Skillset Blog

Sir Bob Geldof
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NESTA: Making Innovation Flourish

Tuesday saw the largest innovation event ever held in the UK descend on the Festival Hall. The Skillset Blog team was there (en masse) to sample proceedings. Despite a slow down in the afternoon, where the ‘expert’ seminars largely left me a bit dissapointed there were some interesting talking points brought up by a range of great speakers.

A lot of the focus seemed to me to be on positioning the UK in competition with the rest of the world over innovation. In some ways this is true, we certainly can’t afford to be left behind (or left out) however the focus of the keynotes was on collaboration above all which is slightly at odds with the idea of competition over innovation.

Tim Berners-Lee, whose ‘vague but exciting’ internet sums this up better than most, is a great example. Whilst a few jokes were spun at the expense of the fact that the web is free and available to all rather than raking in millions for UK plc, it is the fact that collaboration is ‘why I built the web…’.

Sam Pitroda, who is someone I’ve not really come across before, asserted that global competition is ‘the wrong paradigm’ and the global cooperation should be the future, assuring that everyone can benefit from the innovation culture.

Perhaps inevitably the focus of the day shifted frequently to education, and how to foster the culture that will result in great technical and social innovations. The suitability of universities was discussed, with the panel questioning the suitability of Higher Education, calling it outdated and not developed with the modern world in mind. Not sure I agree with this totally, but a lot of Skillset’s work with Higher Education does encounter difficulties whilst trying to work within this system.

The afternoon session I attended, whilst generally underwhelming, (even Charlie Leadbeater seemed a bit flat) did point to the increasing importance of social networks as teaching and learning tools (something ex-Skillseter Andy will be happy about, no doubt) but the panel seemed determined to talk about these networks as physical entities. In taking a straw poll - whether the teacher - pupil dynamic will be key to education in the future (supported by most of the audience) or whether it will be the social network - pupil dynamic that will define 21st Century education (less people with hands in the air).

Naturally I, and the Skillset Blog team, agree with neither of those things. The future it seems is the learner - learner relationship, with teachers, networks and technologies all combining to provide them with platforms for learning new things. In universities in particular we see students collaborating, teaching each other new skills via online groups and networks, and good old fashioned asking for help in the studio.

Build innovative ways to connect people together and they will teach each other things.

One final point (made earlier in the day) was made by Bob Geldof, who asserted that the internet in particular, but generally across all of modern society, collaboration between innovators is more possible than it has ever been before.

His assertion was that in our connected world, it is possible to get the resources and expertise you need without needing significant infrastructure backing you. Net result - talented people need big organisations a lot less than big organisations need talented people.

There is video and audio available via NESTA so you can check out the talks for yourself - let me know if you agree with my impressions in the comments!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under Animation, Facilities, Games, Interactive, Publishing, Skillset. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but we reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.