Innovation—the politics of change

Facts of life

It is a fact of life that the United Kingdom is governed by politicians who don’t understand or value innovation.

In Britain, in recent times, we have achieved little that we can be proud of: Pride, hope and self-respect have been confined to the past—they are now only memories. Politicians align themselves with economists, seeking solace in the measurable, persuading voters that future success may be found by repeating the past. The future is unknown and innovation is dangerous. Creative people are considered to be unpredictable, mysterious and un-quantifiable. As a nation we are all doomed to failure because the world moves on and it can’t wait for us. Nor can we import successful solutions from other cultures because there problems are not the same as ours.

Designers have given moribund policy-makers, people with little creativity, the excuse to avoid creating economic and cultural strategy, preferring the confusion of chaos over order, allowing markets to find their own deteriorating levels of trade and cities to drift in leaderless miasma. In the United Kingdom in the nineties we have a Ministry of Heritage instead of a Ministry of Culture. We live in a society which guards against newness and refuses to plan for innovation, variety, complexity and enrichment. Banality, shoddiness, predictability and myopia are facts of life.

There is much work for designers to do and we must hope that we haven’t been complacent for too long …

Hope

The creative process, the process of designing, is an excellent ‘tool’ for analysis, synthesis and reconstruction of the world. It reveals the ideologies that motivate us and excite us. This gives us clues which we can then use in developing an innovative strategy which may yield a future which will be appropriate: familiar yet new, challenging yet supportive. This ‘tool’ should be of use to politicians if designers take time to explain how it may be used.

The process of innovation, or rather, that of ‘allowing change to happen’, instead of actively preventing it from happening, must involve every faction within society. Innovation should be participative, enrolling every community, allowing people to understand and feel part of the process of change. People feed from the energy created by a successful project. Education and participation ensure people understand why a project might have succeeded or failed, it gives them the strength and support of a team with which to support a second attempt if the first one fails.

Innovation always involves risk. One definition of risk is ‘dangerous opportunity’. Successful designers must be courageous enough to risk and be mature enough to be supportive in failure. Failure is not bad, but a necessary component in a successful strategy for change. Nothing new is created without an element of the unknown. Successful designers must face the challenge of innovation if they are to embrace the future. We must create an environment in which innovation is seen as challenging and not frightening. Failure must be viewed as a necessary part of the process of change.

We must have hope because we can help and support innovative projects.

Faith

Innovation requires control, process, skill, knowledge and faith. Innovation also demands deep self-knowledge, support and courage. Designers can help reveal how civilisations might plan for the future. As designers we should have the tenacity to sustain this strategic vision in the midst of criticism and the doubt which always accompanies change. We must have faith in ourselves.

Designers are impatient. But it is both difficult and undesirable to change the world overnight. The urban environment and the communities who lived there are complex and very fragile. Change must be gradual and set within a strategy which promotes communication between designers and the rest of society through education.

Designing new ways to live and work will, by it’s very nature, be innovative, not simply an exercise in importing methodology from another culture. Every place is different and special however similar it may seem on the surface.

It is meaningless for designers to do it on their own. History is littered with disastrous products and environments inflicted by designers on an unsuspecting public, without any consultation, compassion or even a properly negotiated brief. Product and graphic designers discover their mistakes more quickly than architects. All designers must guard against egotistical behaviour which ultimately serves no one. It is important that citizens are enrolled in the process of change at its outset as they are the ones who shoulder the responsibility for carrying on that process and living most closely with the outcome in the future.

If we, as creative people, can take the time to understand and communicate the social and economic benefits of what it is that we do, to politicians and strategists, encouraging them to use design and creativity as the ‘tool’ for economic regeneration we could help change the world. We must have faith in ourselves if we are to persuade others to have enough faith in design to risk the dangerous opportunities that innovation presents them with.

We must bring all of our knowledge, vision, intuition, analytical method, and above all, humanity, to the table when we become partners with the rest of our community in creating a better world than the one we now inhabit.

Charity

Bureaucracies, by their very definition, maintain the status quo and avoid the risks associated with innovation. Expect nothing from them. Instead it’s important for designers to work in partnership. Partnerships help us understand how our very different worlds work and makes us respect one another. Partnerships and shared risks encourage innovation.

Innovation usually requires funding over a longer period of time because many products are complicated and require extended periods of research, development and testing. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom is now used to ten minute ‘product cycles’ thanks to the Thatcher government’s preoccupation with the stock market. Akio Morito, the then president of Sony warned the UK that it would never again be a powerful manufacturer unless it learned to invest in product development cycles of several years duration. We are a greedy and impatient country who want success today and immediate and profitable return on our investment tomorrow morning.

In Islamic countries it is forbidden for banks to charge interest on money lent, this is regarded as ‘usury’ and it’s a crime. Instead, banks share in the success or failure of each project.

However, designers and innovators aren’t looking for charity, for free money, but we are looking for partners who will help us innovate. Today we live in a world which can’t afford to look only at the financial equation of any project, that’s only a one dimensional picture of the world. We must also count the value of employment and see ‘charity’ as a characteristic which is essential if we are to have a world worth living in, in the next millennium.

Stephano Marzano, the Design Director of Philips said, “Design is a political activity”.

Design, because of its analytical, strategic process and its catalytic ability to invoke change and create wealth, can help identify solutions to the real problems which undermine Britain and much of Europe today. Homelessness, unemployment, drug abuse and lack of cultural identity are all symptoms of more deeply rooted problems which tend to be treated in a tactical and superficial way by politicians.

Countries which are socially and economically successful innovate when designing for manufacturing, the service industries and the built environment. To actively deny a country the right to innovate is to deny its right to exist. What will the the archeologists of tomorrow make of British culture if all they find are Japanese electronic products, American beer bottles and cheap reproductions of seventeenth century English housing types?

Designers working together with manufacturing and service industries create employment, reputation, wealth and the stability and momentum necessary to support innovation. It’s a cyclical process which, once broken, requires huge amounts of energy to repair and re-start. Design provides the analytical framework through which society understands the archaeology of the past and describe what the archaeology of the future might be.

Britain’s future success will depend upon the ability of its creative people to persuade politicians and banks to invest in innovation and work with designers to create a future that doesn’t look like a badly re-worked version of the past.