What if…?

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) publishes some good ideas and often some bad ideas (or should that be unworkable rather than bad?).

However, the latest notion from the self-styled ‘think and do tank’ is very interesting.

They propose a ‘Green New Deal’ akin to Roosevelts New Deal implemented in the US during the 1930’s depression. Full details of their proposals (and who drafted them) can be found here.

There main proposals include;

• “Massive investment in renewable energy and wider environmental transformation in the UK, leading to,
• The creation of thousands of new green collar jobs
• Reining in reckless aspects of the finance sector – but making low-cost capital available to fund the UK’s green economic shift
• Building a new alliance between environmentalists, industry, agriculture, and unions to put the interests of the real economy ahead of those of footloose finance”

All interesting stuff I think, but as always how its implemented would be the challenge. Setting aside the alarmist (but possibly true) 100 months to live stuff, it’s an interesting contribution to a wider debate.

Are we going to sleepwalk into the abyss always doing things the way we have always done them or are we prepared to change?

Bloomberg news this morning had an analyst on who was talking not about recession but about depression, just like the 1930’s. So perhaps a New Deal will be required.

Back in January 08 I was asked to take part in a debate as part of the BURA annual conference.

Now I was given the unenviable task of assessing the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on the regeneration industry.

I tried to make my presentation as upbeat as possible, but even at this stage some of the figures and numbers were pretty gloomy.

The key areas I predicted might be impacted were; commercial property, private housebuilding and its supply chain, retail and cultural led development. Now I could devote a whole blog to pointing out examples that prove my point, but equally there are bound to be some cases that prove the opposite. A point I made in my speech.

However, over the subsequent lunchbreak I was surprised by the number of ‘regeneration and property development professionals’ who said I was part of a group of gloom mongers who were talking Britain into a recession.! Likewise, the number of people who (despite their relative senior status in the industry) had not looked at some of the basic facts and were not that aware of the wider forces impacting their industry and asked me where I got them from was worrying.
For the record, I am still not convinced that the UK will go into recession but the likelihood has significantly increased. These latest figures from the ONS do nothing to change this view and the post-script to this article in The Observer spells out the gloomy scenario.
One of the most interesting things for me about this whole experience is how, if a situation is potentially bad, so many people adopt an ostrich like stance and refuse to think ahead or accept that a situation may be bad.?

Does anyone know of psychological studies that examine this phenomenon?

Im writing this post from the bar of the City Inn in Manchester (which I recommend). The City is bracing itself for an influx of football supporters for the UEFA cup final and most of these will be from Glasgow!!

Hello to all of those that I met at the Constructing Excellence Dinner in Newcastle on Friday night.!

The dinner was well attended and the award winners all seem genuinely committed to innovation and improvement. In fact I had such a good time that I’m thinking of signing the firm up for membership. Who said hospitality doesn’t work?

A while back (2005) I contributed a chapter to this book which was edited by my esteemed colleague Leigh Sear.

In the chapter I argued that all SME’s are ‘born global’ or at least have the potential to operate globally without having to be particularly large. This was primarily due to information technologies helping lower the barriers to entry.

So this article in the FT by IBM CEO Sam Palmisano was very interesting. Seems that IBM are getting onto my wavelength!

Here we go then back into the blogging fray.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve been so busy that thought of keeping a daily blog was just a step too far.

That’s not to say that I haven’t seen a lot that I would have liked to blog about. So, now that things are a little more balanced its time to rejuvenate the What If blog again.

Watch out for improvements and changes over the coming days.!

Cheers

Stuart

Hi All

Thought you might be interested in my new Blog - which contains some of my ideas on idea generation, enterprise, spotting opportunities, innovation and that sort of stuff.

You can find it at:

http://www.treepax.com/blog

Some of it contains reprints of some of the articles I have already posted in this Blog but it is growing daily.

Ian Moore

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had a splurge on books at the weekend. In this frenzy of spending I picked up a book called, ‘A Brief History of The Future’ by Oona Strathern. Looked interesting, so I thought why not?

Anyway, it turns out to be a very good read and an interesting history lesson in mankinds attempts at ‘futurism’. I highly recommend it.

Meanwhile, on the Cognitive Edge blog Dave is asking if anybody has a ticket for the Champions League final.!

