NESTA Connect

Users usurp in-house R&D

This week's Global Business programme on the BBC's World Service is all about user-led innovation with reference to NESTA and with an extended interview with Eric Von Hippel, who spoke at the NESTA Connect launch. You can listen to it here.

In essence, he talks about what he describes as a revolution in innovation moving from in-house R&D (and marketing) departments, to users and customers. He draws out a series of implications for what this means for intellectual property right protection and business models. With the tools to innovate getting better/cheaper/easier (especially in the digital domain but increasingly in other areas as well) he describes his thesis of how innovation is being democratised.

Emergent Conclusions

In a typically diverse couple of weeks, I have been prompted to ponder about the way narratives develop. Not only in the context of cultural media but also in knowledge driven business context where the confident articulation of what you do or are trying to achieve is critical to its success. These musings have been prompted by having lunch with a writer/producer of a long running hospital TV drama series, attending a book group discussing various popular economics titles, and also pondering the theme of my next (this) blog post.

They say everybody likes a good story, but I'm beginning to wonder if that is changing.

Mass Collaboration?

Mass communications, mass transportation, mass markets - how does the increasing participatory culture of the web affect human behaviour and human interactions? I have commented elsewhere that technology and globalisation have shrunk the planet to only 3 degrees of separation which sounds disarmingly small. But with a practically infinite number of combinations, the question is which path to take through the highly connected but labyrinthine networks? In an article about cyber crime this morning, the BBC's Today programme on Radio 4 referred to the internet rather predictably as the 'wild west'. Borrowing that analogy for a moment, who are the new cartographers of this new frontier?

To start to discuss some of these issues and to begin to lay out the tools, techniques and foundations, we are hosting an event ‘Mass Collaboration?’ on September 11th 2007 in London. I'm delighted to say that we will hear from Howard Rheingold and Mark Earls, two writers who examine and challenge traditional perceptions of mass behaviour change and cooperation. This fits closely with our objective to stimulate innovation through extreme collaborations. This event is intended as the start of a conversation on how to optimise the potential social impact of technology, and its impact on how we should think about mass collaboration for innovation in the UK and beyond. If you are interested and able to attend please register here. Please also let others know who may be interested and able to attending.