Today, with the limits of austerity reached the debate about the economy is moving towards innovation and growth. The importance of manufacturing and the creation of real value is being recognised. New possibilities are presented by new materials, new processes, information technology, and the merging of services and products: can facilitate progress and lay the basis for human fulfilment. The value of design and creativity is being recognised in all these areas.

We hope to host a day of discussion and debate at the V&A, provisionally entitled ‘Making It in London’, on 18 September as part of the London Design Festival. It will bring together industry and manufacturing, engineering and design, education and research, and economics and policy together to discuss these new possibilities and the challenges of realising their potential, in the context of London’s economy and beyond. It will have a strong envisioning element, using design to help participants imagine future scenarios. We will also facilitate participants connecting after the event to share ideas and collaborate.

Themes around with the event will focus are:

1. Developing London as a creative hub for global manufacturing
2. Investigating the potential of London as a centre of manufacturing and innovation
3. Showcasing new technologies for manufacturing
4. Facilitating closer working between designers, engineers and manufacturers
5. Linking R&D with design and manufacturing
6. Improving forecasting and scenarios around these themes

We’d like input from anyone interested in and concerned with this challenge around:

• Sharing examples, especially from your work
• Contributing ideas
• Participating in our next Manufacturing Workgroup on 1 July in Clerkenwell
• Joining the discussion before and at the Day

There is a problem with the current ethos of medical research. Grant givers want results in 3–5, not 10–20, years. It’s not the way medical research is going at the moment. The development of The Pill took place outside established medical funding (by a patron), as did IVF. My guess is that some wealthy person will one day fund an institute to do this research. They won’t publish every year in Nature or Science but they will get a Nobel Prize.

A related point is made in Tim Harford’s Pop-Up Economics, Hotpants v the knockout mouse (BBC Radio 4, 16/01/2013) in which he argues that organisations such as the National Institutes for Health (NIH) fund innovations that represent marginal improvements and relates the life story of Mario Capecchi, who studied genetics at Harvard but concluded it had become a bastion of ’short-term intellectual gratification’. He went to the University of Utah and setup the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics. His work there on the ‘knockout mouse’ became the foundation stone for all gene therapy and he won a Nobel Prize accordingly. Harford notes that people such as Kopecki look like they are failing – until they succeed. He notes that institutions such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where Capecchi is now a principal, is more tolerant of failure than those such as NIH.

Our reply has been published in the FT, slightly edited, as Mankind needs to rediscover its hunger for innovation, November 13, 2012. The letter as submitted follows. We have Tweeted about it and would value re-Tweets:

Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel are right that the bright future of scientific ingenuity we expected to solve our problems has gone missing (“Our dangerous illusion of tech progress”, November 8, 2012). Though this vision was technocratic – borne out of the necessity of a World War and the Cold War – today, by comparison, its seems wonderfully positive and ambitious.

As we observed in our 2010 BIG POTATOES manifesto, when boosters of ICT – the main game in innovation today – rave about ‘exponential growth’, they should really say ‘accelerating, but only for the moment’. In reality we are seeing the endgame of research into micro-electronics, computing and telecommunications conducted 40 or more years ago. That these innovations have transformed the media has made amplified our perception of them, in our mediated age. But we are blinded to the lack of investment in fundamental research that will lay the basis for future growth.

Previous huge leaps in innovation were international, mutually reinforcing and, critically, coincided with major social, economic and political upheavals, and the new hopes in the possibility and necessity of progress they ushered in. Today our emphasis is not on revolutionising production, but rather on finance, home insulation, consumer goods, and consumer services. As the authors note, the only huge leap proposed is a misanthropic and irrational leap backward ‘for the environment’s sake’.

In the second decade of the 21st century we badly need to leap ahead in creating new industries. To achieve this we need to re-establish the principles around which mankind should continue innovating.

Big Potatoes co-author Martyn Perks is convening a series of debates at the Battle of Ideas 2012 in the Making it in the 21st-century strand which is exploring the future of manufacturing. And we are sponsoring the Engineering design or design engineering? session, in which our Manufacturing Workgroup convenor, Paul Reeves, is also speaking.

The Battle of Ideas takes place 20-21 October at the Barbican Arts Centre in London, and offers two days of high-level, thought-provoking, public debate organised by the Institute of Ideas. The debates are convened by Martyn Perks, and Paul Reeves, principal software designer at Dassault Systèmes-SolidWorks R&D.

Session titles and speakers follow. Tickets for the Battle of Ideas can be booked online:

Manufacturing: the great comeback?

