innovation – Page 2

Steal the Future; Change the World

My friends Rory and Anita at The Creativity Hub are pretty much the nicest people I know. That’s not entirely surprising considering the work they do in creativity and conflict resolution. I know Rory from a few years ago when he was working in the rehabilitation of prisoners (from our unique political ‘situation’) and I … Continue reading “Steal the Future; Change the World”

My friends Rory and Anita at The Creativity Hub are pretty much the nicest people I know. That’s not entirely surprising considering the work they do in creativity and conflict resolution. I know Rory from a few years ago when he was working in the rehabilitation of prisoners (from our unique political ‘situation’) and I was very glad to re-acquaint myself with him not long after the start of this job – both for work and socially.

Rory introduced me to the concept of “Advanced Civilisation” (which he said is also available on the Internet as Beachhead). It’s something I had used for my creative writing but I had not really considered using it for work-related purposes. I do find now that I use it a lot – that imagination figures heavily in how I want to enact change in the world around me. The secret to achieving things lies in the discovery of great people, not in the funding programmes that are available.

This weekend we will complete the proposal document for StartVI year two and we will be looking for 6 great start-up ideas. We have a much more cohesive programme planned for the 2011 intake, more mentors and a better idea of what can be achieved now that we’ve shown it can work.

I’m also proposing the founding of a new co-working, research based technology centre in Belfast. And a solution to improving the quality of software engineering in Northern Ireland – comprising of a industry-tailored education programme and a community focused technology freeschool. Of course I alone am not qualified to do all of this. That’s why I’ve been looking for great people to help change the world; to steal the future; to get there earlier.

All of this to create a hub of 21st Century Enlightenment.

What the heck does disruptive mean?

Paul Smyth, one of the investment managers at eSynergy wrote: if you are looking for funding in the next 6-8 months and you have a different idea – and that means properly different, something that isn’t a ‘me too’ with a different angle then come and speak to us. eSynergy are the fund managers for … Continue reading “What the heck does disruptive mean?”

Paul Smyth, one of the investment managers at eSynergy wrote:

if you are looking for funding in the next 6-8 months and you have a different idea – and that means properly different, something that isn’t a ‘me too’ with a different angle then come and speak to us.

eSynergy are the fund managers for NISPO the local government-backed investment fund. They have a proof of concept fund (vouched in arrears) and a VC fund (as well as two other funds, one for each university).

I wonder about the definition of disruptive though. Looking at industries which have been disrupted –

who would have guessed that a company could make money in online search after the dot-com boom. We certainly had plenty of search engines but Google was disruptive with their own brand of “me too”. And they’ve retained that edge by investing heavily in disrupting industries where their competitors make money but giving it away for free (email, productivity, etc).
who would have though that Apple, having narrowly missed death and chased the home movie market would have made a right-angle turn and chased the music market with such gusto to the extend that less than a decade later, they own it? Others were doing online music – just doing it badly. Others were doing MP3 players, just again doing them badly.
who would have identified Amazon as truly disruptive, selling books online. Now, Amazon was founded in 1994 and now sells pretty much everything. They’re my default location for books, music, games, consumer electronics. They took 7 years to turn a profit and now have revenues of $24B. Were they disruptive? Ask booksellers on the High Street.
who would have predicted that people would become addicted to the Blackberry device from Research in Motion which has turned a tiny Canadian company into a $15B company. RIM is weathering a hughe onslaught from other disruptive technology such as Android, iPhone and other hungry smartphone manufacturers. But they were the first with the vision that we’d want email on the go.

I am concerned that local investors don’t necessarily have the education and experience to deal with something that is truly disruptive as opposed to something that seems extraordinary. At BizcampBelfast earlier this week, Kevin Parker put the following definition on screen:

Invention is the process of turning cash into ideas. Innovation is the process of turning ideas into cash.

And I really like that definition. If you were reword it to indicate the difference between disruptive and extraordinary, it might read like this.

We may see and want the extraordinary every day, but we tell ourselves we need the disruptive.

