Archive for May, 2010

Inventorium positions itself ans an intermediary actor in the process of innovation in the knowledge economy. Will Hutton, an economist from the Work Foundation made a strong case for intermediation in a speech in Dublin on May 12th.He believes the way out of recession is knowledge based innovation.

His slides are here.  There is a video of his talk.

Recently, WIll Hutton, a well known left wing economist and journalist, has been appointed by the UK Con_Dem coalition as the czar on public sector pay and equality.

There seems to be a consensus that innovation always equals new technologies or methodologies. However this does not apply across the board. Innovation can be the use of existing technologies in a new way or a new environment in order to achieve a certain goal.

During my recent work in Haiti I saw a great example of this; Digicel who is the largest mobile phone operator in Haiti (and the Caribbean) has obviously looked at how they can increase the number of calls made by their customers. In countries such as Haiti one of the big issues facing mobile phone users is how to keep your phones battery charged up. The majority of people do not have electricity in their house (in as far that they live in one) and where there is electricity the supply is fragmented and unreliable.A smart brain in Digicel obviously realised that phones with flat batteries couldn’t make calls and wouldn’t generate revenue for them. So what you see all over Haiti are roadside stalls with a little generator and a wide array of phone charges. For a few Gourdes you can charge your phones battery and I believe that Digicel even offers a free charge-up in some places.

Also Digicel has started providing mobile phones with solar cell on the back and a inbuilt solar charger. I’ve used one of these phones and they’re remarkably small and light. They also charge very rapidly. This solution is even better than the roadside charging station.

Both these examples show a innovative use of an existing technology in order to improve the availability of a service and to improve a companies performance.