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Take one from the IBC 2010 conference

Despite numerous visits to the exhibition, this was my first time at IBC's conference - overall the quality both in terms of logistics and level of speakers was topnotch. I only caught one sales-pitch, much better than most trade shows. If you are going to choose one source, IBC is a good candidate. The only problem is that there is just too much going one to be able to focus as my notes below show. Also once the trade-show opens there's too much pull there to stay at the conference. Going the day before seems the only way for me.

Snippets from the social media session

I caught the wrap-up of the BBC speaker: we are looking to help people find other people already talking about their programs. I expect a TV station to cater to a community created around their content, but was surprised to see one so actively looking to actually create one. The beeb’s innovative attitude is impressive. I’m curious to see if they can be successful sustaining this new mindset.

Android based tablet should bring the true democratisation of tablets device for this year’s Christmas season.

The MTV guy said that talking about social media now is 6 yrs too late; I wonder what he was talking about 6 years ago.

Scheduling is recommendation by a brand you trust that is telling you “we think you’ll like to watch this content at this time”.

On BBC iPlayer navigation is still basically by channel. So maybe TV stations won’t die after all.

The Music industry is several years ahead of TV. What Spotify does with Facebook is showing the way. Facebook isn’t as much social recommendation as social validation.

Recommendation is content coming to you, whereas search is you going out to content.

Scheduled content is often the beginning of a recommendation chain. If scheduling looses its importance, how will broadcasters promote shows that are not scheduled?

Is there really wisdom in the crowd: probably not always.

It now seems clear that Social-TV will be multi-screen so connected devices are key. Who will own this value chain, Samsung or Sony Bravia have a head start in terms of brand positioning.

Social TV ain’t easy: Scandinavian broadcaster had to close down Facebook trials around football matches as tempers rose out of control.

BBC: setting up any kind of forum requires a lot of effort to manage. One can’t simply put up a system. Moderation costs will soar.

At this stage an idea came to me that shut out the talking as I wrote it dow:

Back to the future: After the Internet enabled the long tail, is recommendation, be it social or otherwise, converging back towards front catalogue. Technology under the hood might whiz obscure back-catalogue or UGC items to the forefront in a flash. But as consumers, will we live in a world that will shrink back to hundreds of choices, not the millions the Internet once promised? Ouch, it would be like going back to the middle-ages!

Back to the session:

I heard talk of many devices at the IBC 2010 conference the three that show what a wide variety are on decision makers’ minds were: iPad, the iPad and oh yes, I almost forgot: an iPad.

Cisco #fail

Alex Balfour, is the new media guy from the excitingly named LOCOG A.K.A the 2012 Olympics organisation committee. In 20 dull minutes he mentioned the name Cisco four times and their product name 3 times, the session should actually have been called Cisco & Social media. A Cisco rep took over and when this became a clear sales pitch. I left. Come on Cisco & IBC, don’t let this sort of thing happen, your better than that. Some of the most interesting speakers in the industry work for Cisco, Yes you can!

I caught the last part of a Panel on “the way forward with online video”.

US TV networks are finding that when they promote alternative distribution channels as well as main broadcast feed, there is no cannibalisation. However movies are not available outside of the main feed and TV content is only available during small windows, so as to maximise syndication etc.

Connected TV

The last session I caught on my IBC conference day was on the Connected TV chaired by David Docherty

I was disappointed at how UK centric things were in the intro to this session. The “D-Book” that was described as some sort of holly grail is actually technical specs for UK’s DTT, what’s the big deal?

Ian Fromely from NBC Universal is an entertaining speaker, he had me smile a few times, but he didn’t seem at liberty to say much of significance, or if he did, I didn’t understand.