I’d like to invite you to explain in the comments what is disruptive, how it affects you, how it makes you feel. And if you can fit a definition (not unlike the one above) into around 140 characters, then post into the comments. I’ll give a £10 iTunes voucher to the best one (so make sure to include your contact details)

Vote for Transformational Change

My Dad is a lifelong Tory. Almost institutionalised. So he is looking forward to this election. It’ll bring change. David Cameron said: In Northern Ireland it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this –that the size of the state has got too big,” Cameron said. “We need a bigger private sector. There … Continue reading “Vote for Transformational Change”

My Dad is a lifelong Tory. Almost institutionalised. So he is looking forward to this election. It’ll bring change.

David Cameron said:

In Northern Ireland it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this –that the size of the state has got too big,” Cameron said.

“We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including in the north-east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector going.

“Over the next parliament we have got to see a faster growing private sector, we’ve got to broaden our economic base and we need to have a rebalancing of the economy between the commercial and private sector on the one hand and between the state sector on the other.”

The thing is, this is common sense. This is not Conservative policy, this is plain economic policy and should be supported by every party. They may not due to losing potential votes – but this will need to happen anyway.

We do need a bigger private sector. And this will mean massive cuts in the ~~private~~ public [Thanks, Andy – M] sector but this is not a bad thing if it spurs more private sector. And we can’t always look to the government to provide jobs, we need to be part of that change.

I have ideas on how to do this. But it requires sweeping, transformational change in the way we educate, the way we support innovation and the way we legislate for business. These things need to be in place before the cuts and ready to receive the newly unemployed once the cuts hit.

Fragile Assumptions

I just read this brief blog post from BrainStore which is designed to help people visualise thinking about the future. They say to let them: invent “Headlines of the Future” for the industry or topic you are working on? It puts them in the shoes of a different group (journalists) and generally produces great insights … Continue reading “Fragile Assumptions”

I just read this brief blog post from BrainStore which is designed to help people visualise thinking about the future. They say to let them:

invent “Headlines of the Future” for the industry or topic you are working on? It puts them in the shoes of a different group (journalists) and generally produces great insights that people can relate to better because they are more familiar to them.

The example they give is:

This is a process that beings by eschewing assumptions. For example: lots of people have a concrete preconception of what makes a personal computer. They have severe difficulties in accepting notions which are outside of their paradigm. And it’s not just in computing. By challenging assumptions which are supposedly fundamental to the current stream of thought, we can find new ways to innovate.

Some of these (such as “No More Keyboards” are easy to envisage with the adoption of touch-screens and some of the brain-activity work going on in our local universities – keyboards could already be a thing of the past. But what about screens? We’ve seen a concept computer from DELL which doesn’t have a screen, it has a projector by default. Or how about a wearable computer which feeds data directly to a video headset. What about non-visible user interfaces like on the iPod shuffle? Or one which uses aural or haptic clues?

It isn’t quite as easy as just taking each statement and looking at the inverse – but rather to examine it for fragile assumptions.

The Ultimate Tool of Technical Freedom

I had coffee with @blaine, a really smart guy who really surprised me with his insight and humility. We only had 40 minutes to chat but I’d love to get another longer chat sometime. He also gave me something to google, “Matt Jones on The Demon-Haunted World” and I found this Archigram considered the car … Continue reading “The Ultimate Tool of Technical Freedom”

I had coffee with @blaine, a really smart guy who really surprised me with his insight and humility. We only had 40 minutes to chat but I’d love to get another longer chat sometime.

He also gave me something to google, “Matt Jones on The Demon-Haunted World” and I found this

Archigram considered the car the ultimate tool of technical freedom â€“ whereas now the ultimate piece of technical freedom is a mobile phone.

and this presentation:

The Demon-Haunted World

View more documents from Matt Jones. (tags: sensors archigram)

Thanks Blaine. Really enjoyed it. Til next time!

The Creative Industries Innovation Fund

I attended the Creative Industries Innovation Fund breakfast briefing with Kate Keys (Sectoral Business Development Manager at the Arts Council) this morning at The Presidents Club in Belfast. It was hosted by The Creative Entrepreneurs Club, a networking group funded by Belfast City Council. The CIIF provides access to funding for many who would not … Continue reading “The Creative Industries Innovation Fund”

The CIIF provides access to funding for many who would not normally be able to access funding. For one thing, it covers:

services
content
events
originals

– a lot of which cannot be covered by InvestNI’s funding charter due to the type of work (content, services, events) or the expectations (forecasting of Â£100K revenues). The CIIF is therefore an important part of the framework – and for this reason, existing INI clients may not be eligible. This has to be taken with a pinch of reason – someone who attended the Start A Business programme 7 years ago is an INI client but would not be restricted from applying for this grant but someone who is in receipt of an InvestNI grant in the last three years may not be eligible – in all cases, talking to your client executive is important (and even dragging him or her to the discussion with the Arts Council might be useful).

