There’s a debate on innovation taking place tonight. I thought I’d jot down a few of my immediate thoughts right here. As ever mine will be a technical approach, but take a look at the comments on ‘cultural moment’ and platforms.

How can we explain the causes of the crisis: Financial system failure?
Greed? Lack of productive locations for investment?

Too much free, imaginary and unproductive capital looking for a productive surface with a limited amount of effort from people to find it, i.e. like pensioners (my folks).

To what extent is the crisis a product of lack of innovation?

One could argue that there is insufficient (network-local?) diversity in wealth creation. The symptom is the madness of crowds phenomena. i.e. how would my folks find something to invest in, and a strategy to be safe, other than the norm of investment funds (and houses)? Why should capital be expected to generate wealth without effort. Human energy is the key resource and much of that is directed to short-term and vacuous gain. 

Where and how is value created today?

The technical seam still provides a mass of value. It *is* the ‘cultural moment’ and is still evolving. In Britain we mistake this for a side-show, or are blind to it completely.

What role can government play in facilitating innovation and value creation (or getting out of the way)?

Random allocation strategy? If skill is a problem (in the allocation of resources), and has proved inadequate in the past, remove the skill aspect.

Does fundamental research need to be championed? 

Not in it’s current form. That’s also an old a broken model. Many areas of research aren’t particularly productive (think interactive computing research in the UK - largely irrelevant) and the idea of the channel is repellent. People at the ivory tower end don’t have an idea of the world at the other and vice versa. Productive focus is much harder to achieve and isn’t possible in most institutions, e.g. NESTA, PhDs, industry development and innovation forums.

Where do ordinary people’s interests fit into debates about the future?

Only thinking about getting to the next sandwich is part of the problem. Baa. But seriously, mass unemployment is a great concern. Is the crisis a basis for taking on more ambitious challenges? Yes, all are, but look at some of our grand challenge initiatives and see how tedious they are. An unwillingness to dream distorts the challenges, limiting them to that which institutions think they can achieve with their funding partners.

Are networked tools a key to dealing with the recession?

*A* tool. But that’s all. Human attention is they key factor and most of these networks just diffuse it. They’re not that useful for finding productive partners.

What are the contemporary barriers to innovation?

Sufficient, sufficiently technical founders. We don’t just need to talk about it, we need to do it, and in a clueful manner. Compared to Silicon Valley the UK’s pool isn’t as deep, is poorly connected and has little free energy to redirect.

Is there untapped potential in the design and creative industries?

Yes, but that’s a very leading question. These industries are too shallow to develop what we really need. Also we’ve become conditioned
to thinking that media activity on the web equals innovation. We need to be innovating at the platform level, think: windows/linux (the OS),
browsers (the modern platform), facebook (yup a platform), iphone (another platform) the internet/broadband Britian, exchanges (from LSE
to EBay), elance like sites (skills for money).

A few ideas

Future platforms: smart energy internet for local power generation and distribution. Hive mind for incremental development of digital stuff. A challenge: Low cost personal software. What if you could get any piece of software, any function made cheaply in a few days. How would
that impact your life?