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The Future Of Creativity & Innovation

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By: NMK Created on: January 10th, 2006
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The annual NMK / Cybersalon Christmas Lecture was delivered by Professor James Woudhuysen on 'The Future of Creativity and Innovation' to a packed audience at the Science Museum's Dana Centre on Thursday 15 December 2005...

The annual NMK / Cybersalon Christmas Lecture was delivered by Professor James Woudhuysen on 'The Future of Creativity and Innovation' to a packed audience at the Science Museum's Dana Centre on Thurs 15 December 2005...

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James Woudhuysen began by saying that when thinking about the future, we have to look at world of work. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations contains some of the best thinking on this subject. We need to understand the role of IT in the future of work, not just in the future of consumer society.

He told how he went to the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea. Observing how they worked, he reasoned that the most dangerous time for the rig was during a shutdown period, as there were large numbers of new people there. Shell almost sued him for writing about this, but he was right, as the Piper Alpha tragedy proved. Consultants and gurus say that we should ‘expect the unexpected’ – he says that, as his Piper Alpha story shows, it is possible to predict the future, that forecasting is possible within limits.

History is not a cyclical process, but it is necessary to understand it, as there are elements of continuity. There is a perception that technological innovation is getting faster. The future doesn’t just happen. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

People are consumers *and* producers!

People aren’t just consumers, they are also producers. Man is not just a ‘perpetually needy animal’. Abraham Maslow invented the concept of the hierarchy of needs, but the truth is more complicated than Maslow realised. Man gives to the world, not just takes from it.

Woudhuysen worked for the Philips corporation in Eindhoven. Philips was a company that invented everything but marketed nothing. They are emblematic of the kind of company that is now criticised, of the old model of industrial innovation. (As Edison famously put it, 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.) The old belief that innovation is a linear process is now unfashionable, with the idea that it is a more lateral process holding sway. Microsoft is almost unique in running a large, hierarchical development lab. The focus is now on product – on aesthetics or design. There is no innovation in processes, the assembly line.

The contemptuous attitude to science is a largely European phenomenon, he continued. China is very different. Whatever the aesthetics of, say, Chinese architecture, it shows more commitment to the future than in other parts of the world – their buildings aren’t just built, they’re tested, faults are found, and faults are fixed. China is building long-term R&D capabilities. In China, developments in robotics will decrease costs and increase wealth. This all makes New Labour’s obsession with cultural industry seem rather lame.

Risk averse culture limits success

The way to deal with the lack of innovation in the west, he explained, is to exhort people to innovate – to encourage failure, as it may lead to success. It’s OK to make mistakes. Woudhuysen deplored the prevalence of conspiracy theories about large, top-down companies. In the Piper Alpha case, he argued, there was a conspiracy by management to cover up what had gone wrong. In the case of the recent fuel depot explosion in Hemel Hempstead, there’s been a great deal of hysteria about the pollution cloud that was supposedly going to damage London. This is all nonsense, and anti-technology (which means anti-human, as any conspiracy theories would have to have been created by humans).

In this climate, the emphasis is less on long-term, ‘proper’ research; it’s on quick-and-dirty, cheap development. It’s on marketing as innovation – rebranding rather than inventing anything worthwhile. Regulators really focus on processes, too much so. Industry is more innovation focused, but the initiative has passed to the East.

There is some innovation from the West, specifically in the areas of mobile communications and video conferencing, etc. These have the real potential to change communications. We could be entering a more visual (facially-oriented) society as video conferencing becomes more advanced. Bendy screens, or wall-sized TV screens the thickness of wallpaper are a real possibility. Voice technology is also improving. (Although the fact that only now, a century after Bell invented the telephone, are we getting CD-quality sound on phone calls demonstrates just how slowly real innovation can move.) We take in words as audio far more quickly than if we read them, and deliver them more quickly through talking than writing – so video and voice technologies are areas with huge potential. But there aren’t enough innovations.

Accountancy mindset prevails in UK

The Third World is more inclined to do these things, something which seems to upset The Guardian and The Independent, whose attitude that the Chinese should be perfectly happy without technology is horribly patronising.

There are innovations in Europe, but the truly important ones are too slow. James Purnell, the Minister for Creative Industries, says that he wants the UK to be a hub of creativity. This shows considerable hubris. The UK is very creative about key performance indicators, but little else. We have become a nation of accountants flattering ourselves that we’re creative. New product development is too slow.

What do we have in Europe to rival Google? Google was created with no focus groups, no sociology, just a good idea – the new product created its own new market, rather than going after an existing one. Europe is not doing this; nor is America. The Harvard Business Review says that the workplace is bad. Too much information is bad. And risk taking is bad.

We are afraid of the future, he commented, with various apocalyptic predictions currently popular. There will be a new deluge as the ice caps melt, or power blackouts as the fuel runs out. Carbon emissions are traded, windmills built; these don’t work, so now there’s a new lurch towards nuclear power. It is fashionable to blame ourselves for the energy crisis; we’re supposed to feel bad every time we use electricity. In this climate, the politics of fear take over instead of innovation. The only country likely to visit the moon any time soon is China. The cultural climate of the West discourages innovation.

Anti- human undercurrent in our age of panic

Where does this fear of innovation come from? Frankenstein shows that alienation from technology existed even in the early Nineteenth Century. The bad guy in the novel is the doctor – it’s scientists themselves who are attacked, a rather misanthropic attitude, in James’s view.

