Blogs

Join us in a new interactive website - www.reinnovation21.com - promoting the public understanding of innovation that will be available shortly.

The screech claws at my eardrums every time my dialup modem connects. With less than half an hour to go for the new millennium, I am sending last minute emails to family and friends down south and abroad. Contemplating the early fireworks across the football pitch, today’s snapshots take ages to upload though; seconds seem an eternity with few minutes now to go for the end of this millennium. Still waiting for the photo attachment, I ponder what everyday life would look like in 2050 - how would information and communication technologies have evolved and shaped our future?

On this new BBC production(*), Professors Iain Stewart and Kathy Sykes take a timely look at global warming and the possible technological solutions that could help us humans ameliorate and hopefully reverse the heating of our planet and its potentially ominous consequences. The presenters tell us that many scientists believe that our planet will be two or even three degrees warmer by the end of this century. The temperature changes have started to affect inhabited parts of the globe.

Still feeling lucky after procuring the much coveted leather sofa in the newly opened branch of Costa, I browse the weekend edition of The Times whilst waiting for my wife, son and mother-in-law to emerge from the depths of the Christmas crush. A multitude of passers-by, walking with intent, crosses the main street of the once-industrial Northern town. The current economic recession would seem to have been conquered, judging by the countless bulging bags carried by the shopping crowd.

Place: eOffice, 1 Portland Street, Manchester

Date: 12th November 2009; Time: 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Event: Northern Start-up 2.0’s Managing Growth - Tech Entrepreneur Series

Innovation: noun 1 the action or process of innovating. 2 a new method, idea, product, etc. Compact Oxford English Dictionary

After some economic highs and lows during the past decades and the more recent financial “credit crunch”, the UK urgently needs to secure its global position amongst other leading knowledge-intensive economies. To achieve this goal, the UK Government would need to support the re-alignment of a segment of the financial industry that has been in constant change since its first conception five or six decades ago.

The creative industries account for over eight per cent of UK GDP and are growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole – averaging five per cent a year in recent years (NESTA). New strategic private actions and government interventions need to be put in place as a matter of urgency to be able to reach comparable levels of growth.

In a global economy, innovation, learning and competitiveness have become a development priority. As development strategies focus increasingly on regional integration, however, experience has shown that liberalising trade and entering into trade agreements are not enough to improve economic development and generate employment.

Both Angel and I have undertaken many years of consultancy projects in our life time. In Angel's case on policy studies and action-oriented research in the UK, Europe and Latin America; and in my case, infrastructure projects in the UK and the Middle East. Latter years, I have been concentrating on finance automation; knowledge leveraging; social networks; high-tech startup ecosystem development; etc.