Never in the field of human economics

UK GDP growth has slowed to the pace of South Eastern train passing through London Bridge, unemployment is proving to be stubborn, especially for young people, inflation appears to be uncontrollable by the cadre of venerable olds that run monetary policy and the pound is as popular as fart in a space suit.

All roads seem to be leading to some kind of stagnation, although politicians will use wording that won’t panic the masses of home owners for whom the margin between what their home is worth and what they owe on their mortgage continues to narrow.

There seems to be several solutions being peddled endlessly with out a taker. The Banks should lend more money to more people, everyone working within the banks ecosystem should not take bonuses and the Government should give up on their endless march to return the public sector to a size more aligned with the value it can really deliver. Each repeated with gusto daily in the press and broadcast media, none that can be seriously executed without seriously affecting another part of the economy.

Surely there hasn’t been a time for the need of some Herculean innovation since we were led by Winston Churchill into the field of human conflict.

So what would I do if sufficient people had failed to read their ballot papers and voted to me in charge? Well a part from taking a leaf our of Mr Berlusconi’s for being entertained by talented young meteorologists, incentivise innovation.

Details in my next blog.

Incremental not breakthrough

If you're truly innovative in what you offer, brilliant at what you do and good at communicating that, surely you won't have any competition.’ This approach is at the core of Seth Godin’s book the Purple Cow, and of course he is correct.

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with some stellar senior people about innovation projects my colleagues and I delivered in 2010. Rather proudly, half of the 10 initiatives were instigated or delivered by me (the relevance of that little nugget is purely for my ego and not the substance of the blog).

For me, I thought the value of our dialogue wasn’t in what we had delivered or even the ‘outcomes’ of delivering the initiatives. Although some are pretty sexy. No, the real value is in how the initiatives had been originated, implemented and overcome the challenges.

As I talked through initiatives that had cost from virtually nothing up to a million dollars, I reinforced that most projects were incremental to what we were already doing have therefore been more widely adopted, and those that were more disruptive, while attracting more interest, have not been adopted without on going intervention.

Sadly, what these global senior leaders, and I think most leaders in general, fail to appreciate is, incremental, all other things being equal, is more sustainable than breakthrough. And that most important. in achieving an incremental approach to innovation, organisations should enable everyone in the organisation to originate, implement and overcome challenges.

Innovation is not the exclusive domain of the guy in the corner with the iPad and job title, it should be in every colleague’s job description, annual objectives, scorecard or whatever format you use. Everyone should be charged with continually innovating, not to break through, but to incrementally improve our offer, deliver it better and communicate it more effectively.

Good schools, healthy bodies and now leaders in innovation.

It’s not often you see Government doing something that makes you think, wow, ‘I’d like a piece of that.’

I am continually in awe of what the social fabric Scandinavian countries have weaved for their citizens; mixed with a concern for how sustainable they can continue to be as globalisation increases.

In any case, these high taxation economies are renowned for their high standards of living, education and healthcare. And now, they are appearing to be streets ahead in innovation too.
Read this well written comment from Monday’s London Evening Standard and tell me you don’t wish the UK had a Nokia.

Oh, as someone that has been on the end of their ‘commercial’ policies, the dig at the Ordnance Survey made me smile too. http://tinyurl.com/6ck9jug

Who's that Brit?

Despite trips to the supermarket (due to Mrs’ Ryan’s aversion to shopping brought on by being the size of the Ocado mother ship), ferrying the youth to rugby/cinema and a 9 year old sleep over, I managed some quality time this weekend.

My favourite part of the whole lot was nearly 4 hours of unbroken Piers Morgan. Let me qualify that, I’m not his biggest fan; in fact he is clearly up himself. But let’s face it, we had seen the best of Larry King, and to see a fellow countryman taking on a US broadcast institution is a big deal. When interview no.3 (Condoleezza Rice) was asked if she knew who he was, could only manage “Of course, he’s a Brit.”

My suspicion this was a slur was confirmed when she went on to say “We all know the Brits can make the telephone directory sound intellectual when they read it.”

Putting that aside, the interviews with America’s largest media icons, Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern, were fantastic. Both difficult to interview for different reasons, both with their own constituencies these were difficult interviews. Taking them on first was with hindsight stroke of genius because he pulled it off, but had it gone the other way would have been foolhardy.

I wish the best of luck, and sincerely hoe he goes onto be an icon of the US media that rivals his first two interviews and the greatest talk show host of the all, his predecessor.