This page is a resource for articles on a range of subjects, including business, innovation, cities, digital media, and technology. Scroll down for older articles.
2012: New Sources of Growth
A Futures Company Futures Perspective report that won the Atticus Grand Prix – WPP’s top award for thought leadership. It has a model of the sources of growth (Markets-Values-Money-Technology, or MVMT) and a process for establishing whether the market is ready for an innovation (because, of course, it’s all about timing).
It can be downloaded from the Futures Company’s site here.
FuturePerspectives_UnlockingNewSourcesofGrowth
June 2007: South West Creative Summit
I gave a keynote presentation to the South West Regional Development Agency’s ‘Creative Summit‘ on the theme of the future of creative consumption. An article which develops the argument I made at the event can be downloaded (in pdf) below:
Four stories about the creative economy
September 2006 : presentation and paper for CASE, the Campaign for Science and Engineering
CaSE ran an event in the autumn which was designed to share ideas about how to improve innovation in science and technology areas. I was asked to give a presentation from the point of view of media and creative industries. I also contributed a chapter based on something I’d written for an (unpublished) book a few years ago. The original of The Next Wave was part-funded by a combination of Foresight and Arts Council England. This (below) is the chapter on creative innovation, in pdf. It’s quite long (around 20 pages) and quite fat (440KB) but people who have read it say it’s engaging.
The Next Wave : Innovation (Curry)
July 2006 : ‘Architectures of the Future’; (chapter on cities and funding diversity) for Camelot-sponsored book
Camelot funded a book to create a discussion about the role of the National Lottery in public life, obviously as part of their bid to retain the licence when it is re-awarded later this year. It was published for them by Premium Publishing, which specialises in such books. My chapter argued that lottery funding had created diversity in spending on city regeneration and development which created new types of urban behaviour. I’ve revised it slightly from the published version. A pdf copy can be downloaded below:
The Architecture of the Future (Curry, 2006)
2000: Learning the lessons of Videoway
In the late 1990s I was invited to write a paper on my experience of running Videotron’s interactive television service for a special edition of Information Society. The paper became an exploration of why companies run trial services. Unfortunately I don’t have the rights to publish it here. “Learning the Lessons of Videoway: the corporate economy of new media trials” can be found in Information Society 16(4).
This is what the abstract has to say:
Why do organisations commit resources to new media trials and pilot projects when the results are uncertain and returns are haphazard? This article, written by a practitioner responsible for launching and managing an early interactive television project in the UK, uses his experience as a prism through which to address this wider question.
At one level, the article is a first-hand case study of a specific corporate innovation in new media in a particular location. In exploring some broader questions, the author relates the instability of such projects to the complex and unpredictable interplay of users, organisations, and economics which their development requires, and links this to notions of competition around the concept of the ‘technological frame’. Finally, the author explores the role of such projects in helping organisations create the capabilities to manage innovation in turbulent conditions by building relationships outside of the organisation.
1997: paper on Videotron’s interactive advertising trial
We ran the first substantial trial of interactive advertising in the UK on the Videotron cable television system in the summer of 1996. This paper is a good description of the system, the trial and some of the research – and is reasonably candid.
Marketing Week conference paper on interactive TV trial
1995: keynote address on ‘The Creative Virus’
A presentation on the nature of creativity and creative teams, given at Brighton’s ‘Making Waves’ seminar in October 1995. It ranges quite widely – across music, radio, and film, and I think the ideas stand up to inspection more than a decade later.
the next wave 