Swedish innovation firm Idelaboratoriet is in the process of creating a European “innovation awareness project” called Innovation Circus. This touring innovation event will make stops in Scandinavia, the Baltics, the central region of Europe (i.e. Germany), and the southern region of Europe (i.e. Italy). The goal of the Innovation Circus is to serve as a dynamic focal point for European Innovation Day. As it travels throughout Europe, the circus will motivate, drive and coordinate events “to make everyone think innovation.”

According to Idelaboratoriet, the Innovation Circus will have three different operational levels:

(1) A full-day conference held on European Innovation Day, intended as a way to foster discussion about the drivers of the “innovative human”;

(2) A mobile exhibition and event platform that will “land” in a region or city a month or so before the kick-off of European Innovation Day;

(3) Grass root events coordinated via the Web, where schools, companies and institutions present innovation-related activities.

Anyway, the Innovation Circus is part of a master plan by the European Union to create “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth” by 2010. As a result, the EU is sponsoring projects like the Innovation Circus that celebrate the “innovative human,” the “creative mastermind,” and the “Renaissance human being.” I’m still having a bit of trouble visualizing all the specifics, but it seems like the U.S. doesn’t have anything even close to this…

Tags: innovation innovation circus

[image: “Cirque Du Soleil,” BBC]

Over the weekend, Edward Cody of the Washington Post took a closer look at Chinese innovation, which is now being encouraged by the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party:

Instead of millions of Chinese youths assembling somebody else’s inventions, the party leadership has concluded, the time is right for China to come up with its own ideas and sell them to everyone else. The question of whether China can pull off this transformation — from workshop of the world to cradle of invention — is key to the giant country’s future. The answer will help determine whether a government anchored in 150-year-old Marxist ideology can pursue economic expansion, satisfy the needs of 1.3 billion people and take a place among global powers in an age when knowledge is the highest-earning product.

Although political dogma here seems stuck in the past, economic innovation has become a new Communist Party catchword. Even while they enforce political conformity, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao rarely let a speech go by these days without urging their countrymen to think up new products. Most recently, Hu told scientists and engineers they must make China “a nation of innovation.”

These ideas are illustrated with a steady stream of examples from the world of Chinese fashion, which makes the article a bit choppy to read at times. Little nuggets about Chinese business innovation are interlaced with the tales of up-and-coming Chinese fashion designers. Several times, Shanghai fashion designers are offered up as paradigms of Chinese innovation, even while the article is ostensibly about business and economic innovation. Plus, the photo gallery (”A Nation of Innovation”) attached to the article is full of photos of new Chinese fashion designs, and not photos of technology or business innovators. The attached pic, for example, is of fashion designer Wang Wei, who “dreams up swishy dresses for rich women abroad.”

This emphasis on fashion leads to a lot of forced comparisons throughout the article - “difficulty in attracting R&D funding” is equated to “the difficulty for Chinese fashion designers in winning fame on the world’s runways.” Or, the “conformity of Chinese schoolchildren” is compared to the “conformity of Chinese fashion tastes.” Finally, the article hints strongly that fashion designers are leading the great leap forward for innovation within the country: “In the end, China’s originality may arise from the crude fashions in vogue with country girls who come to the big city sporting spangles on their jeans and sharp points on their shoes…”

Memo to self: that sounds like a great follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada: “Chinese CEOs In Their Star-Spangled Jeans and Sharp-Pointed Shoes.” Contact literary agent about this.

Tags: China innovation

[image: Washington Post]

Stuart Crainer of the London Times recently suggested that the “ideas men” of India are the new superstars of the fast-growing Indian economy. These superstars include C. K. Prahalad, co-author of Competing for the Future; Ram Charan, business guru; Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner for economics; and Vijay Govindarajan, professor of international business at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Across India, students are embracing the study of management and business in the same way they once embraced science and engineering. In March, for example, Harvard Business School opened up its first-ever India Research Center to tap into student demand. Meanwhile, some European B-schools report that 20-25% of each incoming class is now comprised of students from India.

