LDNbeta

In the last post I wrote that I’d like to see a high-profile, London-based innovation centre or initiative. Then I started thinking about how TechAlliance and the Stiller Centre (and what else am I missing?) sort of fit that bill — but not quite. Some elements are missing but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

Then it registered.

I always approach innovation and creativity from a fairly broad, “social entrepreneurship” perspective. When I talk about “innovation” I assume I’m referring to a very wide field that incorporates elements from art, science, business, and civics. Whereas most people who talk about innovation are specifically referring to advanced research in technology and science — and then, “How do we monetize that?”

That’s what organizations like TechAlliance and the Stiller Centre do — and do well, I take it — and should continue to do.

But I’d like to see more bridges across creative domains, more interaction between people in business, art, science, and civics (and why stop there?)

It’s one thing to mix and mingle with people from different backgrounds and disciplines, and to contribute to the same projects, each in our own way, at different times and places, but it’s another thing to really work with each other to create something.

This is something I’d like to see more of in London: business people, arts people, researchers, developers, politicians, activists, designers, visionaries, organizers… working together to create something, challenging each other to learn and grow by cultivating new kinds of knowledge and perspective.

Again I come back to the IDEO philosophy that LDNbeta began with. Specifically, the importance of hybrid teams. I especially like the way Bill Moggridge put it in this interview with MIT Technology Review in 2007 (free registration required):

Put together a team with a great engineer, a crazy designer, a good businessperson, and a good human-factors scientist or psychologist of some kind, and put them in a room and get them to try to work together. It’s a big challenge, but they come to a point, surprisingly quickly, where they realize that what they can achieve together is much more than they could do individually.

Where is that “room” in London?

Photo credit: chrisjfry.