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

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!

I really enjoyed our School’s inaugural Interreg funded conference in Caen last week. About 50 people attended from all around the world, which is good start for our collaboration. I stayed on in Caen for an extra couple of days to develop new research proposals which look like going ahead. Exciting times ahead, as we look forward to next year’s conference, this timein Southampton on the theme of sustainability.

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.