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 on a Saturday morning in his studio on Sunset 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

27 May 2009 | spiked

An R&D recession

Today’s economic crisis springs from years and years of under-investment in research and development

19 May 2009 | Building Sustainable Design

Interview on climate change and real responsibility

Public guilt about climate change is a waste of energy

The West finds cutting back hard, but it finds growth even harder. British officials in particular have largely lost the idea that fundamental, long-term research, as well as technological innovation, can create whole new industries and millions of jobs. There's plenty of rhetoric about innovation, but most of the excitement surrounds cutting back again - reducing Energy usage, waste and costs generally. For all the talk, too, of innovatory 'business models', or new ways of taking money off customers, a prominent and very familiar business model today is... cutting back budgets for research and development.

We need a new spirit of critical enquiry - in science, and also when innovation is rhapsodised about, but not tenaciously pursued. We need to think big, take risks, build more prototypes and learn from their failures, and have faith that human ingenuity can triumph over seemingly impossible obstacles.

It's time to get serious about innovation.