LoveFilm

The LoveFilm lady gave the same presentation as six months ago in London. The company is basically a UK based baby-Netflix (that Amazon now wants to buy – LoveFilm that is, not Netflix Doh!). LoveFilm is 6 years old, with 1,6M customers in 5 countries but mainly UK (1,2M). The main challenge is educating customer base for the move from mail order to digital. The digital service was launched in UK may 2009. Lack of figures on digital usage leads me to assume the take-up is disappointing. But the way Netflix is transforming its 1950’s style mail order business into an online on-demand business shows that it’s easier for these companies to make the transition than it was for Blockbuster. Consuming from home seems to be more important than having a huge choice …

Google – I’m still not convinced

The GoogleTV presenter was not giving anything away. She might as well have cancelled. Oh no she gave a scoop: GTV will be launched in US before EOY 2010! Oops we know that too.

Her presentation showed just how immature Google still is in its approach to TV: he key focuss was on 5 hrs a day average viewing (hmm I though Google was global not just a US company) – 70bn$/yr ad revenues– 4 billion TV users.

She did say something that caught my attention: “TV is reliable” to which I’d add just like fixed-line phones before VoIP. If that is really a USP of the TV then a company whose products are all branded ‘beta’ for several years after launch should stay away.

The Google spokesperson went on to say that the web needs to be a natural extension of the TV. So hooking with previous remark I take it Google is going to tame the web into being well behaved and reliable.

In response to an audience question she said “Google TV will be a free open source platform” finishing off with “If anyone can scale to support explosive demands on the Web from connected TVs, Google can”. Next time she should just take questions, cause that’s the only time she said anything of interest.

My song for Samsung

Despite prohibitive roaming charges the only talk that got me to tweet during the conference was Samsung’s. I tweeted “By saying their connected TV’s aren’t about disintermediation, but about bringing value, Samsung is coming an intermediary.”

Their site www.samsungsmarttvchallenge.eu shows they mean business and sales figures got me listening: 1 set in 4 sold in Europe is a Samsung.

On the down side Samsung’s connected TV is proprietary environment, but at least it’s built on open standards.

I’m still not actually sure what got me to sit up and listen to Dan Saunders. Maybe it’s that Google and Sony are pushing in so many directions at once in the connected TV space that I’m confused and think even their staunchest supporters will be too. Apple on the other hand is very focussed, but runs closed TV shop for now.

Samsung has the mix that feels right: aggressively pushing a single way to get TV’s connected with just enough control to keep things working, and enough openness to recreate the Appstore phenomenon that put the iPhone into orbit around the sun.

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Drowning in IBC data, media accreditation and what I intend to write about post IBC.

One aspect of going to IBC that has always been difficult for me is the deluge of information to sift through. Even as a plain vanilla exhibition visitor there are for example more compelling free trade magazines than my baggage allowance ever catered for. Most years I took IBC Daily home after the event but rarely got time to actually read them which was a shame because there is some cool writing there too.

Delegating that info sifting to one of the many dedicated sites, relying on their selection of relevant information, is an option. But then you’d first have to choose one, which is back to square one because there are so many excellent places to look. As a contributor to Videonet and Broadband TV News, I can recommend them, but there are many more.

The trade press business model we all operate under is great in that it lets all these vibrant content producers exist. Editorial independence is never in question on the sites I mentioned and rarely elsewhere. But it as a reader, one can get bored with the same company execs being interviewed over and over. Let me know if you’ve ever read anything negative about a company or product, I haven’t.

This year should see twitter really take off around the event. There’s been some confusion about hashtags as people are asking whether they should use #ibc, #ibc2010 or #ibc10. IBC’s official twitter account says the later, but there’s something a bit contrary to the twitter ethos for an official #hashtag to be created, it prompted me to quip IBC: Int’l Behaviour Control. I hope no feelings were hurt; it was a joke. Most conferences I’ve been to have several hashtags, which allow for different transient communities to coalesce, which is good especially for IBC as there are some very very different people involved.

Roaming charges means only Dutch people or those working for very rich companies will be online all the time. Every year, at every conference we are promised Wifi, it’s a bit like Waiting for Godot.

This year I’m thrilled to have been given media accreditation as a blogger so I can add my voice to the cacophony.

A downside is that I now get bombarded with even more information: I’m on the press release mailing list which has been adding another dozen or so hefty emails per day for the last couple of weeks.

