important role in innovation. Charlie Leadbeater (who wrote the IDeA’s ‘Man in the Caravan’) said that his experience of good public sector innovation involved leadership, outcomes, customer focus and engaging employees. The problems he identified were deploying new ideas up to mass scale (rather than being trapped with little schemes) and how to stop old lines of business – how to exit (interestingly he thought that while government is not very good at picking winners, they are quite good at picking losers, so could help divestment).

Not everyone agreed with the mass innovation thesis. Doesn’t it undermine the important role of experts and lead to philistinism?

Are we stuck with our national culture, and should we even try to change it? Is it already changing out there through popular culture like the X-factor and Dragon’s Den and virtual forums and worlds on the web? Or should we just accept we are a nation of shopkeepers, who are tolerant, support the underdog and don’t like to boast? We’ve got a successful pop industry but we’re not sure how we’ve done it (no pilot schemes, government grants or performance indicators). Perhaps our one line pitch to the world is something about our quirkiness and oddness. Should it just be that we’re cool?

Ipsos Mori End of Year Event

After an early state, a late finish, with the Ipsos-Mori end of year event with speakers Ben Page, Sir Michael Lyons, Trevor Phillips and Nicholas Boles. Lots of interesting points made, many which complemented the morning’s session: here’s just a few.

Polls show that compared to other countries we really are quite a tolerant nation.

The public would like Scandinavian levels of public service with US levels of tax.

The public simultaneously want to be left to make their own decisions but also for the government to sort things out for them.

People want to know who is making the decision
That those people are powerful and able to make a difference
And if decide to challenge, that it will be acted upon.

There is a common view that inequality is getting better, so we just need to give it time. However, at the current rate of change we will:
· have a representative House of Commons in 2080.
· close the gender pay gap by 2085
· close the ethnic employment gap 2105.
· close the disability employment gap probably never
· close the ethnic qualification gap – definitely never.

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