Speakers: Andrew Bergbaum, director, AlixPartners; manufacturing industry consultant; Peter Marsh, manufacturing editor, Financial Times; author, The New Industrial Revolution: consumers, globalization and the end of mass production; James Matthews, management consultant; founding member, NY Salon; writer on economics and business; Mike Wright, executive director, Jaguar Land Rover

Read on…

Gas galore? Fracking and the future of energy

Speakers: Stephen Bull, vice president, Statoil (US onshore operations); Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, Guardian; Professor Hywel Thomas, pro vice-chancellor, International and Engagement, Cardiff University; fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering

Read on…

Engineering design or design engineering?

Speakers: Kerry Kirwan, deputy head of materials and manufacturing and strategic director of the International Doctorate Centre at WMG, University of Warwick; Dr Natasha McCarthy, head of policy, Royal Academy of Engineering; author, Engineering: a beginner’s guide; member, Forum for Philosophy, Engineering and Technology steering committee; Kevin McCullagh, founder, Plan; visiting fellow, Northumbria University; Dr Paul Reeves, principal software developer, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks R&D; former senior researcher, International Automotive Research Centre, University of Warwick

Read on…

Water, water, everywhere: not allowed to use it

Speakers: Chris Binnie, independent water consultant; member, ICE Water Expert Panel; fellow, Royal Academy of Engineers; Dr Caspar Hewett, water resources environmental consultant; director, The Great Debate; David Lloyd Owen, managing director, Envisager; author, The Sound of Thirst; Andy Wales, senior vice president, sustainable development, SABMiller

Read on…

Commons people: music in a digital age

Speakers: Helienne Lindvall, award-winning professional songwriter; musician; music and media columnist, Guardian; Alan Miller, co-director, NY Salon; co-founder, Londons’ Truman Brewery cultural center; Andrew Orlowski, executive editor, The Register; assistant producer, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace; John Waters, columnist, Irish Times, Irish Mail on Sunday, The Irish Catholic and Tracce/Traces; author, Feckers and Was It For This? – Why Ireland Lost the Plot

Read on…

Following the 2010 publication of BIG POTATOES we have focused our analysis and thinking on particular areas, creating workgroups, including on design, with the aim of drafting manifestos in each area. This symposium is the first time the Design Manifesto will have had a public airing. Feedback and contribution from participants will be invaluable, helping shape its arguments in time for its launch on an unsuspecting world! Read on on the Symposium page…

Intelligent London aims to present snapshot views of London, ‘looking in a non-Olympic, non-Jubilee way at this magnificent city’, with sessions on ‘Creative Juices: Why London Inspires From Business To Culture’ and ‘London Abroad: What Makes London A ‘Melting Pot’?', interspersed with Bright Ideas talks and music from James McMillan and Liane Carroll.

Speakers include Southbank Centre Artistic Director Jude Kelly; Businessweek’s Stryker McGuire; Harvey Goldsmith; Sir Nicholas Kenyon; Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic; Clare Clark, author of The Great Stink and Beautiful Lies; political commentators Matthew d’Ancona, Suzanne Moore and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; and Ben Rogers of the Centre for London. See the full programme.

If BIG POTATOES supporters are interested in this event please get in touch and we can connect you with Editorial Intelligence to request a place.

At its best, the making of things is an all-absorbing activity. It seems odd to have so many people in Britain making things purely as a hobby, when we might be earning our living making high-quality modern products every bit as desirable in their own way as bright new BMWs. The truth is, a consumer or service economy will never make us happy. It is time to curb the shopping, and the environmental destruction this involves, and to rescue ourselves economically, and in terms of wellbeing, through more of us making intelligent, useful and profitable things contentedly and well.

[Summary and shared bookmark]

Glancey is right to celebrate the increased UK interest in the culture and craft of making But he, and some of the respondents to his article, seem to consider our ‘consumer culture’ to be a choice. It isn’t. Britain was the first country to industrialise and is farthest along the industrial cycle – partly thanks to it not having faced bankruptcy and the complete destruction of its industry by war. A century ago it found a role as the global investor – and latterly a provider of services to other global investors – and it is thus more exposed to global economic developments.

The alternative Glancey imagines cannot be wished into existence. But we could significantly alter the balance of the British economy if we had political leadership that could think big and envision better futures, we took R&D seriously, accepted risk and tolerated failure, thought globally, and trusted ordinary people. The latter is a characteristic of BMW, which Glancey lauds. Any UK industrial policy needs to recognise that BMW’s products are more like mobile computers than cars, and that Britain should be inventing new forms of transportation more than aping past industrial success stories.