They range from the terrible: i.e. a non-descript press release about two obscure companies working together in a part of the industry I didn’t even know existed. I had no idea as to why this was significant and the press release didn’t alleviate my ignorance.

An example on the better side was a press release followed by a phone call from a company called Vidyo. They are hoping to bring the rate adaptive revolution - which as I often say, is not prominent enough in our trade press - to the corporate sector, with a robust videoconferencing solution at a fraction of the current cost (the video stays alive even if the network conditions deteriorate, its quality adapts). I hope to go the their press briefing if I can take a break from my judging duties on Friday, that way I get a free lunch, otherwise I’ll just content myself with a visit to their booth like any common mortal.

Now I’m officially “media”, I am surprised that no targeting seems to happen. In my Video Quality specialty field I received only one piece of mildly significant news. Agama is responding to the IP/Cable convergence by launching a dedicated cable product. Ineoquest, the segment leader, are showing their regular product line-up at the show and had the decency not put out a press release with no information – an example to follow. But I’m sure some of the other players are showing new features that I would have noticed and probably written about, but I received nothing else.

Over 20 years ago, fresh out of University, I helped create a company called the World Press Centre to intermediate press releases. They idea was that journalists received so many press releases that they simply couldn’t handle them. On the other side PR firms and blue-chip companies struggled to ensure the right journalists got their content (preferably friendly journalist being given a head start). It was a pre-internet era and we failed for a variety of reasons. But I see the need is just as strong today. Back to the future, maybe that’s something my entrepreneurial side will look into again if IBC doesn’t bring in enough new work ;o).

Having glanced through most of the voluminous material I received pre-IBC hasn’t really changed my objectives. In what free time I have I’ll be looking into 4 areas:

  • Debunking 3D which is I believe just a distraction (but I’m still open to being convinced otherwise),
  • Implementations of rate adaptive technology, which I believe will enable profound changes in our industry,
  • Content navigation/recommendation/filtering which is an even more critical stumbling block as TV/Internet convergence looms ever closer,
  • Keeping abreast of the latest Quality monitoring and Quality assurance developments, which are one of the last green fields of IP services, especially IPTV.

I won’t be posting anything more here during the show, nobody has time to read during IBC and I’d prefer to party than spend my nights writing.

But I’d be keen to have any information or discussions on the topics above which I intend to cover in depth after the dust settles and I can actually think and analyse a bit. I’m also interested in publishing those blogs elsewhere, so let me know …

Oh yes, media accreditation means getting invited to more parties, which clearly counts on the upside, as long as I don’t think of the diet I’ll be going on as soon as I get home.

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Hype-ometer: Comparing lack of rate adaptive buzz with 3D buzz

The more hype the less genuine importance?

Rate-adaptive technologies occupy very little media space but will radically transform the Internet and broadcasting industries.

3D on the other hand is yet again making all the headlines (yes is has done several times over the decades), but I’m convinced this new surge of interest will barely be remembered as just another blip on the radar, a few years from now.

Counting Google hits is by no means science, and you write ‘3D’ in most languages as oppose to “rate adaptive” which is English only, but getting 170 million hits for the search “3D cinema OR TV” (limited to English language) while the search ”rate adaptive cinema OR TV” gets 240 thousand must portray a bit of the hype imbalance between the two topics.

Walking through the booths at IBC for example, you’ll see 3D used on booths whichever way you look, to entice wanderers-bye to stop. Counting the number occurrences of “rate adaptive” on booth walls will be easier!

First let’s look at one reason why 3D is generating such a fuss at places like IBC.

The global economy is apparently picking up after a recession and cyclic industries like the electronics industry need to have something new to push. 3D serves that purpose well. For set makers, there is now a wider and wider array of new high tech parameters to get people to think they need a new TV. On top of the traditional TV specs like screen resolution, size, contrast, colour management etc., there’s also now Internet connectivity, widgets, OTT services and home networking.

This list of features is also used to differentiate from competition. In the end, even if 3D never really takes off in the living room, the likes of Sony, Philips, LG, Sharp or Samsung will have benefited from the hype. 3D is just one of many many features and can only help sales.

