Innovation isn't just for inner city hipsters

 Great article in smh today - below article has been inspired by Tony Featherstone 

"Innovation is a lot more than inner-city hipsters who try to build the next great app while drinking soy lattes at trendy warehouses" writes Tony Featherstone 

 Many Regional Australian towns are in distress - and there is an urgent need to develop new industries or invigorate old ones as the new economy unfolds.

Their needs to be an innovation focus on regional entrepreneurship, local government collaboration and small business, and Turnbulls appointment of the new Federal Minister for Small Business, Michael McCormack is genius ! 

A Small Business Minister with country connections! My view is that he should also take on the portfolio of innovation, AusTrade and AusIndustry  - they all go hand in hand! 

 The Innovation agenda should be used as a tool to address today's problems: 

- job losses in manufacturing and mining,

 - high youth unemployment 

and 

- stagnating regional economies, for example.

Innovation is a process to bring groups together, encourage collaboration and creativity, and link emerging enterprises with established industries.

Let's balance the capital-city version of innovation with policy that: 

• Helps develop vibrant regional entrepreneurship ecosystems that create thriving clusters of new and established business activity in country areas
   
• Presents innovation as a process to help regional economies transition from the decline in manufacturing and other traditional industries, to higher-growth sectors
   
• Creates the option of self-employment for young people in regional areas who cannot find full-time work
   
• Reverses the brain drain as bright young 20-somethings are forced to move to capital cities to start ventures or work for others
   
• Makes regional areas great places to live AND work, creating social inclusion for young people and more harmonious communities
   
• Has real benefits for capital cities. Creating vibrant regional innovation hubs could encourage urban entrepreneurs to move to areas that are close to capital cities. That would help de-centralise population growth away from capital cities, as regional businesses grow and create jobs
   
• Helps develop a stronger national entrepreneurship ecosystem by giving start-ups that are struggling with scarce resources greater options to work in lower-cost regional areas.

How can we do this using existing infrastructure?

We should take a leaf out of the massively successful Uber - ( listened to a great talk at an Amcham lunch yesterday) (thanks Niels) .

How can we utilise existing assets and existing infrastructure to ignite innovation in regional Australia? 

Australia has already built a massive infrastructure built around Councils.

How can Councils spark the drive for communities to build on their strengths (which is invariably there people) and actively support innovation and entrepreneurship 

Councils in Ipswich, the Sunshine Coast, the northern suburbs of Adelaide and north Queensland, to name a few, understand innovation's potential to invigorate their economies and have done some cool things , such as 

- implementing smart-city technologies, planning and processes; 

- launching co-working spaces for start-ups; and 

- creating entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Other councils should follow their lead and federal and state governments can help by framing a co-ordinated agenda – and funding – for regional innovation and entrepreneurship.

Imagine 

 Imagine having a goal for your local  town to be an  innovation hotspot  that is linked to your capital-city entrepreneurship ecosystem and university, rage or learning institution!

- Imagine if your local town had a simple, low-cost co-working spaces for start-up ventures - supported by mentors, existing businesses and greys, aligning them with educational institutions and VET providers - 

(How many government owned buildings/ spaces  are unlet or underutilised? The infrastructure is there !!)

- Imagine if your local Council had a  Crowdfunding Council platform where residents fund local ventures with funding to start-ups in their area and perhaps take equity in some. 

- Imagine if those loans would be Government Gauranteed  if it  was supported by an accreditted mentor. (they do this in USA.)

The real opportunity is linking bright young regional start-ups with established businesses

How can councils create collisions of innovation between the new and old that drive entrepreneurship?

There's never been a better time. 

A focus on a co-ordinated regional innovation is good policy AND politics.

Car sharing with city parking

How car-sharing is already helping cities with their transit issues

July 19

 

WASHINGTON

There's a promising fix for any city with transportation issues -- and car ownership has nothing to do with it.

A new study found that cities that turn to a flexible type of car-sharing stand to benefit from less pollution, less traffic and more parking.

Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley's Transportation Sustainability Research Center focused on the impact of car2go, which is different from car services like Zipcar and GM's (GM) Maven. With car2go, drivers paying a one-time $35 membership fee and can rent a vehicle parked on a nearby public street and leave it elsewhere in the city. There's no need to reserve a vehicle ahead of time, or return it to a designated parking lot. Car2go strikes deals with local governments so that its cars can be parked in public spots.

