Behind the froth in IT and innovation

James goes ‘Behind the froth in IT and innovation’ at TEDx Sussex University taking on two contemporary notions of IT – it’s all great or it’s all bad news.

The very positive claims being made of IT and innovation today are not so novel. James provides a timeline back to the early 1960s, against which he charts the moments when claims about the transformative impact of IT and innovation were first voiced.

Marshall McLuhan led the pack in 1962, stating that innovation brought be new electronic technology that was as significant as the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. A number of similarly over-stated claims about the impact of IT and innovation in relation to information, knowledge, skills, communication, electronics etc had been made over the subsequent years, right through to the present day. Discussions around Wikileaks, social media and the Arab spring, virtual communities, smart mobs etc all overstate the role IT is having in transforming democracy, accountability and communities.

Is it possible that the IT being introduced is having such an impact? If there really was true confidence behind all these claims, wouldn’t companies be making major investments in research and development (R&D) to discover new innovations? As a challenge to conventional wisdom, James asks why is it that the billions of pounds in profits being made by technology companies remain dormant in banks, while not even making any interest. Companies, it would seem, have grown complacent about what has been achieved and seem unwilling to push beyond existing boundaries.

And what about those who only see bad news in what IT delivers? They say we will be shallower, as people; that our security will be compromised; and our privacy invaded. Again, not much is new here. The doom merchants only see a future where our lives are restricted and controlled by a few big corporations such as Google, Apple, FaceBook and Amazon. And you only need to look back to Vance Packard’s book of 1964, The Naked Society, to see that our fears about the impact of IT on society are also not that recent.

We need, James offers, to be more critical and come to a better understanding of both the current limitations of IT AND the opportunities it presents to humanity.

Strangely, we find that IT is undervalued in areas it is having most impact – where it is having a genuine influence on the nitty gritty aspects of production and services between both Business to Business and Business to Government – but the discussion about this is, at best, muted.

Instead, the allure of consumables dominates, rather than the application of new thinking towards areas of life that could be totally transformed. While the Japanese did invest in R&D, Japanese economic growth remained sluggish for two decades; so there is no guarantee that investment will bring success. However, Europe, with such little investment in R&D, can only be sure it will not deliver new innovations.

Rather, Europe chooses to display a complete loss of nerve. Investment in R&D, as a proportion of GDP, stands at less than 2%. Europeans, seem to have forgotten how hard it is to actually create innovation from IT and they have fallen out of love with the romance of the struggle required to make a real impact.

Valuing ambition, taking on the risk of the unknown and the pursuit of research should be our three guides, and calls, to action.

A bold change, indeed, is needed.