Device makers make cool devices but - Apple apart – they don’t deliver cool services. For the 3D revolution to happen, content needs to start flowing.

Apart from the set makers, the other group that have a vested interest in making 3D take of are service providers who feel it would give them an added value.

Now for some reasons why this might remain hype and never make it to mass-market.

Today’s side-by-side trials by satellite operators actually have to reduce resolution. They basically split the screen and send the left and right components of the 3D stream on each half of the screen. Feedback I’ve had has been disappointing as viewers notice the drop in resolution from HD, which is not compensated for by 3D.

3D will have to be broadcast in full HD resolution to have an outsider’s chance of delivering its promise. To do this a bandwidth of 20% to 100% increase will be required. DSL and unmanaged Internet will drop out of the race, at least for live content. So the only stakeholders I see pushing hard to get the 3D bandwagon rolling are satellite operators – and in some cases FTTx and Cable operators – for whom bandwidth is less of a blocking point. That’s why Sky has several 3D initiatives and been showing some impressive demos for over a year, they rightly see 3D, if it takes off, as keeping them one stage ahead of the game.

But even the biggest marketing muscles are ineffective to make a person adopt something that doesn’t bring any benefit to them.

When a movie especially thought of for 3D comes along people will notice. But beyond aesthetics, this doesn’t answer a need expressed by users or yet imagined by marketers.

HD improves the experience of any content, whereas 3D is beneficial only to content specially designed and created for 3D. It’s a funny contradiction that the sex industry was one of the last to take up HD, (indeed who wanted more gynaecology?) but may take back its role as innovator for 3D (have a beautiful body passing right by your fingertips can have more effect that just seeing it in 2D). But beyond that early adoption, 3D will remain niche for most of us for a few years yet, because it doesn’t answer any of our needs. It might even remain niche forever like 3D photography has for over a hundred years.

Aesthetics alone can however make an impact if 3D becomes part of our culture. 3D will have to permeate all aspects of production, starting with design of the content; this is underway, but will take years.

***

Rate adaptive is a lot less sexy to talk about than 3D. Indeed there isn’t all that much to show, except maybe to geeks who understand what’s happening under the hood.

Rate adaptive technologies will however enable the delivery of services people have been wanting from the Internet from the outset. This month’s Wired magazine cover reads “The Web is Dead”, inside you’ll see they mean that it’s video in particular that is killing it. Delivering video over the Internet remains a challenge though. In the media space one of the rare companies out there that was saying this out loud was Verimatrix with their white paper from last year "Adaptive Rate Streaming: Pay-TV at an Inflection Point". They don't seem so focussed on the subject (at least on their Website in the sun up to IBC), I'll try and find out why and keep you posted.

An early implementation of rate adaptive technology from Move Networks led the market by several years and almost made it to the mainstream when they were rolling out web streaming services with major US studios. Somehow they failed in the last stretch. Positioning and marketing must be to blame, because the technology is beautiful. They have now moved out of the B2C space and head-ends and are concentrating on enabling TV delivery for corporate customers.

Rate Adaptive technology is picking up speed in the consumer market. It is one of the latest exciting things from all of Microsoft, Apple and even Adobe. Of course all the encoder manufacturers like Envivio support it too now.

UK’s project Canvas CTO Anthony Rose recently said it’s “essential for Quality of Experience on a range of Internet bandwidth”.

He’s right and there should be more fuss about it in the media it’s really much more significant than 3D.

Bad quality and unreliability have been real killers to both user aspirations and business models for all Web streaming efforts from even before the Internet bubble days.

The traditional pay-TV model may survive in a renewed shape, but even the most conservative execs in the industry agree there is a major shake-up underway and OTT is one of its names. Content owners frown upon many OTT ventures, but to reassert control, content owner are investing themselves heavily in TV-Everywhere initiatives so that consumers have access to premium content from anywhere. That means pushing content across unmanaged networks.

Google’s entry into the market reinforces the feeling of unstoppable change.

As the MP3 and music industries debacle showed, people want more freedom in consuming content. Companies, TV content creators included, need to make money. Rate adaptive technology is the key enabler for both to be satisfied.

