We had a great ‘innovation pizza’ evening on Tuesday - many thanks to all those who attended. Among those attendees, David Wilcox brought his camera along, so you can see my instant reaction to the conversation here. (Update: and David Wilcox blogs here about the conversation).
If I were to pick out two features of the conversation, they would be diversity and scale. On diversity, there were some strong challenges about how the Innovation Exchange can reach different people across the system. The chasm between the people who buy services and those who use them means getting citizens’ views is vitally important. Equally, different kinds of people in different roles will respond to the Innovation Exchange in different ways, and we need to cater for all of them.
On scale, there was an important question about whether we want to be encouraging the third sector to be ‘innovative’ or to be supporting particular innovations to grow. The conversations encouraged me to be loud and proud about the fact that we are focusing on the latter - not preaching at people about innovation but providing practical support for innovators who need it.
If you were there, what are your reflections? If not, what might you have said?
It was a great evening, and good to meet such an interesting collection of people focussed on this issue.
Like John, I left convinced of the value of an emphasis on scale. My sense is that innovation comes from people who are passionate about solving the problems that matter to them, and that those people are out there and doing it. Scale is about offering them the tools to make the biggest impact possible with the solutions they have.
That’s a big incentive to work with you and a huge contribution to the sector .
Hey John.
It was a really useful evening of dialogue and discussion. I’ve blogged a few reflections over here: http://www.timdavies.org.uk/2008/02/22/small-ideas-scale