A polemical approach: James in former times
Polemics and disagreements are nowadays felt to be disagreeable. But they can clarify ideas, and bring light as much as heat
PICTURE CREDIT: Lewis Woudhuysen

Latest activity 

18 August 2008 | Design magazine, May 1980

Message from a grand old man

Interview with the late Raymond Loewy, the man who invented industrial design

17 August 2008 | Design magazine, July 1982

Interim report

Interview with the late Herman Kahn, the man who pretty much invented forecasting

17 July 2008 | Battle of Ideas

China... pollution solution?

How China's economic growth can help the world's environment

16 July 2008 | Radio 4

Nothing Romantic about environmentalists

The great nineteenth-century English poets waxed lyrical about nature, but they still believed in humanity - unlike today’s eco-pessimists

15 July 2008 | Forecasts proved right

Freddie Mac – when are you coming back?

What my book Why is construction so backward?, written with Ian Abley, said four years ago about today's financial crisis in the US

14 July 2008 | Times Online

Eco-imperialism is alive and well in the West

The West's pleading with China to cut carbon emissions bursts with ulterior motives

11 July 2008 | IT Week

Will insight lose out to inanity on the mobile web?

Mobile web’s business potential may be undermined by its more frivolous aspects

7 July 2008 | SAB Miller Globalisation Debates

Are global consumer brands a force for good?

Panel speeches and discussion at the Royal Society of Arts, with SAB Miller, Interbrand, Coca-Cola and brand guru Stan Slap

30 May 2008 | IT Week

Innovators must follow Frank's example

Sinatra’s My Way might be a hammy song, but it’s the right policy in R&D

28 April 2008 | IT Week

Experience trumps youthful exuberance

Firms must resist calls to indulge the techno-whims of the MySpace generation

31 March 2008 | Battle of Ideas

The ‘Regeneration Games’, London, 2012

Don’t let the 2012 Olympics become another Dome or T5!

28 March 2008 | IT Week

Race to be green saps creative energy

The energy conservation fad is symptomatic of IT leaders’ narrowing ambition

9 January 2008 | Radio 4

Reality Check on housing and the Land Question

The UK government plans millions of new homes. James comes face to face with a developer, the Sustainable Development Commission, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and a woman who is desperate to buy her own home

1 January 2008 | The Register

The Electric Car Conspiracy... that never was

What a hit movie really tells us about innovation

| Design Council

Mission creep; the limits of design

Transcript of speech at the Intersections conference on design, Newcastle, 25 October 2007

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Taking issue 
  The initiative for Innovation has passed from West to East. Obviously the West still brings out innovations; but the fear of the new is much greater in Europe and the USA than it is in Asia. The West would rather innovate in the realm of Brands, Design and Play than in the realms of Work, Construction or the Public Sector