User surveys invariable show that consumers are happy to pay for content; as long as technology is seamless and doesn’t get in the way. Price points will find their natural equilibrium on their own.

Finally a little technical perspective [geeks only from this point]: what do you actually need to deliver rate adaptive say in a STB? A recent LinkedIn post by Amino’s CTO Dominique Le Foll puts it nicely in a nutshell.

The most high-level requirement is to adapt quickly and automatically to a change in available bandwidth. All components of the stream must of course remain synchronised (video, audio, teletext / closed caption). All features requiring significant processing must be supported by hardware (demux, decode, etc.). Trick modes must be supported for Fast Forward, Rewind, Pause, etc. Of course the technology license must be affordable and content protection must be possible. I also agree with Dominique that streaming should be based on http. This is the best solution via the NAT in end-user’s home, but it also means that in some implementations of the technology (e.g. Move Networks), streams can make use of cheap HTTP caches throughout the Internet (this is akin to free multicast feature in the network). Adjusting the initial buffering level will be tricky to achieve good TV user experience, but who said it would be easy?

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IP Vision was back in the news in August with concerns about Canvas

IP Vision formally lodged a complaint with Ofcom on August 18th.

As several others in the industry, IP Vision, claims to be the leading provider of hybrid DTT/IPTV over-the-top (OTT) TV. They do ad credibility to the claim by stating in the same sentence that it’s a nascent sector, which shows that they know what they're talking about and so must be active in it Q.E.D! Numbers of subscribers are still less important than mindshare. Their core technology, from Netgem is also doing well elsewhere, like for example in the Telstra launch in Australia.

Clearly they are legitimate in asking Ofcom to examine whether the Canvas joint venture will “stifle industry innovation, inhibit competition and ultimately restrict consumer choice”.

But are they founded, or is it just sour grapes for not being part of Canvas?

By calling the Canvas gang “Goliaths, supported in part by BBC licence fee funds”, IP Vision’s CEO Eddie Abrams is casting himself as David.

As an industry observer, my initial response is that he’s right and that it just ain’t fair, but that thought is immediately followed by the one telling me that he’s wrong to be worried.

The background to this story is that the BBC must remain technology agnostic. Last year they prevented IP Vision from releasing their own implementation of iPlayer. Of the two main reasons stated at the time, one was maintaining the BBC brand value. I can buy that, although it could have been managed in a more creative way, maybe by creating an “iPlayer Compatible” brand.

The other reason was about preserving the value of the investment the beeb had already made in iPlayer. That argument doesn’t hold water. Despite having some of UK’s best techies onboard, the beeb will always be a behemoth (suits better than Goliath), and managing libraries of source code, some proprietary, some public domain, accompanying API’s and the likes, is not the core business of a public broadcaster.

However I can see both arguments and understand how the situation would leave IP Vision with some grievances.

Why IP Vision shouldn’t be worried though, is because If Canvas fails, well it’s all benefit to that company; but if they succeed its even better.

A successful Canvas will turn what Abrams calls a nascent industry into something really big. IP-Vision will always be more agile & nimble than a bunch of Goliaths. In the end, OTT is also about giving power back to the end user. If IP Vision and their technology partners focus all their energies on delivering the best product (and I won't write the "instead of" part of this sentence), which they can, then IP Vision can reclaim their first mover advantage. After all David didn't have the strength to confront Goliath head-on, but he was fast and accurate with a slingshot.

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Does the 3D emperor have any clothes on?

I went to see the latest Shrek4 in 3D with a party of 9 of all ages a few weeks ago. As we left the cinema, comments were all very favorable: «much better than the last shrek», «almost as good as the original», «the villain was really well portrayed»‚«great scenario, shame they didn't have Shrek seduced by a someone younger than Fiona so he would have had a complete mid-life crisis then»; nobody spontaneously mentioned the 3D.

When I asked the first response was «oh yes I did get a bit of headache» and «apart from the opening scene with the white horses, I didn't really notice it was 3D», «nothing like Avatar».

I agreed with all these comments.

