NESTA Connect

Can we risk being open? Or should we be asking can we risk not being open?

NESTAs 2009 Crucible programme had its second residential last weekend and the group received a presentation from Dr Cameron Neylon from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Cameron is an enthusiast for open science - anything from open access publication to blogging about lab results as soon as you have them. Through open access to data and the collaboration that this allows, Camerom believes that we will make more progress and ultimately innovate quicker.

Interestingly many of the early career researchers who participate in Crucible found this appraoch alien and certainly not a way of working their home institutions promote!

The general feeling was that working this way could be risky for an early career researcher - what if someone steals your results?

Cameron has blogged about the event at Science in the Open and the article and responses have brought up some interesting ideas around the issue of risk. Careers in research are risky enough as it is - is working in an open way any more of a risk?, or could it actually create new research pathways and be less risky?

Another reply has suggested that the perceived risk is conencted to the way research is funded. The system has arisen whereby we effectively fund work that has alrady been done as grants will only be awarded for work that is so clear cut and proven that it has no risk associated with it. It is only in this environment that researchers can not risk sharing data or results in an open way.

myPolice wins Social Innovation Camp Scotland!

 

I would have written this post yesterday but I was frankly exhausted from what was a typically exciting and intense Social Innovation Camp weekend, where six back-of-the-envelope ideas for using the web to tackle important social problems are taken to prototype stage in less than 48 hours. 

The SI Camp weekend has so many elements to it but I'd summarise it as:

• one part hack-day
• one part MBA crash-course
• one part party
• one-part X-factor
• an unimaginable volume of croissants

And most importantly come the show&tell on the Sunday afternoon we heard from how six excellent projects had developed, with weedayout.com taking the runner-up slot and myPolice, a Patient Opinion analogue for police services taking the coveted title of the SI Camp Scotland winning project.

The ever-dynamic flocklocal.net team hard at work, recipients of an honourable mention

Social Innovation Camp gets a lot of attention and praise as being the stand-out champion of social technology for social change and that is certainly all well deserved.  However now that I am a relative veteran of two camps as well as being party to that which goes on under the bonnet, please indulge me in one of my favourite passtimes...namely mythbusting.

Myth 1 - Social Innovation Camp is just a weekend event
This is a popular one and just not true.  While the weekend is certainly the main showpiece event, it is the culmination of a process of several months.  During this time the core SI Camp team will work with a large number of key stakeholders and influencers to raise understanding of the process in its chosen location (Scotland in this case), manage a communications process to ensure that as diverse a set of ideas are entered as contenders for the weekend build and run a series of meetups to build a community of people interested in attending the SI Camp.

Myth 2 - Social Innovation Camp will save Britain's imminent public service funding crisis
Paul Miller, co-founder of #sicamp, has written an essay for Reboot Britain on how public service start-ups can help transform Britain for the better.  He is one of the most articulate voices on the subject so I recommend you read his piece Weary Giants and New Technology.  So what we require is a more vibrant ecology of sustainable start-ups focussed on fixing things that matter.  Part of this is providing a clear route and understanding of how anyone can take a back-of-an-envelope idea and turn it into the next big thing and SI Camp is an important part of the first stages - building awareness, showing what is possible and encouraging new issues into being solved using digital means.  But more support from all quarters is needed so as to bring high-potential projects to maturity - only then will we are really reap the benefits of this stuff. 

Myth 3 - Social Innovation Camp is all about social innovation
Well clearly it is to some degree!  But the point I want to make here is that SI Camp is mainly about people.  People who understand need and people who understand (digital) opportunity.  They then have a conversation and learn about each others expertise and work together to produce something that neither could have though of by themselves.  What this means for me is that we need not just more conversations but better practical conversations about what is possible.  And SI Camp is the best practical conversation I've ever seen. 

NESTA is delighted to be the majority funder of SI Camp since its inception and thereby be part of the extraordinary confluence of social innovation and new technologies. 

And finally, on a personal note it has been a true delight to have support Anna Maybank, Katee Hui and Paul Miller in what little way i have been able to - their phenomenal hard work, passion and dedication - mostly behind the scenes - is inspirational, visionary and deeply practical all at the same time - a difficult trick to pull off indeed.  

