Dancing, innovation and a walking stick

I have a friend who is a dancer, bust his ankle and had to go to hospital. There, he had an instant, gloved microsurgery, booming lights, blink and its over, operation. Wow I said when I saw him walking uneasily 2 days later. Is that down to incredibly expensive new NHS tricknology? No, he said, it’s a bloody stick, pointing to his only means of support. You get one free with every operation.   

This apposite forcing together of software and stick also seems to be the case with innovation and technology. Anytime innovation is mentioned, there on its coat tails is technology. Recently the Higher (‘Hire’?) awards for excellence, innovation etc (www.heacademy.ac.uk) joined them together too. But they can be separate, can’t they?

I was wondering about these recent innovations I’d seen or heard of, the ‘successful exploitation of new ideas’ and where technology fitted, if at all:

• Adblock Plus (www.adblockplus.org) free downloadable soft ware which blocks advertisements
• LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) project ‘Eat London’: imagining and building an edible map of London, where 5,000 people from many different communities created 60 square metres of edible grass, tarmac, brick and steel, their cuisine representing the diversity of London
• Holidaytaxis.com: enabling transfer from flight to hotel without waiting for 50 other people and the Lost luggage couple to get on your transfer bus
• Clicksnmortar: estate agents who want to help
• 02 interactive ‘stareout’ ad challenging users to a staring contest with Englandrugby team members. Mike Tindall, apparently, can stare for 6.5 minutes without blinking. (Premium rates for this?)
• The people who queued up at Northern Rock who didn’t have savings there because they didn’t want their neighbours to think they didn’t have any. 
• Karen Bilimoria’s Cobra beer, an Indian lager (Been there, drank that)
• The 105,800 new enterprises starting up in Jan-March 2007 and not worrying about the mortality rate…. yet (At least Alan Sugar wasn’t among them)
• HSBS faced down on Facebook: a ‘ viral campaign’ by student protesters about HSBC new banking charges, including ‘flash queues’ forcing HSBC to freeze planned charges
• Sean Kingston (Kisean Anderson from Miami) posts a demo on MySpace and targets key record label producers, with 8 emails a day for a month, to get a record deal for ‘Beautiful Girls’ (Number 1 world wide this summer)
• Horsesmouth.co.uk: from ‘me’ to ‘we’ social networking for positive change, funded by the Edge, (an alternative learning charity), advocating self help,  includes mentoring
  The Homeless World Cup held in Denmark this August with 48 Nations taking part. Scotlandwon, beating Poland in the final.
• Gilad Atzmon & the Orient House Ensemble’s ‘Refuge’
• Fruit shaped tables in a primary school to interest pupils in nature and design
• Kevin Finch S+M cafes: controlled nostalgia in an updating of ‘greasy spoon’ cafes opening in London(S+M = sausages and mash)

So which ones aren’t real?

And where’s the technology? Even better, where’s the learning?

Comments

[Mary]

Innovation the new buzz word......

Innovation - something newly introduced, new method, custom, device…………..innovation the new ‘buzz’ phase in the markets…………but surely that’s not new, so is innovation a buzz about nothing?

Let’s investigate…………….’new’ – never existed before, appearing, thought of, developed, made, produced, etc for the first time……………but ‘new’ is also defined as – existing before, but known or discovered for the first time.

Hummm…….so new doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘brand new’, which brings us a little closer to the real essence of the modern day explanation of ‘innovation’. In order to explore this further, think of the ‘innovators’ as sitting in two camps:-

Camp # 01 = the Fashionistas

In this camp, people are wearing amazing clothes – the colors are vibrant, cloth which has never been seen before, new shapes, new cuts, and new patterns – plain exquisite!

Camp # 02 = the Insanes

In this camp, people are either not wearing clothes, wearing them on their head or wearing their tents instead of wearing clothes. Screams of excitement and glee from them can be heard in the other camp.

Which camp contains the real innovators?

............what if I told you Leonardo De Vinci had a tent in camp # 02 – new perspective , ………..perhaps new conclusions.

Modern day innovation – a PR triumph!

(Think of a 4 segment grid, with 'perspective' and 'idea' as the axis, and 'old' and 'new' as the segment labels - innovation could be seen in at least 3 of these segments).