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

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11 November 2009 | spiked

Still no clear policy on nuclear energy

New Labour’s commitment to nuclear is half-hearted at best, and goes hand in hand with more policing of our energy use

4 November 2009 | Special to Woudhuysen.com

Innovation: 10 case studies

Paper to the conference Insight Shanghai on how to translate social trends into new products – new technologies and emerging patterns of use 108kB

3 November 2009 | Design Week, 3 November 1989

Hess is more

Interview at the Connecticut home of the late Dick Hess, co-inventor of Paint By Numbers and one of the 20th century's greatest illustrators and graphic designers 52kB

31 October 2009 | spiked review of books

State intervention is no substitute for innovation

Should governments in Britain intervene in the economy to ensure that the nation’s industrial base is preserved?

22 September 2009 | Design Week, 22 September 1989

Bass profundo

Saul Bass (1920 –1996) was one of America's very top post-war graphic designers. Seven years before he died, I talked to him in his studio on Sunste Boulevard

16 September 2009 | Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council

Challenge of the crisis

In terms of the workforce skills it develops, how should a region of South Africa like the Eastern Cape respond to the credit crunch? 6MB

19 August 2009 | spiked

New Labour’s power vacuum

The UK government’s obsession with energy self-sufficiency and renewables looks set to lead to blackouts in the next few years

21 July 2009 | spiked

Who’s afraid of electric vehicles?

The fact that Greens oppose even eco-friendly electric cars shows that what they really dislike is travel itself

7 July 2009 | spiked

The green man’s burden

Why is Greenpeace calling on the UK to set an example to nations like China, when the Chinese are cleaning up faster than us?

2 July 2009 | Facilities Management World

What movies tell us about the workplace

The history of the cinema reveals much about how people have interpreted the world of work

29 June 2009 | spiked

Let’s go back to the Moon – and beyond

As the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing approaches, backward attitudes here on Earth have tainted our view of lunar exploration

28 June 2009 | Management Today, July 1989

One small step

It took the Apollo mission for man to come to terms with the mechanics of himself and of the man machine interface. Today, space has other lessons to offer, but it remains instructive to designers on Earth 32kB

26 June 2009 | spiked review of books

Gladwell: hero or zero?

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest bestseller, Outliers, has its moments. In the end, however, its treatment of why individuals and groups ‘make it’ in the worlds of work and education operates as an up-market compilation of liberal prejudices

June 2009 | Special to Woudhuysen.com

Paying in cash: more than the strange pastime of a few

Contactless debit cards, the decline of cheques and the rise, in Korea, of payments made by mobile phones: all raise the spectre of a cashless Britain. But that will never happen 164kB

15 June 2009 | spiked

Risk-taking, R&D and the recession

The woeful level of Western investment in R&D reveals much about the capitalists’ state of mind

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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