[Images courtesy of The People Speak - watch out for their #sicamp Scotland film on www.sicamp.org in the next few weeks]

Becoming Innovation Detectives

I firmly believe that the solutions to many (if not all) of our innovation problems are already out there somewhere; it's just that we need to get much better at finding them.

We all know that too much 'reinvention of the wheel' happens within all organisations. But in an ever more connected world, the core innovation skill set is now migrating away from invention capability, and more towards innovation search capabilities.

By way of illustration, take a look at this video below* (it's actually a public service ad but don't let that put you off). It's a nice pun on a similar ad earlier in the series which you may have seen recently at the cinema. 

Did you spot all the changes? If you are like me you didn't even get close. We generally don't spot stuff if we don't focus on it, even if it's right before our eyes. And that's the problem. We are arguably too focussed on our work, projects, sectors to spot what's coming up in the slipstream.

The promise of open innovation, namely of brighter, faster, cheaper innovation, is now coming of age. It's the organisations who engage pro actively and systematically with others, whether it's customers, suppliers, universities or clients, are beginning to see the returns on investment from this strategy.

In other words all innovators and innovative organisations need to become better detectives, and be better able to spot what's happening outside of their immediate focus.

*Thanks to Paul Sloane for the link

We MUST stop meeting like this!

Why are most events rubbish?

I've attended, spoken at, or organised more than my fair share recently, and found myself mentally writing a list of do's a don'ts as follows:

• Presentation - I prefer bumbling enthusiastic honesty to a slick rehearsed presentation, everytime.

• Visualisation - Please don't read out your slides verbatim - Tell vivid stories, show pictures, convey your enthusiasm.
• Contradiction - Give me a healthy disagreement any day of the week, rather than fawning consensus (alas I fear a very British trait).
• Conversation - There is never enough time or space for conversation. The best bits, as the unconference crowd well know, are the coffee breaks - always.
• Inspiration - Going to events for me is all about getting inspired and learning something new, even though things all too often conspire against this.
• Connection - There is almost certainly someone in the room you really would want to/should speak to - the trick is how to find them.
• Facilitation - Is a dark and underrated art but alas so frequently apparent by it's absence.
• Discussion - Panel sessions are often tedious and artificial unless superbly curated. And Q&A almost always feel tokenistic and seldom adds much value.

Unfortunately, most events I attend still get many of these things wrong. We really must stop meeting like this!

A recent notable exception was bTween09 in Liverpool which was excellent, and I'm also looking forward to Reboot Britain on July 6th which I know will buck the trend too. A common thread in those exceptions is the use of Twitter which I find most useful and interesting at events especially to plug the attention gap and to make connections and start conversations with interesting people. 

Oh, and thanks also to Johnnie Moore, who gave me the title of this post and is also one of the most unassuming but best facilitators out there.

Innovate then disseminate...

We're learning a lot about corporate open innovation and we think it's about time that we started consolidating our knowledge and articulating it as effectively as we possibly can, to encourage others to get involved. 

To achieve this, we've recently started working with an agency called Moving Brands. Over the coming months they'll be helping us to work out how we best communicate: what we do; the concept of corporate open innovation and the specific things we've learnt from the projects we've been involved with. They'll also be working with us to create practical tools and resources that will help others run successful open innovation projects themselves.

The project has it's own blog so take a look and tell us what you think.

It is time to Reboot Britain!

Anyone remotely conscious will have know that as a country we face an unprecedented set of challenges: a decimated economy, ever increasing demands on our public services and trust in our political system at an all time low.

But instead of more pessimism, how can we begin to punch through the gloom and take advantage of the radically networked digital world we now live in to help revive our economy, rebuild our democratic structures and improve public services?

NESTA is delighted to announce Reboot Britain, a day-long event on July 6th in London which will explore these issues. 

The day runs from 9:30 to 6pm and has a two-track format:

• In the main lecture theatre there will be a non-stop series of high-impact presentations by leading politicians, technologists, entrepreneurs and commentators
• In the surrounding rooms there will be participant-led sessions and practically-focussed workshops in response the main presentation themes in real-time

To find out more and to register your place please visit rebootbritain.com