In the 1980s [many thought everything] had to take second place to preventing [nuclear] Armageddon… Thirty years on, at Chris Huhne’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, it’s the same story: the survival of the Earth trumps all other arguments… the Coalition has put reduction in the demand for energy at the heart of its policy programme… consumers must be ‘engaged’ in their energy consumption… Rein back your profligate energy use if you want to avoid… the Apocalypse!… Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne [portrays] climate change as an already-established ‘disaster’… The Coalition has repeatedly postponed plans for growth… New Labour’s ‘Plan B’ for growth is even weaker on innovation than [Osborne's]… Labour has nothing to say about higher productivity in industry, construction, agriculture or services [and has] confirmed its desire to put Britain into suspended animation… politicians [can] think of nothing more ambitious than to maintain the status quo.

The end is nigh: is survival all we can hope for?, James Woudhuysen, Independent Blogs, 11 October 2011 [Shared bookmark]

James Woudhuysen will be speaking at the V&A Friday Late debate Idea factories? Manufacturing and making in the 21st century (one of the Battle of Ideas Festival Satellite Events) on Friday 30 September. There is no cost to attend the event. James notes:

In Britain, illusions about the creative economy die hard. Artistic creativity does not require the investments or the long-run budgets demanded by R&D in manufacturing, and especially in services. Britain’s designers and artists love to flatter themselves about their importance, and politicians are far too ready to reciprocate. The result is that the ‘creative’ potential of China is underestimated; the technological possibilities with Britain’s not-dead-yet manufacturing sector are forgotten, or exaggerated; and changes to behaviour rather than in technology are seen as the solution to backwardness in infrastructure, private services and public services. What creatives need to rally round is the cultural struggle for innovation that leads to more and better ’stuff’, more and better intangibles, and more and better science. These signs of progress are indivisible, whether they come from Shoreditch or Shanghai.

The chair and speakers are:

David Bowden, coordinator, UK Battle Satellites;
poetry editor, Culture Wars;
TV columnist, spiked
Sandy Black, professor of fashion & textile design & technology,
Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London;
author, Eco Chic: the fashion paradox

Daniel Charny, senior tutor, Royal College of Art;
director, From Now On;
curator, ‘Power of Making’, V&A

Dr Paul Reeves, principal software developer,
Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks R&D; former senior researcher,
International Automotive Research Centre, University of Warwick

Angela Saini, freelance science
journalist; author,
Geek Nation

James Woudhuysen, professor of forecasting and
innovation, De Montfort University; co-author,
Energise! A future for energy innovation

Matt Warman, new technology journalist,
Daily Telegraph

If you Tweet about the event please use the hashtag #battleofideas. You can also add the event to your calendar from the shared event page.

“We want the words: ‘Made in Britain, Created in Britain, Designed in Britain, Invented in Britain’ to drive our nation forward. A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers” said Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in his 2011 Budget speech.

In his prime time BBC documentary Made in Britain Evan Davis argued that creativity and innovation is the life blood of the British economy and mapped future scenarios. We have created a globalised economy in which new materials and processes proliferate, products and services have merged, digital and analogue are a continuum, and R&D funding models are being fundamentally challenged. Yet, substantial and high quality manufacturing is still core to London and its hinterland – from Coca Cola to Ford Motors, tractor makers to manufacturers of electrical products – and many global companies choose London as their creative hub.

On Friday 16 September, as part of the London Design Festival, we have co-programmed and Nico Macdonald is chairing the debate Designed in Britain, Made in Britain with the Imperial College-RCA Design London programme. This debate takes place at Imperial College London.

Taking part are Bonnie Dean, Chief Executive of the Bristol & Bath Science Park and Chair of Economic Policy Committee, Engineers Employers Federation; Gus Desbarats, Chairman of TheAlloy: experience led design, National Chairman of British Design Innovation; Nick Leon, Director of Design London; Miles Parker, Managing Director of Linx Associates Ltd and co-founder of the Thames Gateway Manufacturing Alliance; and Kwickscreen founders Michael Korn and Denis Anscomb, a company incubated by Design London and recent winner of the UK leg of the James Dyson Award.

We will be asking whether the city is again becoming a viable site for manufacturing. Can we can re-design design to help London, and the UK, build on its manufacturing strengths? How can we better integrate design and manufacturing? Where can education and national and local government help? And we will be debating the credible design-manufacturing visions for London’s economic future which could influence strategy over the next 50 years.

Please see the event page for more information and to reserve your seat. [Shared event listing] Attendees will be Tweeting about the event using the Festival hashtag #ldf11.

More generally, people involved in the Big Potatoes Design workgroup will be taking part in London Design Festival events and debates and we will be flagging them on the event sharing service Lanyrd with the tag ‘ldf11′.