Another interesting post by Roland Harwood asks if location matters for open innovation.
There has been a phenomenal effort in boosting clusters in the past two decades… and my (entirely subjective and unscientific) estimate is that 98% of that investment has been in vain. You can’t recreate Silicon Valley in Milton Keynes no matter how hard you try and how much money you invest.
I feel the same way. Of course if you’re atop a power hierarchy I’m sure the world looks very different.
Roland continues:
As a friend of mine who works for a major Water Utility said to me at the weekend, when discussing the poor drainage in a section of our local park… you have to make a feature of it as it’s very hard to rechannel water away from where it wants to go.
I am easily drawn to this viewpoint; hence my oft-repeated insight/platitude about noticing more, changing less: support what is emergent rather than go round trying to change the world.
