I am sure we all have experience of news articles telling us that there is a new bit of technology guaranteed to make our lives in to some kind of Utopian existence. The new gadget to save you time, the new home appliance to halve the amount of work you need to do. And yet, technology is also sometimes thought of as a nuisance, something that interferes rather than helps.
Recently, Paul Ormerod and I were invited to a round-table at Nesta to discuss systemic innovation. After that meeting, we were invited to write a blog reflecting on this issue. I thought it might be neat to write two articles, one on systems and one on innovation (which will be published tomorrow).
Six forward-thinking city authorities across Europe are currently working with talented data technologists and designers to leverage technology to innovate their services. The Code for Europe 'Fellows', based in Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Barcelona and Rome, are all starting to map out digital solutions to key challenges the cities have set them.
What would you do with an extra five hours a day? Have a lie in; catch up on work; go on a big night out?
I was in San Francisco last week at the Encore.org conference - a meeting of a couple of hundred Boomers over 50 all committed to achieving social change in the second half of their lives.
I visited Denmark a few weeks ago as part of the Bruce Lockhart Scholarship piece for the Local Government Challenge.
Yesterday, I was delighted to host Skinder Hundal and his team from the excellent New Art Exchange (NAE) in Nottingham to mark a key stage in the evolution of their Culture Cloud project.
Earlier this month I participated in a fascinating panel discussion at the Institute for Government (IfG) on the topic of using experiments to inform policy.
NESTA Provocations are independent essays by thinkers that showcase thought-provoking work on innovation. In our latest Provocation, State of Uncertainty: Innovation policy through experimentation, Jason Potts, Alan Freeman and I, writing in our personal capacities, call on the government to adopt a radically new approach to supporting innovation.
This time last year we explained why the DCMS's creative industry classifications have to be updated and placed on a more rigorous footing. We start 2013 with a new research report that does just that.
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