Beware smotherers of invention

Few newspapers covered Lord Sainsbury’s December report for the Department of Trade and Industry, Competing in the Global Economy: the Innovation Challenge. Yet the challenge facing the UK will not go away.

You know the story. Britain, still a nation of boffins, has great ideas for technology, great inventions; but after the boffins come the botches, while other countries rip off our science. We are world-beaters in creativity. Yet for every James Dyson we get an almost empty-handed Tim Berners-Lee.

As minister for science and innovation, Sainsbury believes that the UK should be a country “famed not only for its outstanding record of discovery but also for innovation”. He may yet get his wish. As Francis Spufford has shown in his recent book Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin, Britain has commercialised a number of key discoveries: Vodafone, one of his examples, being among the success stories.

And Britain no longer shows every inventor, bankrupt or aspiring venture capitalist the door. Gordon Brown wants US-style lenience to be shown to plucky but failed entrepreneurs. And British venture capitalists are booming.

But real barriers to innovation remain. Society’s risk-conscious subservience to purchasers and regulators certainly dampens innovation. As do the following arguments – arguments that I’ve overheard in corporate corridors, and that have no doubt caused many an innovative project to collapse: “We haven’t got a budget for that.” Now that hanging loose and avoiding risks are thought preferable to investment, corporate short-termism has a whole new force.

“It’ll cannibalise sales of our existing products and services, in which we’ve made a large investment. You can’t just write that off.” Yes, and that way no going concern would ever innovate.

“In the Gold Rush of 1849, people made money by sticking to the creative production of commodity shovels, not from stab-in-the-dust exploration. Innovation is too unpredictable. It’s best to be a fast follower, not a first mover.” My last riposte again applies. I’d only add that there was a time when the unpredictability of innovation was regarded as exciting, not dangerous.

The argument I hear expressed quite openly nowadays is the most pernicious one. It concerns how one explains an innovation. It runs: “Sales staff and end-users are so dumb, they’ll never grasp how it works. Anyway, they don’t need to know and aren’t usually interested.”

This condescending argument disempowers non-technicians, and makes those who are technologically ingenious look like an isolated, alien force.

“Don’t make them think!” Now that argument really does set back the cause of innovation.