2 February 2012 | spiked

All this carbon-cutting is a waste of energy

Neither Boris Johnson nor Ken Livingstone is willing to deliver the uninterrupted, cheap energy London needs

29 January 2012 | Design Principles and Practices journal

The craze for design thinking

The historical and social reasons why hip designers talk of little else. Plus: elements of an alternative 127kB

| Design Management Journal

The Next Trend in Design

Given the alacrity with which design managers uphold and then forget about future trends, it's worth asking: Where do such trends really come from? How can we forecast the next one, and be sure that it won't simply be a transient fad? 106kB

25 January 2012 | Amadeus

Back on track

Europe's railways need to up their game in IT 1.2MB

17 January 2012 | spiked

Making a molehill out of a mountain

Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J Edgar Hoover is more about the man’s personal identity than his historical significance

29 December 2011 | Campaign, 16 September 1988

How design got High Streed cred

The British High Street began to swing in the 1960s. By 1988, the frothiest year of the Thatcher decade, it really hurtled

24 December 2011 | Blueprint, 1987

The apostle of Cool

Interview with Dieter Rams, the crusading German designer of Braun products and much besides

| Management Today, January 1989

Winter of the wastemakers

High-tech consumer durables have a reputation for falling apart. But planned obsolescence does not account for the problems of repair

7 December 2011 | spiked

The forgotten history of Pearl Harbor

Japan’s attack on the US 70 years ago was not a surprise, but rather the culmination of imperial rivalry

17 November 2011 | BBC Radio 3

Manias about change

Just because your email Inbox is brimming doesn't mean that the real pace of change is accelerating. Panel discussion

11 October 2011 | The Independent

The end is nigh: is survival all we can hope for?

In their policies for energy and for the economy, British politicians hold up continued existence as the maximum goal we should strive for

10 October 2011 | spiked

Is Britain drowning in too much packaging?

The wrapping that our food, mod-cons and medications come in is not 'evil' - it is a product of civilisation

7 September 2011 | Design Week, 20 April 1990

Straddling both art and design: an interview with Milton Glaser

Milt Glaser put Bob Dylan in silhouette on a memorable poster (1967), and designed the red-hearted I Love NY logo (1975). Now the subject of a Sky Arts documentary, I talked to him 20 years ago

30 August 2011 | spiked

Anna Hazare: apostle of political hygiene

Why India's middle-class warriors against corruption aren’t so heroic

28 April 2011 | Akzo book on colour, forthcoming

Cities and colour

How colour will likely change the urban landscape in future 135kB

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.