In a follow-up blog post, Vijay Govindarajan offers insights into how and why this enormous flowering of intellectual talent is happening now within India. After all, twenty years ago, he was the first Indian faculty member at Tuck. Now, as Govindarajan points out, “it’s not unusual to see 20% of faculty with Indian roots and connection.” After explaining the various factors that made him so passionate about learning and ideas while growing up in India, Vijay Govindarajan suggests that a “learning ethic” has replaced the traditional “work ethic” for many Indians:

“I think there is a cultural aspect to learning as well. In India, learning is viewed as sacred tradition, and I believe there is a strong “learning ethic” woven through our culture and lives. I am beginning to see this “learning ethic” much in the same way as I view the “work ethic” of the early Protestants. In part it explains the devotion of my grandfather to his students, and it explains why his actions shape my thinking to this very day.”

With that in mind, VG also lists four questions that every manager or executive should consider as they prepare for the transition to the global creative economy:

(1) Am I passionate about what I am doing?

(2) Am I learning — becoming different and growing intellectually?

(3) Am I altering the aspirations of others, helping them to set their sights higher than they previously envisioned?

(4) Do I respect the corporations and executives I work with?

Tags: India innovation VijayGovindarajan

[Image: Vijay Govindarajan]

Pasta & Vinegar points to the latest issue of Red Herring, which has an extended feature on European technological innovation:

“Europe may not have as many venture capitalists, innovative companies and fluid markets as the United States, but the region is surely emerging as a place to seek venture capital and public funding for technology companies… in the last year, the number of venture-backed technology public offerings in Europe was the same as in the United States. Judy Gibbons, a venture partner at London-based Accel Partners, said the European venture market is changing as a result of the flattening of the world. “The talent is here and the ability to innovate and develop innovative companies is not exclusive to the U.S.,” Ms. Gibbons said.”

Ah, I love it when venture capitalists mix in Thomas Friedman references. Nice. Anyway, European innovation appears to be proceeding on a two-track path: new product innovation (i.e. Skype and MySQL) and a “me too” strategy of copying American products. As an example of this copycat innovation, Red Herring cites LoveFilm, which copies the NetFlix business model of renting DVDs by mail.

Also, be sure to check out Red Herring’s list of the Top 100 European innovators: “The 100 companies selected by Red Herring in this year’s judging reflect the rich vein of innovation and entrepreneurial activity in Europe and the Middle East. They range from a Finnish company trying to harness the power of tides to a Belgian biotech company that uses llama blood to create therapeutic proteins.”

Tags: innovation technology Europe

[image: Red Herring on Flickr]

Iceland now has something to brag about other than Bjork and really cool-looking geothermal spas. According to the latest OECD report on broadband usage, Iceland has edged ahead of South Korea as the world leader in broadband penetration, as measured by the percentage of inhabitants with broadband connectivity:

Iceland topped the global ranking of high-speed Internet connections compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with 26.7 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, or 26.7% penetration, at the end of 2005. South Korea dropped to second place at 25.4 percent, followed by the Netherlands at 25.3 percent and Denmark at 25 percent.

The findings underscore growing European demand for high-speed Internet connectivity, with Finland (22.5 percent), Norway (21.9 percent), Sweden (20.3 percent) and Belgium (18.3 percent) also ranked among the OECD’s ten most-penetrated broadband markets. Each country added more than six subscribers per 100 inhabitants in 2005. Australia was ranked 17th with 13.8 percent.

Don’t worry, though, America (ranked 12th in the OECD survey) still has the largest absolute number of broadband subscribers in the OECD, at 49.39 million, while South Korea only has 12.19 million and Iceland - tiny but beautiful Iceland - only has 78,000+ broadband subscribers. As GigaOm points out, though, South Korea appears to be moving away from a reliance on cable and DSL connections to fiber-based broadband connections. So, when evaluating the numbers, it’s also important to keep an eye on the quality of the broadband connection. When it comes to download speeds, Japan and South Korea are at the front of the pack.

Tags: Iceland OECD broadband Internet

[image: Blue Lagoon, TabascoKid on Flickr]

After the big brouhaha over the Dubai ports deal in the U.S. and the still simmering rage over those Danish cartoons, let’s show the Arab world some love. Can’t we all just get along? The World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship wrapped up in Oman on Monday, and it looks like innovation and entrepreneurship were two of the buzzwords being bandied about by conference participants:

“A strategy to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging nations was agreed to in a gathering of business, government and NGO leaders from around the world in a three-day meeting in Muscat, Oman that concluded today. The path outlined by the world leaders includes establishing knowledge-based business clusters, cultivating a culture of innovation among youth, facilitating access to capital, identifying best practices, eliminating red tape, empowering women and encouraging cross- culture collaboration.

