We've been working over the last few months on a new programme to support effective uses of digital technology in schools. It's partly an offshoot of the Next Gen. work on games and IT, but also a response to the evidence that many new opportunities are opening up thanks to the ubiquity of technologies like smart phones.
I appeared recently in front of the Public Administration Select Committee, chaired by Bernard Jenkin. PASC has long been one of the most thoughtful parliamentary committees and is now continuing its inquiry into strategy, and asking some good, probing questions about government's ability to handle the long-term.
A few weeks ago I was in India for the Global Innovation Forum. India has huge ambitions in innovation, stretching from launching satellites to village-level sanitation projects.
In mid-November NESTA again helped host Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, with a flood of activities from appathons for students to design new apps for public services, to high profile events with Valley luminaries such as Reid Hoffman.
We've been very interested in the experiences of accelerators over the last few years. These appeared in the US in the middle of the last decade, in IT and web sectors, and some have grown enormously. They bring together a cohort of start-ups and provide them with a mix of intensive support, a physical home and investment. In some cases one or two individuals have been the driving force - as guides, mentors and shapers.
An interesting event I participated in last Thursday, hosted by the Ove Arup Foundation and the Guardian, looked at future cities. I kicked off by complaining that despite thousands of years of learning about what does and doesn't work in cities, so much design and building results in unpleasant spaces.
A few days ago I went to the first Puma Creative Impact Award, organised by the remarkable BritDoc foundation, which is dedicated to promoting documentaries. I've been to a few of Britdoc's informal evenings, showing newly made documentaries, but this was a grander affair, reflecting the amazing renaissance of documentaries in recent years, from obscure late night slots on BBC2 to multiplexes.
I've just been on a brief fact-finding mission to Estonia - a country that counts a hunger to learn among its many virtues. Estonia has often been at the forefront of e-government, and at one point (almost) cut and pasted laws from other countries which it liked. A session with senior officials in the Estonian equivalent to the Cabinet Office also brought home how much we can learn from nimbler countries.
This week I'd like to share a couple of data graphics that have caught my eye over the past few weeks.
Steve Jobs was unique for combining high aspirations and a love of beautiful design with an acute business brain. It's marvellous, and surprisingly rare, to see an innovator honoured and mourned. But like any truly great changemaker Steve was contradictory.
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