Last gasp
/ 01 June 2009
Innovation nation
We Brits might excel at innovation, but we fall down when it comes to making money out of our grand ideas – and we still haven’t managed to reinvent the cat, says Stewart Gowans
Innovation is a big buzzword in business these days. The consensus seems to be that for all organisations, whether in the private, public or not-for-profit sector (which these days includes most banks), it’s ‘innovate or die’. Ignoring, for a second, the inspired innovations the financial sector introduced over the past few years which brought the global economy to its knees, I couldn’t agree more.
Innovation is sometimes about doing old things in new ways. Take James Dyson: a man so obsessed with dirty carpets that he spent over 20 years thinking about how to clean them. His carpet obsession, and his titanic struggle with dust, has made him a multimillionaire and converted the world to buying expensive yellow and green vacuum cleaners starting at about £200 a pop. Sheer genius. I have a Dyson and spend many happy hours hoovering the cat with my crevice nozzle. The cat, of course, takes a dim view of this, and is currently suing me for assault.
What annoys me about my cat is that, despite providing all the food, the shelter, and not to mention the endless cuddles and tummy scratches, it still treats me like an inferior species. It knows that it’s much smarter and cooler than me – but mind you, most people are.
Actually, in the same way that James Dyson reinvented the hoover (sorry, vacuum cleaner), someone should reinvent the cat. Just think: a cat without attitude, a cat that thinks you’re great, a cat that offers unconditional love, a cat that will go for long walks with you, a cat that will fetch sticks. Hang on, it’s already been invented – it’s called a dog.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of the innovative Apple Inc., once said: ‘Innovation distinguishes between a leader and follower.’ I agree, and like to think I’m an innovator and don’t just follow the herd. For example, only the other day I took part in the London Marathon – by taxi. It was exhausting – I spent most of the time leaning out of the window to shout at the sweaty hordes who were blocking my marathon attempt. The fools at the finishing line refused to give me a medal, even when I pointed out how innovative I’d been.
Wired for sound
Of course, innovation isn’t just about doing things differently or reinventing existing items – it’s about inventing brand new stuff. Currently, the most iconic objects of desire are probably the iPod and the iPhone. Actually, the iPod has been around for a while and was a replacement for a real innovation, the Sony Walkman, which was invented in the 1980s. It truly was revolutionary and I can remember the thrill of being able to walk around with music in my ears. Before this, the only way to hear music in your ears when walking about was to get someone to hit you over the head.
Innovation keeps the world turning. Whenever I hear someone moaning about the passing of an old industry – such as blacksmiths, weaving or banking – I always think of the new industries that will inevitably take its place. One statistic says that 40% of children currently in primary school will end up in jobs that haven’t been invented yet.
It’s not just items you can hold and play with that lead the way in innovation – it can be more intangible. The invention of the moment is undoubtedly Twitter, which allows you to send ‘tweets’ of up to 140 characters to all your friends about what you are doing at any given moment. This is genius, because it taps into a basic human desire to be connected with others. My cat is on Twitter, but mostly it tweets things like ‘Thinking of having a sleep’, ‘Having a sleep’ or ‘Sitting on a fence looking cool’.
We Brits are good at inventing things. You could even say that the inventions which made the modern world are British: I’m thinking of the telephone (invented in the US by Alexander Graham Bell, a Brit), the television (John Logie Baird) and the worldwide web (Sir Tim Berners-Lee). However, we’re hopeless at exploiting them. The list of British inventions is long, but other people do seem to be better at making money from them. We only really come into our own when it comes to cultural innovation – our movies, literature, television and pop music (with the exception, of course, of Lily Allen) are seemingly the only things we have learnt to profit from.
So, are we proud of our varied inventive history? It seems not. Last year a survey showed that we Brits view the flushing toilet as the greatest ever British invention. The other results were fairly depressing, too: among newer inventions, the most prized were the in-home cinema, massage chairs and chilled drink dispensers. Hmmm.
Anyway, must go. I’ve just had a tweet from my cat – it wants me to go and stand next to it so that people can see just how cool it is compared with me. I’m going to get a dog.