The experience pushed me to write this blog and say what many have been thinking and a few saying for a while now:«The 3D emperor hasn't got many clothes on» which can only really interest the sex industry.

Here are my reasons:
Specific content specially written with 3D in mind, will always have a niche, and people will pay for that. So there will be more Avatar-like blockbusters, although Avatar in plain HD (gosh that's already no longer an oxymoron) is still beautifully made.
It seems only natural that Gaming would adopt 3D, but that's just an assumption we're all making. People presume that the games and sex industries will be first to adopt a new technology, but actually, they only do so if the new technology brings them value (the sex industry was most definitely not an early adopter of HD, but was first and to date, the only one to successfully adopt multiple angle views) so there's no golden rule. 3D must bring something to succeed. I'm not actually saying that gaming will not adopt 3D, just that it's not a done deal, and even if it does, there's no guarantee this will lead to adoption of 3D in TV usage.

[Last minute: just read a post in French here about Marc Dorcel a French Porn mogul that is investing in 3D. I suppose the author is right that when a beautiful ass passes literally under your nose it might have more effect than with regular video].

If 3D does impact these innovation hungry industries, it'll only concern their hardcore from the outset, maybe even for good.

The 3D Emperor will certainly take his clothes off if he's a porn star.

One of the main battle cries of our industry for the last couple of years has been “3 screens” or more openly “multi-device”. This will be an obstacle for 3D. Repurposing 3D designed for the cinema, where viewers are typically 10m from the screen, will be difficult for a PC let alone a mobile device. There is an issue of base-line calculation.

The industry needs a big subject to federate around. HD was one such example and does bring a deeper sense of immersion to all content, whereas 3D has is only relevant to content specifically designed for 3D. Just adding 3D for effect leads the latest Shrek movie as opposed to Avatar.
Technologies come to enable something new and go when they serve no purpose other than their own. 3D technology will be useful to enable the viewing of 3D content. Even if I'm wrong and 3D does end up bringing something to any old video, the “3D-ing” of all that video still needs to be done. Remember how may years it took the plain vanilla VoD sector to take off because of ingest problems.
Oh and if like me you spend an average 10 minutes a week or more looking or shouting at your kids for the remote, just imagine what'll happen in the average household with multiple pairs of glasses yikes!
One last reason I can see hindering 3D adoption: as an early adopter myself I have a 450€ HDMI 1.3 compatible A/V system that all my devices talk to. Enabling 3D is going to require HDMI 1.4 for the extra bandwidth beyond HD, which basically means I need to change that expensive sound kit to get full functionality. Otherwise I'll need to plug all my future 3D sources directly into my future TV set. Yikes again.

I can see one main reason why I could be wrong. In UK and France, Sky and Canal+ respectively, have both started promoting 3D. If they do decide to put all their marketing weight behind 3D, that kind of juggernaut could push mass adoption. The reason they, and satellite operators in other markets might do that is simple.
Operators delivering over multiple networks especially including DSL are severely handicapped when it comes to HD let alone 3D. HD with its fourfold bandwidth requirements really hurts TV over DSL eligibility. When 3D comes along, even if it turns out to only require another 20% (which is the optimistic estimate, others talk of a 50%-100% increase), things will only get worse. So if Sky promotes 3D, that hurts BT but more importantly Canal+ will really want to hurt Orange.
Of course the set makers are aggressively pushing 3D already, but I think they are making a big mistake. People will either think their message is irrelevant or worse, succumb, buy a set and then feel conned by the brand, with the scarcity of content where 3D actually makes any difference. If I were a set maker, I'd promote 3D as a cool extra feature, not the one big reason to buy a new set. As Jeff Vinson reminds us on his blogpost on 3D, «Don't believe your own hype!».

But in the end, early-adopters aside, mainstream customers buy mainly things whose added value they fully understand. I can easily imagine the articles in 2011 and 2012 explaining why 3D never made it mainstream.

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Brain Drain: Is British Innovation here to stay?

