The Ten Habits of Mass Innovation
Innovation by the masses, not just for them. This pamphlet argues that Britain will have to become a society of mass innovation in the future, a place where creativity and innovation are everyday activities, practised in many settings by many different people.
We can no longer rely on innovation as something produced by an elite of special people working in special places, the creative class in their cultural quarter or the boffins in the lab. The pamphlet sets out the ten key features of a society that would promote innovation as a mass, everyday activity.
Invest in creating very widespread capabilities for innovation in public and social sectors as well as commercial.
Innovative societies are good at mingling: they encourage people and ideas to find one another and combine creatively.
Education systems designed for the innovation economy not the industrial economy.
Mass innovation societies encourage ideas to be challenged and tested.
Low barriers to entry make markets competitive and cultures creative.
Innovative societies are good at turning ideas into action.
Innovation is inescapably a public-private undertaking: public platforms often create the basis for a mass of private innovation.
Innovation needs to be about how products are used as well as how they are invented.
That means consumers and markets need to be as much part of innovation policy as scientists and laboratories.
Innovation has to be central to the story the nation tells itself.
The UK's economic prosperity and society’s well-being will not depend on mass manufacturing, military might, natural resources, cheap labour nor financial capital.
Our future will turn on how we develop, attract, retain and mobilise creativity from all sources within our society and apply creativity systematically in all walks of life, from health and education, to arts and business, science and industry.
This report outlines how the UK can innovate on a mass scale and how its innovation compares internationally.