Seminar on Business Innovation at Faraday Wharf

Another excellent free breakfast, and mind-altering experience; I'm not quite sure what they put into the coffee. For a sceptical engineer like myself the major "wow" moment of the morning was hearing Daniel Cremin of Rhubarb Radio, and one of the mover and shakers of the social media world, pitch his presentation very much at how to make money from the media, without necessarily plastering every web page with banner advertising, or being driven by the sponsors. Very refreshing. It also struck me that there are huge implications in my own field; interest has value, and that's true whether it's interest in a coffee house amongst its customers and potential customers, or a company with an engineering edge amongst potential investors. Are there lessons that can be learnt in how to raise profiles through use of new social media, even in the technical and commercial disciplines which are usually thought of as quite staid? Should I be on twitter or, more importantly, advise my clients to be on twitter - would this impress a potential investor tremendously? As ever, I think it's the details that make the difference, and this could be the base for a potential collaborative project with one of my new contacts.

Innovation

So what is innovation? Why should we do it? How do we do it? And once we've done it, how do we make sure that we use the innovation that we've come up with, and that the innovation is actually better than the old way?

I think one of the advantages of having a baby daughter is that it brings home to you just how programmed for change humans are; we are born eager to innovate, to adapt to our own changing capabilities, and to the changes that take place around us. As we get older we are taught to value stability, constancy and permanence. Sadly no-one has taught the universe. Life around us continues to advance with improvements in technology, changes in society and alterations in how humanity views itself. All of this is brought out in the viral presentation "Shift Happens" - now available in a multitude of different flavours.

I have issues with the presentation, but it succeeds in its core purpose - we need to think about the changes that are occurring around us, and what they mean for the life we live.

Basically put, to stand still we need to be running. What goes for humanity as a whole is true on both an individual and corporate level.