I recently spoke on a panel at ei's Comment conference.
It was a privilege to be among the speakers see here; http://www.commentconference.com/
I was quite taken by Sam Roddick, Coco de Mer's founder, world view. Innovating our attitude to sex is quite a way from the usual technology based discussions I have about innovation and IPTV.

Anyway, here are the ideas I put together in anticipation of the conference.

If British Innovation is here at all, can there actually be a Brain Drain in the first place?
If there is, then Britain is already sliding down a slope towards decrepitude of some kind. The second part of the question implies some kind of divine right or duty to shine out.
My (and Julia’s) Viennese grandma told me of her Honeymoon in London just before the 1st world war. In Trafalgar Square her brand new husband told her “darling I’ve just brought you to the centre of the world”.
Well, that was a century ago.

I’ve lived in France for twenty years, so my brain must have gone down the British drain. Drains lead to sewers so that’s how I got to Paris.
Well maybe not. Britain is now part of Europe; at least that’s what the other Europeans think. If this talk had been about European Innovation and mobility we’d be taking quite different stances.

Innovationuk.org clearly state that innovation is about raising the standard of living.
Innovation for its own sake has never created any value. True innovation must be useful, It’s about creating or reinforcing/reasserting a role a person or organisation plays in an ecosystem or society at large.

Some examples of failure and success from the past include: Chrome car bumper makers of the 50`s & 60`s. They went out of business when plastic came along because they thought their business was to do with chrome and a certain style, it wasn’t, they were absorbing shocks as cheaply as possible. In the same vain cinemas almost lost it, in the eighties, so they got smaller & cheaper but that just made things worse until a crazy Belgian guy created the first cinema multiplex. That was all about big seats, huge screens, lots of choice, ludicrously expensive popcorn galore, huge entrances, requiring a car journey to get there … it brought cinema back to the role it was always meant to have in society: a real night out, a break from reality, the opposite of home TV.

So if technology alone is extremely rarely a success or failure factor in innovation, what is? It’s the marketing ideas around something new and especially the way they’re perceived. That’s why this is a really interesting place for me to be instead of the usual techie conferences I attend.

The “Brain Drain” concept is very twentieth century. If British innovation were about being faster and more agile in the knowledge society that we’ve just entered into, then it’s a lost battle anyway. Spend just a few days in an Indian High-Tech company and you’ll see what I mean. These companies may not yet be the cause of a British Brain Drain, but they will very soon make a mockery of a previous worldview that implied that we, the chosen, (I mean Brits and a few other select nations) would somehow be superior in a knowledge-society world, just because we had more educated people.
Innovation in a knowledge-based society requires mobility and agility and the concept “Brain Drain” just doesn’t fit in.

A “brand” new Britain could capture a new set of criteria by which to measure success and innovation. Setting an example for the future of society rather than trying to win previous battles over again. Shifting the balance to social and environmental progress away from technological prowess might be part of the answer (ouch that last sentence hurt as I’m a technology person).

The new government can play out previous bust & boom scenarios and Britain will quickly get better including in terms of old-school innovation (no that’s not an oxymoron).
If the government plough loads of cash into making life great for technology start-uppers, of course we’ll see more twentieth Century innovation from London. Reducing capital gains tax and the likes would reduce the perceived Brain Drain. But is that all there is?
If such Innovation were the yardstick, Britain would fall to its true place well behind many other nations like for example South Korea or Israel.
Britain is one of the rare nations that could try a different route. What Obama has done to the US economy by pushing “green” into business could be even more powerful if done in a European context. European society is more intricate. You can’t “just do it” in London for example. You need to first get everyone on board to discuss, have tea, discuss some more then maybe decide over tea a few months later.
Going green in more than rhetoric would require more political will than in America, but the end result would be proportionally more significant. If Britain embarked on such a journey for this decade, it could spearhead a European move. In the next decade she would have an army of consultants and thousands of companies of a new kind.
The political entity we call our Country might not be better in terms of GDP or standard of living, as InnovationUK.org would have it, but could be leaps ahead in terms of quality of life.
Britain can innovate again on a global scale if she changes the rules. One new one could for example involve happiness creation as criteria for measuring the success of innovation.