Comments on: What is the Government’s role in innovation? http://www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/2007/03/07/what-is-the-governments-role-in-innovation/ The BQF Innovation Unit Blog Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:09:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Paul Sloane http://www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/2007/03/07/what-is-the-governments-role-in-innovation/#comment-86 Paul Sloane Wed, 14 Mar 2007 06:46:58 +0000 http://www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/2007/03/07/what-is-the-governments-role-in-innovation/#comment-86 More comments about this meeting and issue including a piece by Morice Medoza here: http://www.editorialintelligence.com/world_of_ei/zeitgeist/?p=8 More comments about this meeting and issue including a piece by Morice Medoza here:

http://www.editorialintelligence.com/world_of_ei/zeitgeist/?p=8

]]> By: Paul Sloane http://www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/2007/03/07/what-is-the-governments-role-in-innovation/#comment-85 Paul Sloane Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:09:40 +0000 http://www.bqf.org.uk/innovation/2007/03/07/what-is-the-governments-role-in-innovation/#comment-85 I received this comment from Ken Olisa who was also at the conference: The main question at the seminar - “Has New Labour helped or hindered innovation?” was an astonishingly dumb question for three reasons. Firstly it’s dumb because it implies an impossible – namely that Governments can ever play a central rather than a peripheral role in driving innovation. Secondly it’s a dumb question because, posed in that way, it’s not really a question. Instead it’s a cynical statement containing its own snippy implied negative answer to a rhetorical question – namely “Of course they haven’t, stupid: and as is self-evident, the UK is consequently slipping rapidly down the innovation ladder towards rock bottom.” Finally, it was a dumb question because the evidence used to support the above assertion was all in the negative (except the bit about the huge injection of cash into science which was ignored as being unhelpful to the argument) and given that a list of all the things that haven’t been done is, by definition, practically infinite, it is bound to leave the impression that nothing has been done. The correct question should have been – “Is Britain a more innovative place than it was a decade ago?” And the answer to this question is self-evidently in the affirmative. Yesterday’s panellists, fulminating in the “Aid not Trade” culture of the 1960s were obsessed with trivialities – the eclectic range of which included the failures of Wakefield’s Innovation, the time taken to travel to Newcastle to attend a funeral and the efficacy of homeopathic medicines! There are legion examples of how innovation has become a way of life in the UK – Reuters and Friends Provident provided several of them yesterday – but one global scale example serves to illustrate the point of how far things have progressed in 10 years. London’s AIM exchange is doing for risk capital precisely what Nasdaq did for it in the 1980s. From nowhere, the LSE’s barely legitimate child has become the world’s most successful growth company market raising billions of pounds each year and cementing London’s new place ahead of New York in the IPO stakes. And what triggered this phenomenon? The cynics would say it was America’s suicidal introduction of Sarbanes Oxley that drove AIM’s growth. But this analysis is wholly flawed – if it were the case, Toronto, Paris and Frankfurt would have flourished too. Instead it was AIM’s innovative regulatory structure that fuelled its success – the cellular Nomad construct allowed shared reputation to replace rules-based regulation with spectacular effect. An example of UK City innovation that has turbocharged the young company sector in a way that venture capital has never achieved. Oh, and to trump the anti-Government lobby, the Ed Balls’ action in introducing the Investment Exchanges and Clearing Houses Act 2006 has secured AIM’s operational autonomy in the face of the likelihood of it losing its ownership independence. Listening to the Panel yesterday, innovation was revered as an objective in its own right. As Amanda West from Reuters put it – “There is no shortage of good ideas” success depends on effective process for their exploitation: defined as their conversion into something of utility to mankind. London’s AIM is a brilliant example of innovation at work – a world-changing phenomenon which is itself providing the capital to drive further innovations in a form of global capital chain reaction. Proof positive that we are in a far better place today than we were in 1997 – due, in so small part, to direct Government action. As a Brit and therefore preternaturally inclined to a bit of cynicism myself –I find it more than faintly amusing that yesterday’s Panel failed to note the irony of ironies – whilst the last 10 years have seen quantum leaps in measurable innovation, the Government-bashing, change-denying innovation pundits have remained stuck in a 1990s time warp, trotting out the same tired old rants about venture capital disinterest, government inaction and cultural inertia. Surely it’s time for the Innovation industry to think of something new! Ken Olisa Chairman Restoration Partners I received this comment from Ken Olisa who was also at the conference:

The main question at the seminar - “Has New Labour helped or hindered innovation?” was an astonishingly dumb question for three reasons.

Firstly it’s dumb because it implies an impossible – namely that Governments can ever play a central rather than a peripheral role in driving innovation.

Secondly it’s a dumb question because, posed in that way, it’s not really a question. Instead it’s a cynical statement containing its own snippy implied negative answer to a rhetorical question – namely “Of course they haven’t, stupid: and as is self-evident, the UK is consequently slipping rapidly down the innovation ladder towards rock bottom.”

Finally, it was a dumb question because the evidence used to support the above assertion was all in the negative (except the bit about the huge injection of cash into science which was ignored as being unhelpful to the argument) and given that a list of all the things that haven’t been done is, by definition, practically infinite, it is bound to leave the impression that nothing has been done.

The correct question should have been – “Is Britain a more innovative place than it was a decade ago?”

And the answer to this question is self-evidently in the affirmative. Yesterday’s panellists, fulminating in the “Aid not Trade” culture of the 1960s were obsessed with trivialities – the eclectic range of which included the failures of Wakefield’s Innovation, the time taken to travel to Newcastle to attend a funeral and the efficacy of homeopathic medicines!

There are legion examples of how innovation has become a way of life in the UK – Reuters and Friends Provident provided several of them yesterday – but one global scale example serves to illustrate the point of how far things have progressed in 10 years.

London’s AIM exchange is doing for risk capital precisely what Nasdaq did for it in the 1980s. From nowhere, the LSE’s barely legitimate child has become the world’s most successful growth company market raising billions of pounds each year and cementing London’s new place ahead of New York in the IPO stakes.

And what triggered this phenomenon? The cynics would say it was America’s suicidal introduction of Sarbanes Oxley that drove AIM’s growth. But this analysis is wholly flawed – if it were the case, Toronto, Paris and Frankfurt would have flourished too. Instead it was AIM’s innovative regulatory structure that fuelled its success – the cellular Nomad construct allowed shared reputation to replace rules-based regulation with spectacular effect. An example of UK City innovation that has turbocharged the young company sector in a way that venture capital has never achieved.

Oh, and to trump the anti-Government lobby, the Ed Balls’ action in introducing the Investment Exchanges and Clearing Houses Act 2006 has secured AIM’s operational autonomy in the face of the likelihood of it losing its ownership independence.

Listening to the Panel yesterday, innovation was revered as an objective in its own right. As Amanda West from Reuters put it – “There is no shortage of good ideas” success depends on effective process for their exploitation: defined as their conversion into something of utility to mankind.

London’s AIM is a brilliant example of innovation at work – a world-changing phenomenon which is itself providing the capital to drive further innovations in a form of global capital chain reaction.

Proof positive that we are in a far better place today than we were in 1997 – due, in so small part, to direct Government action.

As a Brit and therefore preternaturally inclined to a bit of cynicism myself –I find it more than faintly amusing that yesterday’s Panel failed to note the irony of ironies – whilst the last 10 years have seen quantum leaps in measurable innovation, the Government-bashing, change-denying innovation pundits have remained stuck in a 1990s time warp, trotting out the same tired old rants about venture capital disinterest, government inaction and cultural inertia.

Surely it’s time for the Innovation industry to think of something new!

Ken Olisa
Chairman
Restoration Partners

]]>