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!

Here’s a couple of snippets from interviews taken on the night  John Bessant and Gerry George

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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I’ve spent the last 3 years as Director of PG Studies in the School of Management, which has kept me pretty busy given the range of programmes that I oversee as far as educational developments are concerned. As my tenure for this role is now coming to an end, it’s time to look ahead to a new focus. To that end, I’ve been working with colleagues to develop a Research Centre for Strategic Innovation. It’s early days yet, and we launch formally on the 10 November – the publicity for that will be on the website soon. Very excited about generating energy for my field and developing some of the great connections I’ve made across the university since 2004.

Southampton School of Management has an EU-funded collaboration with Normandie Business School which has campuses in Caen, Deauville and Le Havre. This week I made my first visit, taking in the campuses at Caen and Le Havre (Deauville wasn’t accessible because of the G8 summit). I met some great new colleagues and developed some research connections in creative industries/digital media. Notable sights were the Chateau Breuil which we visited one evening and the Honfleur bridge on the road between Caen and Le Havre. Looking forward to future developments as there are some fantastic connection to develop in the maritime industries, given the different histories in our two different locations.

We held the second talk of this series in the School of Management today. A great talk from Scott Shane on University Spin-Offs and Wealth Creation. This guy really knows his stuff!

Visited Barcelona this week to take part in the Creative Regions in Europe conference. Good to meet old colleagues and new friends, hear critique of Creative Cities concept, but plenty of successes too. The slides are below.

I had an excellent trip to London this week to what might seem like two quite disparate events. Firstly, a workshop/forum organised by the Maritime Innovation Leadership Council held at the Institute for Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. Secondly, to hear one of my research collaborators, Professor Sally Jane Norman give a lecture on the sense of place in theatre to Sussex alumni at the Royal Society for the Arts. This lecture was of course re;ated to her new post as Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on the Falmer campus. Connection between the two? Well the MILC initiative is clearly aimed at developing economic business benefits from (in part) better understanding of the supply chain (or wider, value networks) in the complex maritime ecosystem in the UK – sound plan for UK plc. Place and theatre? The sense of seeing things differently, making new connections — the very stuff of disruptive innovation and the re-shaping of entrepreneurial landscapes. The sense of wonder that arises from that wider sense of potential disjuncture is the very lifeblood of innovation, stimulating, thinkers, inventors, engineers and designers to create radically new pmaterials, systems, services. I saw it with great clarity. A good day.

Another excellent event I enjoyed very much earlier this month was a workshop at King’s College, London, at the Centre for e-Research, Digital Humanities Collective Intelligence: a workshop to foster international cooperation, chaired by Stuart Dunn. good to meet new friends and old looking to secure greater connection across Europe for the Digital Humanities.

I had a great time earlier this month thanks to the hospitality of Tony Emmerson, Head of Science at the English College in Prague . i gave a talk on Science Entrepreneurship to a group of around 20 students studying for their Baccalaureat. I really enjoyed the questions at the end – very bright, polite students who were a credit to the College and to Tony. All in all, a great stay, and I was introduced to some great pubs and the famous Reduta jazz club too where Bill Clinton and Vaclav Havel famously bonded over saxophone playing. Thanks again Tony.