Epoch Hothouse: Business and communications in 2010
December 3, 2009
Overview
The launch event of corporate reputation and business communications agency
Epoch's Business and communications Hothouse 'explored the nexus of world events and forecast the trends shaping the coming year'. Epoch's strapline is 'Challenging conventional thinking through curiosity about the future' and it seeks to raise the quality of insight and debate to help its clients beyond shaping messages. [Disclosure: I collaborate and consult with Epoch.]
Presenting were
James Woudhuysen [
Twitter], Professor of forecasting and innovation, De Montfort University; Paul Mason [
Twitter], Economics Editor, BBC Newsnight; Adam Boulton [
Twitter/
Boulton & Co. blog], Political Editor, Sky News; and
Bronwen Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator,
The Times. Epoch MD Chris Clarke introduced the event and outlined Epoch's perspectives.
Introductions
- Chris Clarke: New business psyche: demonising risk, more shareholder involvement, demand for radical transparency as people expect businesses to act more like government bodies than commercial enterprises
- Chris Clarke: Some of most important and successful brands were developed in a downturn. The same will be true of the dominant brands of C21, whether born in the West or the East
- James Woudhuysen: Government increasingly focuses research funding based on impact. But where was the impact of Einstein's 1905 paper that proposed E=mc2 at the time or in Switzerland?
- James Woudhuysen: Innovation used to mean saving time and labour, new processes, and other universals such as portability, maintainability, versatility. Today it is about about minimising your impact.
- James Woudhuysen: There may be only one earth in carbon fuels, but there is more than one earth in in artificial fuels.
- James Woudhuysen: 'Scale is beautiful': let's make that our slogan. See Japanese factory houses, Chinese cleaner coal; Chinese electric cars with 120 mile range after 10 minutes charging; and China's high speed rail network which is a continental endeavour they are building something new rather than bailing out the banks.
- Paul Mason: In 2010 we are entering the decade of political economy.
- Paul Mason: Consumers' technology obsession is new. Today my definition of a slump when they take your mobile away because you can no longer afford it.
- Paul Mason: We have had a century of finance 'taking the piss' and government making its safety net more and more flexible. If you read one thing on the financial crisis read Andrew Haldane's speech Banking on the State', 24 September 2009 [Bank of England|Publications|Speeches|By Date|2009].
- Adam Boulton: The impact of sleaze and loss of confidence in government will lead to very different reactions in different constituencies. We will see the first Green MP in Brighton, and perhaps a UKIP MP.
- Adam Boulton: Are models of social leadership becoming more like West than China? Obama has moved politics from top-down spin, dragging people along, to explaining and laying out one's position to shift opinion. David Cameron has noticed.
- Bronwen Maddox: If you are wondering who will re-build Iraq and Afghanistan, it is China looking for unresolved conflicts in which to play a part.
- Bronwen Maddox: [Region by region] China is doing well, though will feel like a poor country for some time. However, in India there is a failure to address fiscal problems and create economic stimulus, or tackle corruption. Countries in Africa, such as Rwanda, are getting investment to do what a half century of development failed to do.
Review
This was one of the most stimulating discussions of global economic, social and political developments I have taken part in recently, though the presentation and discussion didn't suggest many concrete measures organisations might take in response. The overall scope was good, from long term futures and large scale innovation to financial and social analysis, the impact at the political level in the UK along with a global review of challenges.
In the discussion, setting Mason to address Woudhuysen's thesis, I asked whether to the extent the financial crisis Mason described is a product of the failure of innovation and investment in the 'real economy', Woudhuysen's proposes the right solution, and what are the barriers might be to it working in the UK? Mason noted that we had had free market policies in the West since 1989 [the end of state socialism] and seen the 'financialisation of society'. While we had the seeds of our innovative and economic future in network technologies government didn't cut off the financial boom and allow old industries to die soon enough, and we now have the novel situation of an old wave is overlapping a new wave, which might lead to low growth for 15 years. He questioned whether the West was not innovative, arguing that the East is good at implementation but not innovation. Woudhuysen questioned this based on the examples around transport from his introduction, while Mason countered that the
innovations had come from the West. Mason is on balance right, though Woudhuysen noted the Chinese are able to realise innovations as they believe in technology and innovation and don't have opposition from Greens.
Documentation
Nico Macdonald's and others' Tweets on the event tagged '#HothousePanel'
The Epoch Hothouse Panel page
[Pictures to come]
Future events
Innovation Agenda group events on Upcoming.org
Comments