Innovation as a Driver of Growth

Very interesting article by Will Hutton in the Observer today, about technology and it’s economic impact. Here’s an interesting sample:
“Over the past couple of decades the key question – what new goods and services are entrepreneurs going to come up with using transformative technologies – went largely unanswered. Instead western policymakers were bullied by the financial oligarchs into believing that the market is magic.”

And:
“For 30 years or more the consensus has been that governments necessarily and always fail – and only markets succeed. But reality is beginning to intrude. Even the coalition government, wedded to the old-time religion, is finding that if it wants a growth strategy it has to do what used to be prohibited – design markets and build institutions that innovate.”

I wonder how anyone at a UK university will view this just at the point when investment in public funding for all courses is being slashed? Where will the innovators of the future come from? The UK hasn’t been renowned recently for producing world leading technologist who break the mould and come up with something new. It’s fine to praise Dyson and Rolls Royce, but they are making things that we already have, only doing them better, not changing the game.

Creativity and innovation look likely to be the battleground of future investment, whether it is led by industry or government. But one thing is certain, it will be a battle between big and small, agile and slothful, nimble and established, multicultural and elitist.