So now i am officially a lender on Zopa. At present my money has been allocated to borrowers who are going through credit checks and stuff like that. More updates when the money has gone.

Experience to date has been pretty cool and painless. So a big thumbs up.

Splurged on books today at Waterstones in Durham. I had to go to the Passport Office in Durham anyway to renew my second borns passport. We then went into the City and I ended up buying four books in Waterstone. More on these soon.

I have been interested in Zopa for a while, but only just got round to really investigating the site. Creating a big stir in the financial press, Zopa cuts out the banks and allows people to lend and borrow from other people. Its loan rates are less than any other bank (according to them) as are their return rates.

Due to launch in the US soon, will Zopa be the start of a new revolution in banking?

It all looks really interesting to me, so in the name of research I am going to become a lender on Zopa. Watch this space for more news on how that goes.

Cognitive Edge Workshop April 2007 003

Originally uploaded by stuwhatif.

Thanks to all the participants in our social complexity workshop. The feedback I have had so far has been positive. Thought you might like to see a photograph of yourselves working very hard.

This is when you were deciding whether Star Wars was chaotic or complex and whether it was the movie or script we were talking about?!

Of course if you had just used the force like Chad Vader then you would have been okay.!

Good news. We have managed to secure the services (once again) of Steve Bealing CEO of Cognitive Edge, who will be visiting the UK to run a workshop highlighting Cognitive Edges unique approaches to social complexity, knowledge sharing and sense making.

The workshop is in Newcastle on the 4th April. It runs from 10.00 - 15.00 at Jurys Inn. £150 (ex VAT) to cover costs. For more details or to book a slot email andrewh@woodholmes.co.uk.

Places are strictly limited so first come, first served.

Yesterday I was a judge at the Big Ideas ICT Hothouse Challenge. This was hosted at Southmoor School in Sunderland. I was required to view a range of student ICT project ideas as well as deliver a 1 hour talk on futures.

So, big “Hello!” to all the participants, judges and organisers of yesterdays ICT Hothouse Challenge!

Thankyou for a great day. Hopefully you all enjoyed it as much as I did. All of the projects were excellent and well presented. Several people asked me for the links to the sites I was talking about. They are listed below for your enjoyment;

GoodPoint in made by the fine people at Gesture Studios (the people who do Tom Cruise style pointy gloves!). This website has some videos which show you the gloves in action.
Beeline TV - the aggregator site for online TV.
The current tv VCAM site is here. In case you are wondering VCAM stands for Viewer Created Ad Message.

If you are interested in RFID then start here. This is the site of the RFID Journal.

Finally for all things to do with plastic electronics or digital paper, you can start here with the Plastic Electronics convention or you can look at CENAMPS website, who are based in North Tyneside.

Hopefully, this helps everyone. Good luck.!

On the earliest train from Newcastle to Edinburgh this morning. There is a truly depressing article/column by Lucy Kellaway  in the Financial Times today. Its subject is Generation Y (which apparently is the term to describe people born between 1982 - 1993) and how they are as pushy as any other previous generation. Lucy does an excellent demolition job on a report published by Deloittes on ‘talent management’ of this demographic group. However,  several aspects of the article are still depressing.

More on the Edinburgh trip (and the reasons behind it) later……

Happy New Year to all What If…..? readers.

To begin 2007, a look back at the 20 most innovative tech products of the year in 2006 according to PC World magazine.

Most of these innovations seem to be of the ‘already mass market’ type rather than the insane, nanotech type stuff that Stuart usually talks about, but some interesting products nonetheless. How many of them do you own/use?

Microsoft Office 2007 is number 1 apparently, but I’m not sure whether it is good enough for me to abandon GMail and Google Calendar for now.

They also list their ‘5 breakthrough technologies to look out for in 2007′:

1. Hybrid hard drives

2. Offline Ajax applications

3. Windows Vista SideShow

4. SED TVs

5. Wide scale WiMax

So, start to tick off these products/applications as you begin using them in 2007!

Digital Industries Conference

Originally uploaded by stuwhatif.

The first day of the Digital Industries Conference was a enjoyable and stimulating affair. The day was finished off with a comedy workshop which revealed that several delegates were in the wrong careers.

More to come