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

Summary:

James Woudhuysen, Head of Innovation at De Montfort University, opens the European Communication Summit in Brussels 2014. In a call to arms, James implores the audience to be concerned about the innovation emergency that was highlighted by the EU Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. He identifies what is causing this emergency and the action innovators need to take to get out of this situation.

*******

Europe has a major innovation problem; it is not investing in Research & Development. ICT is the only sector where investment starts to match what is needed. In all other sectors – transport, energy, construction, agriculture and chemistry – R&D is lagging behind many countries such as China, India and Japan.

James outlines 3 stumbling blocks to innovation in Europe

• Europe has fallen out of love with the “can do” approach of the 1960s
• Scientific innovation and discovery has become stigmatised
• The focus of attention has narrowed to a focus on IT at the expense of other sectors

As a counter, James advocates a different sensibility to innovation – that of risk taking, blue skies thinking and vigorously re-opening discussion about innovation, across all sectors.

However, James argues that this counter is still unlikely to be enough. Innovators today need to sharpen up their critical approach and learn from past eras where dynamic innovation flourished. Innovation requires high morale; it is not an automatic process that just happens, rather its propagation demands a fight. Objectives, goals and direction need to be clarified.

And, returning to basics, James describes some essential qualities of innovation – newness, the human desire to learn and understand, being confident to pursue an idea, regardless of what others say is important and, last but not least, taking big risks. The test of real innovation is whether the result is new products, new processes and new forms of organisation.

The final part of James introduction and the subsequent Q&A starts to explore the implications of adopting a different sensibility toward innovation and some of the areas innovators could be concentrating on.

James concludes with one idea he would like to see introduced in all corporations to develop and train young minds. View the video and see if you think his idea could take off….!