Innovation Posts
Yuri Gagarin: when the world admired Russia
Western leaders’ praise for the USSR’s achievement 60 years ago stands in stark contrast to their Russophobia today
Read the full article...
Electric cars – or electric vehicles?
Expensive electric cars have become a cover for nationalist carbonistas. Bigger electric vehicles should be our priority
Read the full article...
The EU is holding back innovation
Its plans for innovation have precious little to do with science and technology
Read the full article...
Brexit is not a threat to British science
Will Brexit cause irreparable damage to British science? Eminent scientists seem to think so
Read the full article...
China and India set the pace in space
Fifty years on from the first Moon landings, the human conquest of space has changed
Read the full article...
Sceptical employees and the office of the future
We need productivity and innovation in workplaces, not eulogies to the employee experience, wellness or the circular economy
Read the full article...
Keynote on Agility at a conference of Fujitsu Distinguished Engineers, October 2018
About software agility, business agility… and agile offices
Read the full article...
Artificial meat
The Adam Smith Institute claims that lab-grown meat could lower CO2, improve land use and re-wild the UK countryside. James would eat it, but says it’s no panacea, and a fair way off
Read the full article...
Cash: down, but not out
There’ll be lots of new kinds of money, but no real end to cash
Read the full article...
What we can expect to see in technology
As 2018 gets underway, it’s time to take a look at what the year ahead holds for us. There are many areas we could focus on but the one that seems to be on many peoples’ minds is technology.
Read the full article...
Innovation then – and the challenge now
In 1965 the debating society at my old school held a parents’ evening in which a debate took place on the motion: ‘The spirit of adventure has been lost’.
Read the full article...
Innovation in megaprojects
Mostly, experts in innovation think about it in terms of the products and processes of industry and services: a new Dyson, or the software in Google or Uber.
Read the full article...
Internet of Things, Internet of Apprehension
The IoT has much to recommend it – but we need to set our sights higher: co-authored with Mark Birbeck
Read the full article...
The Queen’s speech: all talk and no tech
Promises of driverless cars and space travel ring empty without funding for research.
Read the full article...
Cosmonauts: a tribute to Russian grit
What is it about the Russians and space flight?
Read the full article...
Extraordinary innovation: presentation to a conference of UK power systems manufacturers
With a speech entitled ‘Extraordinary Innovation’, James Woudhuysen opens the Association of Manufacturers of Power Systems (AMPS) conference 2015
Read the full article...
Tackling challenges faced by oil and gas companies
Michael Zipf interviews James Woudhuysen after his Keynote address ‘Forecast of the Future: The Value of Ambitious Innovation in Energy’ at the International SAP conference for Oil and Gas, CityCube, Berlin April 2015
Read the full article...
Drones: time to reach for the skies
Unmanned aircraft systems could radically enhance people’s lives.
Read the full article...
The robots are not taking over
Stephen Hawking may be scared, but AI promises to help, not hinder us.
Read the full article...
Carbon makes the world go round
Ignore the miserable greens – carbon is a boon to humanity.
Read the full article...Communicating the romance of innovation
James Woudhuysen delivered the Opening Keynote II ‘Communicating the Romance of Innovation‘ at the European Communication Summit in Brussels 2014
Read the full article...
China in space: conquests, reversals – and revival
The success, relapse and then partial resuscitation of its lunar explorer Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, should awaken us to the broad advance China has achieved in space
Read the full article...
US firms and the ‘dash for cash’
American companies are grimly hanging on to cash, or returning it to shareholders, rather than investing in innovation
Read the full article...Six high-tech industries for 2020 and beyond
To tackle unemployment, unleash human talent and end global poverty, industry needs to embrace big ideas – here are six.
Read the full article...R&D: why failure is necessary
The US government’s reclassification of R&D as a sexy investment, not an iffy expense, is foolish.
Read the full article...The robots are coming – but not fast enough
The claim that mechanisation is sweeping away jobs in a wave of innovation bears little relation to reality.
Read the full article...From red peril to green panic
America’s military industrial complex once chased communists. Now it obsesses over CO2 emissions.
Read the full article...What London needs in terms of IT
Just three minutes on how the UK capital should apply IT for everyone’s benefit.
Read the full article...
Is Britain drowning in too much packaging?
The wrapping that our food, mod-cons and medications come in is not ‘evil’ – it is a product of civilisation.
Read the full article...
BP’s Deepwater Horizon and Loren Steffy, Drowning in oil
BP became so obsessed with irrational management practices and petty health-and-safety measures that it overlooked the real safety of its workers
Read the full article...
Yuri Gagarin’s brave, brilliant leap into the dark
On the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight, James Woudhuysen praises Gagarin’s daring – and says we need more of it today
Read the full article...Big Pharma, small ambition
Pfizer’s decision to close its UK research facility was born of an industry-wide angst about medical discovery.
Read the full article...A very conservative approach to innovation
The Lib-Con coalition is more concerned with controlling behaviour than forging a brave, hi-tech future.
Read the full article...The UK if everything was nearly half as much bigger
A White Paper for BROTHER UK
Read the full article...
‘Lifestyles will have to be redesigned’
A Guardian journalist’s ranting about the ‘neglect, greed and human filth’ of modern China shows that new prejudices about a Green Peril have replaced old fears of the Yellow Peril.
Read the full article...Business models are no substitute for genuine innovation
James Woudhuysen can’t get excited about BUSINESS MODELS. They distract from the much harder work of scientific and technological innovation.
