I'm not sure if you've ever tried to talk about masturbation in a business context?
I'm not sure I'd recommend it; whatever angle you take, it's a tricky subject to bring up.
But, finding new ways to help people see what is happening in the world is what I do (see also The Future is Falling, 2023 was one of the coldest years in the century, etc).
Because this is a piʌotal moment for humanity, but it’s hard to find the perspective to see it as such; so, sometimes a little shock value and nervous humour can go a long way.
I hadn't planned to mention the m-word when my longtime friend Liz, who had recently joined the team, invited me to join our local council's Regeneration team for their monthly meeting. It just came up in conversation, followed immediately by an apology to Liz for the unsanctioned outburst.
It's their job to provide the policy foundation for the development of a new 'Innovation Arc’*, a spatial zone in the city comprising 1 million square feet of business innovation space.
I worked on public sector economic strategy for all of my career, when I had one, so I know innovation is the holy grail of government economic policy.
This was brought home to be during the austere 2010s, when I was trying to recreate and run something akin to £400m PA economic development organisation that the government had recently abolished, on 1% of the budget. The only significant money the government were willing to hand over was being ploughed into innovation; UK Research & Innovation, the Government's innovation agency, were pretty much the only organisation left with any serious money for economic development.
Because it's obviously a good thing, right?
Obviously, our economy, and thus the well-being of people and society, depends on businesses finding innovative new ways to create products and services that generate the value we need to provide jobs and taxes.
And that was a believable truth at one point.
I believed it, I pursued it.
But not now.
It's not obvious or believable at this point in time when we have crashed across six of the nine planetary boundaries critical for the continued functioning of human civilisation.
No longer can we pursue innovation for innovation's sake.
Yes, we absolutely need to innovate, but that must be in service of a greater purpose than pure profit.
This is why innovation is like masturbation; it may be pleasurable, it may spread a rosy glow, but it is not productive when it is not in service to life.
*As an aside, the Innovation Arc is being promoted with a picture from the launch of the Leeds Doughnut City Portrait, which features a bunch of folk, including myself, who probably don’t entirely entirely agree that’s it’s aims and objectives are really what we should be focussing on right now in the city that helped found the Industrial Revolution.
And yes, I note the 46 references to sustainability in the planning document, but without exception these are all in reference to sustainable travel or construction. They have absolutely nothing to say about what happens in this new innovation space.
In effect, it is ok to pump up the extractive economy which has pushed us over the edge, so long as you use green transport to get there and work under energy saving lighting whilst you figure out yet more ways to inflict suffering and pain on future generations and those already left out of the dying days of our industrial economy.
I’ll touch on this co-option of the language of sustainability and innovation by the bulwarks of business as usual in the next part of my thoughts on the topic of business innovation and transformation.
No, we’re not done yet!
(Read the next piece ‘Is Net Zero making things worse?’)
I like the point you're making here, Tim. Quite a tricky (and sticky) subject you're talking about.
I would call this hyper fixation on specific solutions on complex challenges.
I think we still need to shift our approach in education to raise more awareness and unlearn this kind of pattern.