The subject of ‘not being eligible’ drew some fire from the crowd but there are very good reasons for it.

This fund is for people and companies who cannot normally avail of InvestNI funding for whatever reason. InvestNI cannot normally invest in content creation or fund the running of an event highlighting creative work – this attempts to cover that.
EC Regulations regulate the amount of support that a company can receive in three fiscal years to â‚¬200 000. There’s a detailed page at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform which explains this fully.
There’s degrees of interpretation here. Again, if you received the Â£400 marketing grant as a startup, you may indeed be eligible. If your company is a new startup based around a “Collaborative Special Purpose Vehicle” then it may be fine even if some of the collaborators were previous recipients.

There are two calls remaining for CIIF applications. One started on the 5th January and ends on the 5th February. The last call starts on the 7th September and ends on the 8th October. Applications will take approximately 8 weeks to process and feedback will be given if your application is unsuccessful – the guidance was to speak to them first, apply in the first call and if unsuccessful, obtain the feedback ad re-apply for the second calls.

The judging panel for these applications will have input from the Arts Council, InvestNI, the Department of Employment and Learning, The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry and the Department of Culture, Arts and Learning.

The CIIF is a part of the funding ecosystem of the Northern Ireland marketplace. It fits around the funding available from InvestNI, NIScreen, the Arts Council and other funding bodies.

I found it incredibly encouraging to be in a room which had run out of seating, where I was sitting beside an award-winning clothes designer and someone from an award-winning design and branding company. There were a few familiar faces as well – all keen to find out how their next great project can be turned into a reality.

60% of the fund will be going to fund 143 individual projects over the next two-and-a-bit years to March 2011. The remaining 40% will be distributed to Sectoral Bodies ( councils, universities, sector leads ) to run projects which will help focus on the themes of innovation, creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship. The Arts Council are urging individuals to apply early and apply often. The demand received for this fund will help indicate a further and/or extended funding requirement for the future.

Research and Development? What it is.

I wrote a post on digitalcircle.org today about the new Grant for R&D from InvestNI. Much like the stuff I’ve written about R&D Tax Relief and R&D Tax Credits (both of which are available), there’s some clearing up around the term “R&D” that needs to be done. During a conversation last week with Marty from … Continue reading “Research and Development? What it is.”

During a conversation last week with Marty from NoMoreArt in the Black Box CafÃ©, I said “Every line of code is…” and we both finished the sentence in entirely contradictory ways.

He said “Derived”. I said “Novel”.

Thing is, we’re both right.

Research and Development in these terms is difficult to define for software development and it galls me that R&D in these terms does not include the creation of digital content in any way despite the amount of time, technology and expertise that might be required to create that content.

In these terms, it means either “industrial research” or “experimental development”.

Industrial Research is defined as “Planned research to acquire new knowledge and skills to develop new (or significantly improved existing) products, processes or services (including prototypes).

Experimental Development is defined as “Existing knowledge/ skills used to plan/design new or improved products, processes or services.”

When writing a new application, you’re likely to be using “existing knowledge / skills” until you hit the wall where you have to do something new.

i.e. writing an image viewer is no big deal. Writing an image viewer that also handles audio, video, layers, multiple languages and internet content is “hard”. Especially when no-one else has done it.

To a degree I think software development gets a raw deal here. The work is as technical, as challenging as material science (for example) but the definitions don’t assist in the availability of grant aid. The province is looking forwards towards becoming a knowledge economy as we witness the manufacturing bastions of our past fall away.

We have to show our value here and while I think it’s a little harder to demonstrate real innovation in software in Northern Ireland (due as much to the lack of innate, home-grown talent capable of judging it for it’s real value), I think the possibilities for product-based, forward-thinking companies is immense.

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