BIG POTATOES

In an ever-changing industry and uncertain economic times, is it really wise to invest so much time, money and effort into long-term business plans? David Hansson, partner of 37Signals and Basecamp supremo certainly doesn’t think so, and his new book ReWork has been hailed as an anti-management manifesto that sees short term cutbacks as the way forward. Martyn […]

Thursday 13 May: Speech to BA Hons Graphic Design students, Bristol Faculty of Creative Arts, University of the West of England. Designers are influencing change everywhere. We are told that ‘creative industries’ are a major boost to the economy; that ‘design-thinking’ is reforming the NHS; that better design can reduce consumption and protect the environment; […]

James Woudhuysen appeared on Material World (Radio 4), 29/04 with Sir Martin Taylor of the Royal Society (who oversaw its Scientific Century report) talking about whether scientific development and innovation can push the economic recovery forward. The show is repeated on Monday (03/05) at 21:00, and is also available on iPlayer and as a podcast […]

Can design save healthcare? from Norsk Form on Vimeo. 28 April, at DogA (the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture), Oslo, Norway. The event was sponsored by Norsk Form and the British Council in Norway Many countries are cutting back on expensive healthcare provision. In the UK all political parties want to cut bureaucracy and […]

James Woudhuysen was interview by Grant Thornton at the The Economist Redesigning Business Summit The Big Rethink in March. The two day conference, produced in conjunction with the Design Council, was aimed at ‘giving business leaders the opportunity to sample the fresh thinking needed to seize opportunities in today’s volatile world’. In the interview James […]

In an article on innovation in spiked‘s Election 2010 Question everything series James Woudhuysen explores the roots of the establishment’s neglect of scientific and technological innovation, and calls for the creation of new industries for the twenty-first century. On the neglect of scientific and technological innovation James argues: the categories of consumer society – and, […]

Despite its importance to our economic future, innovation has largely been overlooked since the credit crunch and is being largely ignored in the UK General Election. As a remedy, the R&D Society and the authors of BIG POTATOES: The London Manifesto for Innovation, in association with Epoch, have together organised an eve-of-election event at The […]

Manifesto co-author Norman Lewis is speaking at the Economist CIO Agenda in London on 9 June. Sub-titled ‘Guiding the Business into a New Era of Technology’, the CIO Agenda brings together ‘leading CIOs, experts and influential thinkers will come together for an intense morning of debate’ for which Norman will be a discussion leader. These […]

Manifesto co-author James Woudhuysen spoke about BIG POTATOES at the University of Plymouth on 5 March. In a report published in SouthWestBusiness Colin Searls, associate Dean in the University of Plymouth Faculty of Arts, said: We were delighted to have Prof Woudhuysen come to the university for what was his first talk in the South […]

Sparked by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Science and the General Election 2010 event, Manifesto co-authors James Woudhuysen and Norman Lewis have written in spiked-online on how red tape-obsessed, visionless governments are holding back the kind of big and risky innovation society needs.