A call for retraining

new technology and robotics is not a death knell for workers but it is a clarion call for re-training and continuing education. Innovation creates efficiency and new products/services and concomitant new work. There will always be a cohort that has trouble making the transition and we need safety nets for that.

 

Vint Cerf

Doing vs Being

This conversation of Automation - and the worry that innovation and automation is detrimental to the human race does not sit well with me! Something needs to change!!!

is it bad to automate processes that could potentially replace millions of jobs as we know it? Is it bad to reward people in a different way? 

Doing vs being

We are not human doings , we are human beings!

If robots AI and technology are taking jobs, because they can do things faster - this can only be a good thing - it gives the humans more time to be.

Being shouldn't be about randomly doing for wage. It should be about doing to add value to your fellow human being and your environment.

Human beings ( and indeed many other species) have thrived over the centuries and millennia by being in tribes ( or communities) , and creating structure, usually being governed by a strong leader. 

The tribe has developed by working as a team - with the leader allocating functions for survival and growth. 

The way this has been done in the last Millenia is through Economics. 

A system of exchange, giving the human a reward for doing (providing a service or a product ) , so they can be, using "fun vouchers" (money) as a common currency.

As humans have evolved and innovated, they have developed tools, that can do the doing, so they can get more fun vouchers, so they can do more being.

So, if a tribes doing has been automated, enabling their tribe to do more being, giving them  more fun vouchers, enabling them to be rather than do - how can this be a bad thing? 

Humans need a sense of usefulness that has in the last few hundred years been supplied by jobs - but why does adding value and feeling useful have to be related to earning fun vouchers ? 

It's all about lifelong learning

From the legendary Heather Macgowan

The end state of being “educated” is no longer enough. The future of work is learning agility, learning must be part of work

The future is arriving

From 14j contributor Herman Gyr:-

I just returned from Switzerland where I got to be part of history --- very much related to this thread's topics. The Swiss Postal Service's PostAuto inaugurated the world's first autonomous public transportation service in the city of Sion, Switzerland. It was a great honor and treat for me to be invited to this special event, and to get to ride this remarkable vehicle. This project represents the culmination of great vision, committed leadership and extraordinary collaboration among a wide range of interests and capabilities (the Post, the City of Sion, EPFL, politicians, regulators, start-ups). Truly inspiring! Check out the video: https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/wirtschaft---boerse/2016/6/23/in-sitten-rollen-ab-sofort-autonome-busse-durch-di.html Yep, that's me sitting on the thing at 0:10 to 0:16. 

As part of a strategic blueprinting session in 2013 with PostAuto (the largest bus service in Switzerland) I had offered the following provocative mock-up to stimulate considerations about potential participation in the autonomous mobility space. They decided to go for it, and came up with what's shown on bottom. It's coming fast now --- in fact, it's already here!

Tune in:- Conversation on Automation

Whitehouse Simine Leiro is speaking to i4j member Robin Chase on Automation and is calling for questions to be answered 

Summary: 

Wondering how driverless cars or chatbot lawyers will change the ways we work and live? Join us for a LIVE White House Conversation on automation.

You’ve seen photos of self-driving cars zooming down California highways and read about lawyers that are actually chatbots. These are some of our first encounters with automation and artificial intelligence (AI). And if you’re wondering how these types of technology will change the ways we work and live, you’re not alone.

There's no shortage of predictions. Depending on who's talking, it will be the source of tremendous opportunity or a challenge to even our most basic institutions. In any event, it's no longer just the stuff of science fiction. Our growing reliance on automation implies some big public policy questions. Some that we're already grappling with, and others we'll need to tackle in the coming years.

On Tuesday, July 5, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough will host a conversation with Robin Chase, transportation entrepreneur and author, and Martin Ford, author and futurist, to help shed some light on these issues. They’ll discuss and debate the nuanced aspects of automation, from what it means for jobs to laws to how we spend our days.

In addition to the White House Facebook page, you can watch this conversation LIVE on Business Insider’s and Futurism’s pages, on Tuesday at 1:15PM EDT. You can also get ready for the conversation by checking out more information about automation from Futurism. 

Have a question about automation that you’d like to hear in the conversation? You can join the discussion by submitting your question below.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT AUTOMATION? *

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Simone Leiro

Assistant Director for Online Engagement