Who, How, Where?

Innovation is, often mistakenly, largely associated with a special breed of people — inventors, designers, researchers, boffins — working in special places — labs, design studios, creative quarters of cities — in special ways — often at odd hours, employing idiosyncratic forms of organisation. The implication is that to get more innovation we need more of these special people working in special ways in special places. The trouble is that these people are often creative because they are also detached from the real world, working in protected and artificial environments that are designed to allow them to think imaginatively. That often makes it difficult to translate their ideas into the real world. Much of what determines whether innovation is successful turns on this process of translation and adaptation: innovation is often more about how ideas are developed than it is about pure creativity.