Even management guru Peter Drucker has said that effective innovations start small, and are not grandiose, seemingly discouraging large-scale ambitions. He said that examining the market de-risks innovation. He said we should do work, and dream of innovation.

We don’t feel that we can commit to the future of science. There is fear of ‘unknown unknowns’. The dot com boom and bust led to an unwillingness to be too aggressive about ambitions, as pride comes before a fall. At least Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician – even if what she believed in was objectionable to many (James included), at least she believed in something.

Even before 9/11, but after the collapse of the dot coms, The Wall Street Journal said that mobile and the Internet shouldn’t be combined – everyone got coy again (and the fact that mobiles can do so much more now shows just how short-sighted this attitude was). So even before 9/11, the view of IT was being drastically dumbed down. Since 9/11, risk aversion has become much more pronounced – people now question whether IT is necessary for anything other than ensuring survival. The emphasis is no longer about creating wealth or improving productivity, it’s about trying to protect ourselves against the terrorists.

Short-termism symptomatic of deeper problems

Although aesthetics (and emotions) are great, they shouldn’t dominate what we do. There must be more to life than the simple pursuit of happiness. Could our desire for gratification be a symptom of a more profound problem? The obsession is with objects, the emphasis is on product innovation rather than process innovation. It’s about narrative now – we’re going to get a ‘narrative’ about the July London bombings rather than what really happened – and the same is happening with technology.

The head of the Higher Education Funding Council for England has said that the traditional sciences (maths, chemistry, engineering, biology) are too old-fashioned, and should be replaced by ‘cross-border activity’, whatever that means. But science has to represent the future as well as the past.

De-risking of innovation takes its toll

Innovation in IT has been replaced by business continuity, the privileging of emotions and aesthetics, and the user has become all-important. Narratives rule, and if you oppose any of this you’re condemned as unfashionable and out-of-touch. Harvard says innovation should be ‘open’ – one person doesn’t innovate, everyone innovates. In the NHS, ‘users’ (ie patients) ‘innovate’ in collaboration with doctors and other staff. Companies are encouraged to outsource innovation.

We should learn from US technology, but be critical towards US management structure. We should take risks! Don’t assume risks are bad. Stop condescending, stop criticising science blindly. A genuine base of knowledge in society should be for everyone, not just the cultural elite. Displacement activities aimed at de-risking innovation should be un-masked. Someone has to take responsibility for innovation. We should resist the politics of fear (which stockpiles remedies for a flu pandemic that may never happen at the expense of funding cancer research).

DISCUSSION:

If the EU is so backward, is was pointed out, why are there so many mobile phones? Woudhuysen admitted that the EU was an innovator in mobile, but needs to shift focus towards computers. You can’t design a dam, or an air-traffic control system on a phone.

The question was raised of whether there is any cause for optimism about the future of innovation in the UK, and if so where would it come from? Woudhuysen replied that yes, the UK is doing well in, for instance, stem cell research, certainly when compared to the US. But generally, the expansion of London and other cities is financial services led. Companies have money, resources, and even talent, but they don’t use it.

Isn’t the main problem the way maths and the sciences are taught in the UK, someone asked. Concurring, Woudhuysen added that scientists in turn need to start criticising the government’s deplorable attitude to science.

Buying small companies isn’t real innovation. The mergers and acquisitions people do well, but where are the new Fords, Microsofts etc, he asked. There aren’t many of these in Europe, except maybe GlaxoSmithKline or Vodafone. There’s too much bureaucracy for government grants.

Another audience member counterposed ‘not invented here’ with ‘not perfected here’ – big companies buy innovative small companies and nurture them, take them forward. Google Analytics wouldn’t be a free service if it hadn’t been bought by Google. Could this not represent a valid alternative to the traditional top-down view of innovation?

In reply, James asked if we should really see the corporate world in terms of a Darwinian struggle between companies. The big T-Rex gobbles up the smaller companies. But T-Rex became extinct too! Why can’t big companies innovate more? The corporate religion is to keep responsibility away from the top.

Mobile is contributing to productivity in the East, very integrated into public transport etc. Is convergence the answer?

Convergence is good, he acknowledged, but mobile isn’t the solution the northern hemisphere thinks it is for the south. Putting mobile phones in rickshaws isn’t the real way forward for India. We can’t tell Third World countries not to grow, in spite of global warming. Innovations are too small, Woudhuysen concluded. Clockwork radios are great, but they’re not enough.

----------------

About James Woudhuysen:
James Woudhuysen, 52, is a physics graduate. He wrote about chemical weapons for the Economist in 1978, and devised an instruction manual for a word processor in 1983. He consulted on and advocated e-commerce in 1988 and Internet TV in 1993. He has worked with AT&T, BA, BT, Equant, Ford, HP, IBM, John Lewis Partnership, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Philips, Symbian, Unisys, Vodafone, Xerox and Yamaha Motor, as well as the cities of London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow.
Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, James has written for The Times and contributes regularly to IT Week, spiked and Radio 4’s You and Yours. His most recent publications are Why is construction so backward? (Wiley, 2004), The globalisation of UK manufacturing and services, 2004-2024 (UK Trade & Investment, 2004) and ‘Play as the main event in international and UK culture’ (Cultural Trends, 2003).

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