The Summit, which was the first of its kind in the Middle East, aimed to develop practical solutions to address the most important issues facing emerging nations and to inspire the development of the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. Participants included leaders such as Oman’s minister of Commerce & Industry, His Excellency Maqbool bin Ali Sultan; Michael D. White, chairman of PepsiCo International; Richard Stevens, Boeing senior vice president; Jonathan Lord, Humana chief innovation officer; Stephen R. DuMont, Cisco Systems vice president and global managing director; Kenneth P. Morse, managing director of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Center; Tom Stewart, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review; and Ahmed Sheikh, editor-in-chief of Al Jazeera.”

That’s quite a mixer, eh? Harvard and Pepsi mashed up with Al Jazeera; Boeing, Cisco and MIT sitting down in a room with Arab sheiks. No details were released, but one of the conference organizers hinted that the next step will be “a partnership between a Fortune 100 corporation and one of the world’s most populated Third World countries to test pilot what we have learned at this Summit.”

Tags: MiddleEast innovation entrepreneurship

We’ve been sounding the alarm bells on this one for awhile: China is really stepping up its emphasis on innovation, unveiling further details of its plans to boost spending on science and technology by 20% this year. Without a doubt, the Chinese government is making it a top priority to enhance the country’s innovation capability, seeking in the process to overcome the stigma of the “Made in China” label. Innovation is more than just a slogan - it’s a path to economic prosperity and growth for Chinese manufacturers: “A Chinese DVD player exporter can make only 1 dollar from each machine priced at 32 dollars, while 20 dollars goes to the foreign patent owners. That’s 60 percent of the total value. And according to the Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, China must export 100 million shoes or 800 million shirts in exchange for the value of one Boeing aircraft.”

At a recent seminar in Beijing, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz expained the significance of China’s new innovation strategy:

“The 11th Five Year plan makes an important step forward. It’s a major change, that is, it seeks to establish a basis of what it calls independent innovation. In the past, China has been basically borrowing ideas, trying to close the gap. What it recognizes that enormous amount of the rents that exist in the world associate with knowledge rents, the returns to the control of knowledge. So if China’s income is going to be raised, it has to create a basis of independent innovation.”

Tags: China innovation JosephStiglitz

[image: “Man Overboard” by hornbuckle]

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen of the Hobby Princess blog points to the new Platform 21 initiative in Amsterdam, which sounds like an interesting showcase of design & innovation in the center of a large urban metropolis:

“Putting money in cultural activities within an urban area is an investment that pays back. At least that is what the directors of ING Real Estate in Amsterdam believe. ING, Premsela Dutch Design Foundation and the Amsterdam City Council have started an amazing project, which aims at building a 5000 square meter space for design, fashion and creation in the city of Amsterdam. Joanna van der Zandenfrom, the manager and main architect of Platform 21, has admirably fresh ideas about what design is and how it should be exhibited.”

The building, which was originally envisioned as a design museum of sorts, is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2009. (the architect will be announced in mid-2006) According to the event’s website, Platform 21 will be “an international meeting point, real and virtual, where seemingly disparate groups can inspire and strengthen each other: a network for people curious to explore our new century… We look forward to experimenting with different ways of exhibiting design and fashion, showing the process of creation, and allowing interested designers and companies to share and test their latest projects.”

Not clear yet on what Platform 21 is? This could be a tough one to wrap your arms around, given that, the Platform 21 logo will randomly change over time:

“The logo of Platform 21 is a small platform in itself. It will change in style, colour and pattern according to its purpose, the season or Platform 21’s programme. Its creator, graphic designer Roelof Mulder, foresees that the Platform 21 logo will become more than just a corporate image. He imagines a fashion label, a 3-D product design, a cookie, a sculpture. Watch this page to follow the changing moods of our logo and download your favourites.”

Dude, groovy. Instead of a mood ring, a mood logo.

Tags: innovation Amsterdam Platform21