Innovation Reading Circle
> Innovation Agenda
> Overview
The Innovation Reading Circle aims to help develop theory around innovation through rich, high-level and well-informed public discussion around key and related texts and discourses... [Read on in Objectives]
> Event
06: Economic futures
> Titles
Fantasy Island by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson (Constable and Robinson, 2007)
Larry Elliott is economics editor at the Guardian. His areas of particular interest are globalisation, trade, Europe, development and the interface between economics and the environment. [Full biography on Guardian Comment is Free.] Dan Atkinson is economics editor of The Mail on Sunday, and was previously financial correspondent the Guardian, specialising in issues of regulation and fraud. [Full biography on the Financial Mail’s This is Money site.] Elliott and Atkinson also co-authored The Age of Insecurity (Verso, 1998).
Sub-titled Waking up to the incredible economic, political and social illusions of the Blair legacy, this book is particularly timely, given the ascendance of 'design-friendly' Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his creation of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; the rollout of the recommendations of the Cox Review; the re-founding of NESTA around an agenda including national policy for creativity and innovation; the forthcoming DCMS Green Paper on the creative economy; and the recent focus of the Work Foundation on this area.
> Took place
July 16, 2007
> At
IDEO London, White Bear Yard, 144a Clerkenwell Road, London EC1R 5DF
> Notices
July 17, 2007 Thoughts on the book and discussion can be found on the Innovation Reading Circle group on Facebook, in the 06: Economic futures topic. A meta-review will be published shortly.
We are grateful to IDEO London for hosting this event.
Information on participants who has chose to flag their attendance can be found on the listing for this event on Upcoming.org.
Points for discussion
Some of the questions that we plan to discuss include:
- How might we characterise the changes in the UK economy over the last century?
- What are the current models proposed for ensuring future economic success?
- Can the the UK’s financial sector make the country indefinitely wealthy as ‘coupon clippers’ of an increasingly prosperous world economy?
- What are the origins of the term ‘creative industries’ and ‘knowledge economy’, what do they encompass, and how useful are they as concepts?
- Could the UK “be the Athens to the rest of the world’s Rome, compensating for its dearth of economic and political clout through intellectual and cultural superiority”, taking its place delivering creativity as its contribution to the international division of labour?
- Do we have a useful way of measuring innovation and the value of the creative industries?
Background reading, listening and viewing
Blair's legacy: a fantasy island trying to live beyond its means at every level, Larry Elliott, Guardian, May 14, 2007 [Summary in shared bookmark.]
Talk is cheap Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, Guardian, May 18, 2007 [Summary in shared bookmark.]
The Work Foundation: Staying ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries, Will Hutton, Áine O’Keeffe, Philippe Schneider, and Robert Andari, The Work Foundation; Hasan Bakhshi, NESTA (2007)
Other shared bookmarks for Innovation Reading Circle 06.
Reviews
Timely lessons for Gordon Brown, William Keegan, Observer, June 24, 2007. For Elliott and Atkinson, there is a vast contrast between the popular perception of a successful British economy and the reality of a country still recording record trade deficits, with a government that deludes itself that it is somehow a world leader in research, development and the 'knowledge-based' industries of the future... This is an angry tract, written like a thriller. It captures the public mood of dissatisfaction.
Let technology set you free James Heartfield, spiked review of books, Issue #2, June 2007. In today’s Technology Wars, the techophobes of the New Left have emerged victorious over the technophiles of the Cold War era – and that is bad indeed for humanity. Reviews The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900 David Edgerton; Imaginary Futures: from thinking machines to the global village Richard Barbrook; Fantasy Island Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson. [Shared bookmark on Magnolia]
Interviews
[None to date.]If you have queries about the event please email Nico Macdonald