Grass Roots Innovation in Northern England

Over the holidays, I stumbled upon this amazing speech by John Thackara, the author of In the Bubble; Designing in a Complex World.

John spoke at a Competitiveness Summit held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London on December 7th, 2006.

John Thackara addressed the question:

"How best shall we use our creativity and innovation to stay ahead in the game?"

And, in answering this question, John described an unusual grass roots project, called DOTT, for "Designs of the Time" taking place in North East England, with the motto:

"Who Designs Your Life?"

(See DOTT 2007)

In his speech John Thackara described DOTT:

"Dott is an initiative of the Design Council and a joint venture with the Regional Development Agency, One North East,

Next year, throughout the North East of England, different communities have been challenged to address the question, “how do we want to live?”

Grass roots communities are taking the lead in experiments to change the ways they deal with daily-life issues.

These issues range from energy use in the home; to how we move around; how we look after older people; how we can grow food in cities.

One Dott project is called LOW CARB LANE.

More and more of us would like to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, especially at home. To save money, if not to save the planet...

Another Dott project, called Move Me!, tackles the need for  mobility and access in a rural community.

The question posed by Move Me! is this: How can we improve peoples mobility, and access to services, without adding more cars or building new roads?..."

John goes on to describe several projects that are underway in communities and in schools to envision a different future and to design new approaches to achieving these citizens' visions.

This DOTT project in reminds me of the grass roots integrated development that has been going on in the Kibaale District in Uganda at the Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme. There villagers have determined what kinds of lives they'd like to be living. They have created both individual and common visions, and been empowered through education and training in the creative process and in visionary leadership, to create new approaches to improve conditions in their homes and villages. These include organic farming, solar energy, biogas production, and the use of appropriate technologies, such as the Internet and computers.

Moving from Productivity to Innovation

In describing the fact that we're playing the "wrong game," John says:

What’s especially mad about productivity, as a measure of success, is that so-called “external” costs – energy, water, minerals, the biosphere as a whole - are not properly counted as part of the game.

The theory of productivity is that we produce more with less.

But we don’t. We use energy to exploit resources; and we don’t pay the full price of the energy or the resources we use to do so.

Excluding external costs from the score sheet means we completely ignore the impact of our game on the playing surface. And guess what. The playing surface has become worn. And the ball has started to bounce in alarming ways."

It's a great speech, and addresses the complex issues of global competiveness, how to increase productivity, and how to "Re-Design the Game" of global competitiveness.