As I moved around from friends’ houses and hotel to hotel over the Christmas and New Year period, I reflected on the need to continually charge devices, becoming ever alert to plug sockets on trains, planes and unfamiliar living rooms.  Where to sit to be close (and not leave wires for people to trip over), do I have the correct charger/adapter and dongles. I’ve managed to internalise the need to carry a raft of chargers, adapters, duplicates in different bags. I’ve become adept at flipping between wifi and network carriers, hopping in and out of hotel lobbies.  It occurred to me that I have become the equivalent of a 21st century hunter-gatherer drifting from point to point, picking up electricity, wifi or broadband juice where I find it – and in competition at times for sometimes scarce resources.  adds a frisson of excitement to the journey I guess!

As many of you are aware, I spend a fair bit of time trying to debunk the myth of the so-called Digital Native. Here’s a link to a blogpost in the new Tech publication, The Kernel.

A busy week all round with the launch of the School of Management’s new Research Centre for Strategic Innovation on Thursday evening. About 40 people turned out overall to hear a panel consisting of John Bessant, Gerard George and Sally Jane Norman – leading academics in the field, talk about the opportunities and challenges of the new innovation landscape. Looking forward to a stream of events in the coming year – I’ll be keeping you posted!

Yes, it’s that time of year, and this will be the first full year for our School in the newly-formed Faculty of Art, Business and Law at Southampton. I’m kicking off the new academic year with an informal lunch to get some interdisciplinary groups working on the creative industries and digital media. This builds on last year’s series of talks on commercialisation in various spheres from Profs. Tony Wasserman, Scott Shane and Charles Davis from the US/Canada. I have links from two of these lectures/workshops, which I’ve posted before, but it’s useful to see them together 

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A slightly belated note to say how much I enjoyed my time with Creative Industries colleagues at INESC in Porto – some great incubation work going on out there. Here’s my presentation – looking forward to continuing this theme in near future.

The Shooting Star, Bevois Valley, Southampton hosted Southampton’s first one-day barcamp, organised by Chris Gutteridge and Chris Philips.  I didn’t get there until lunchtime, but once I read there was free chili I was roused out of my weekend torpor!  Good buzzing atmosphere when I got there, good mix of folk from local universities, IBM and elsewhere.  I gave a Lightning Talk to kick around some ideas as to how to mobilise open data for students.  Friendly atmosphere, looking forward to next year!

Really enjoyed this event which took place on Monday at the de Vere hotel in Southampton. Around 100 people from the University of Southampton (many, but not all from Electronics and Computer Science) and the City Council attended.  For me this was a great opportunity to take forward ideas about  how open data can be used to improve the student experience – particularly the international Masters students who are so important in our School.  the event was filmed, and I’ll post the link later.  Till then, the #opensoton hashtag gives a flavour of the event [at least for now]

A cliché, I know, but where has the summer gone?  I did manage to do quite a bit of writing and get a couple of papers submitted.  Sadly, the funding bids I put together were unsuccessful, though well received.  On the plus side, I have kicked off the PhD project I advertised in an earlier post with a great guy who has some very bright ideas as to how to take the topic forward.  Oh, and a little publicity for myself using Camtasia here , thank to Adam Warren at LATEU, our Learning and Teaching enhancement unit.

I’ve also been getting some interesting work underway with colleagues at the University of Sussex, looking at value capture in the MIPP project, looking forward to some great interdisciplinary perspectives regarding disruptive innovation and motion capture technology. A good year ahead in prospect.

Update

I’m  pleased to say that I have had some good people applying for this opportunity – sorry to say the deadline is now passed, and I’m working on the selection.  Of course, I’m always interested in new colleagues who want to work with me in this space so feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss anything further.  Thanks to all those who applied and colleagues who circulated the link.

Work with me at the University of Southampton’s School of Management

Project Title: Digital disruption and value creation

The research focuses on how small businesses in the knowledge-intensive services sector can realise value from mobile communications.  It embraces innovation theory and business strategy and will enhance competitiveness in UK plc.

Supervisor: Dr Lorraine Warren

Start Date: October 2010

Details of the Project:

The rapid development of digital technologies now presents a nexus of possibilities: widespread access to broadband/mobile technologies; smartphones enabling new forms of communication, handheld internet access and bespoke applications development; software platforms that enable a high degree of networked connectivity and communication  with the potential to amplify to (potentially) a global audience; readily available real-time geographical data; increasing availability of government datasets to the public.  This nexus produces a new locus of innovation, a shift from the corporation to the individual, recognised in new so-called paradigms for innovation, ‘open innovation’ (Chesbrough) and ‘democratic innovation’ (von Hippel) across the distributed innovation networks foreseen by Rothwell.  The barriers to digital innovation by non-computer scientists have been significantly lowered as the plethora of new businesses in the fields of social media, or smartphone applications demonstrate.  It should now easier than it has ever been to not only access and use new technologies, but to extend them, customise them, develop new combinations, and to access and develop new sectors and markets.  Thus the potential for not only incremental innovation but transformative, disruptive innovation is also possible.

However the roadmap for inductive thinking that will create value in novel and unforeseen ways in new contexts and settings is not clear.  Classical technology transfer models are too linear to translate into this milieu and are also too focussed on economic value creation at the expense of the other forms of value – social, cultural, creative, artistic and technological – that are so significant in the 21st century.

At the heart of this project is a continuation, development and extension of ongoing research on the use of complexity theory to provide an understanding of value creation in disruptive contexts because of its potential to: conceptualise across multiple, interlinked levels of analysis (ie non linear); relate initial conditions to indeterminate outcomes.  To explore the above, the project will take as its starting point the use of the iphone/smartphone as a tool for small businesses in the knowledge-intensive services sector, now that people are using mobile applications  for a wide range of tasks, from purchases, service access communication and information retrieval, bypassing traditional web access.

The Student

The project would suit a School of Management student with an MSc in a relevant qualitative discipline, or a mature student with industry experience.  In terms of future employability, the student would graduate with detailed knowledge and practical understandings that would support entry into the industry, or the development of their own business, trading consultancy skills either to companies or government agencies.

To apply for one of the above scholarships, please apply for a place on our PhD programme by following these instructions at: http://www.management.soton.ac.uk/StudyOpportunities/PhD Please email Phdteam@soton.ac.uk once you have applied stating your application number and which scholarship you are interested in.

All completed applications, which include all supporting documents and details of any funding already awarded, received by 31st July 2010 will be considered for the scholarships.  Students who already have significant sponsorship will not be awarded scholarships under this scheme.

I really enjoyed presenting at Ignite Liverpool on Thursday night – to me, this was a new format, presenting 20 slides in 5 minutes with an automatic slide change every 15 seconds.  It’s best described by WimpyKing.  I took the bullet and went first – hopefully getting over some of my passion about working with creative artists in the digital economy.  My presentation is below – I just used a few words and clipart to get the message over  quickly – or try to!