Read the full article...How the state is a roadblock to progress
Red tape-obsessed, visionless governments are holding back the kind of big and risky innovation society needs.
Read the full article...Do we need a more venturesome economy?
It is true that in the world economy, R&D, laboratories and national competitiveness aren’t everything – but they count for more than Amar Bhidé suggests.
Read the full article...State intervention is no substitute for innovation
British industry isn’t dead by any means, but if low-carbon jobs and protectionism trump new research and development, it soon will be.
Read the full article...
Let’s go back to the Moon – and beyond
As the 40th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing approaches, backward attitudes here on Earth have tainted our view of lunar exploration
Read the full article...Risk-taking, R&D and the recession
Contributing to the spiked/CMP debate on the future of business, an innovation expert demands real wealth creation.
Read the full article...An R&D recession
Today’s economic crisis partly springs from years and years of under-investment in research and development.
Read the full article...The myth that New Labour is pro-nuclear
Everyone from big business to greens imagines that British government policy favours nuclear energy. It doesn’t.
Read the full article...The recession and the Politics of Fumbling
The consistent incompetence of politicians is no accident: it is testament to their lack of a cohering ideology.
Read the full article...Energising the debate about climate change
Energise! eschews the misanthropic green ideology of restraint and explains how human action can solve a human-made problem.
Read the full article...Global rivalries go green
Climate change will be a central part of government agendas in 2009 – and a rich source of diplomatic squabbles, too.
Read the full article...Innovators must follow Frank’s example
To the flagship conference on innovation held by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta).
Read the full article...Knocking the wind out of the energy debate
The UK government department in charge of energy is strangling urgently needed generation schemes in red tape, precaution and ceaseless consultation.
Read the full article...
Sputnik: when American fears went into orbit
When the Soviets put the first man-made satellite into space, 50 years ago today, the event launched an era of US self-doubt that continues to this day
Read the full article...Let’s research our own R&D record
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development may be right that the Chinese are sluggish on research and development. But the same is true of America and Europe.
Read the full article...The future of the workplace: innovation vs displacement activities
Paper to the 2007 conference of the British Institute of Facilities Management
Read the full article...Let robots take the strain
Robots have the potential to revolutionise peoples’ lives, but Whitehall doesn’t want to fund the research
Read the full article...IT is our best bet for urban renewal
New Labour’s enthusiasm for supercasinos betrays a lack of faith in the transformative power of IT.
Read the full article...UK energy rules leave managers cold
In line with the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, UK regulations require a whole-building approach to calculate office carbon emissions.
Read the full article...Innovation: on the horizon
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have often praised creativity, but the post-Blair era promises to see more pleas for innovation. In the past, too many designers were fooled by the false promise of Oasis in No 10. Now, whoever wins the next election, they don’t need to be so credulous again
Read the full article...Voice-operated: a word-of-mouth success
Speech-to-text tools are improving and can be a real boon for people who find typing difficult
Read the full article...Big-headed ideas for mobile systems
It is time to think large and ambitious, not small and niche, for mobile enterprise applications.
Read the full article...Cool heads needed for RFID debate
Trade unions, lawyers and privacy campaigners worried about “Big Brother spychips” should not be allowed to dictate the RFID agenda.
Read the full article...Metro miserablists
Two new top-level reports only seem to see the downsides to life in a big city.
Read the full article...Carriers put innovation on hold
Telecoms networks have proved remarkably complacent
Read the full article...Review of ‘Calculated Risks’: Thomas Watson Sr and the Making of IBM
Kevin Maney’s biography of IBM founder Thomas Watson does justice to his daring personality.
Read the full article...Do not focus on customers
Ben Hunt’s The Timid Corporation argues for more investment in long-term research and development, rather than customer focus groups.
Read the full article...Will AI put mankind in check?
Is the epic man-versus-machine chess contest taking place in Bahrain evidence that humans will one day be merely pawns in a world ruled by computers?
Read the full article...Converging on risk aversion
It’s short-termism in the IT world that means mergers are thought to be Bad News.
Read the full article...Ask the customers because they are always right
The reorientation of manufacturing means a move from “technology push” to “user pull”.
Read the full article...
Design for space
Inside the Command Module, Armstrong confronted no fewer than 650 switches, dials, motors, circuit breakers, controls and displays
Read the full article...
Exiled to Malibu
A capitalism in which manufacturing turns out modest production runs with easily customised products? The possibilities were being exaggerated decades before 3D printing. Review of one of the most influential forecasters and forecasting books: Alvin Toffler, The third wave, Collins, 1980.
Read the full article...Innovation: a case study
Americans worried about their industrialists’ willingness to take on risky innovations should take heart – and learn lessons – from Corning Glass Works.
Read the full article...
KOWTOWING TO BEIJING DEPT: Whaddya know? Keir Starmer finally discovers his ‘growth agenda’! As my piece also suggests, the portents don't look good for Labour to protect the UK from CCP operations https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-pares-back-secretive-china-strategy-review-seeking-closer-ties-2024-12-16/
"By all means, keep up the salty, anti-Starmer tweets, Elon. But kindly keep your mega-bucks to yourself."
At the #ECB, convicted lawyer #ChristineLagarde has just beaten inflation, oh yes. But #AndrewBailey's many forecasts of lower interest rates have excelled again, with UK inflation now at 2.6 per cent
Painting: Thomas Couture, A SLEEPING JUDGE, 1859
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls