* Everyone involved in innovation needs to help focus innovators onto issues of strategic importance rather than allowing them simply to pick off quick-wins (item 1 below).
* However much we identify and develop new opportunities for innovation, we need people whose role is to get them into widespread use (Item 2).
* Accelerators are using all sorts of ways to support innovators (Item 3); and they are getting more choosy about who they accept and what kinds of opportunities they will support (Item 4 below).
* And if there are many aspiring entrepreneurs who do not get accepted for an Accelerator, here is a FREE website that can do a lot to help them develop their idea (Item 5).
Applied Creativity
Briefings from
John Whatmore at
The Centre for Leadership in Creativity
July 2013
Join the discussions at https://johnwhatmore.com/
* * *
Focusing Intensive Development programmes onto issues of strategic importance
In selecting candidates largely on the basis of their ideas for generating a new business, Accelerators have focused more on quick-wins than on major social, economic or cultural issues. How could aspiring entrepreneurs be encouraged to work with issues of major strategic importance? What can we learn from EPSRC’s week-long ‘Sandpits’, Watershed, Bristol’s Sandboxes, Tom Inns work with AHRC, IBM’s UK Laboratories and Future Centers work? (http://wp.me/p3beJt-5A)
Innovation in the UK badly needs ‘pull’ as well as ‘push’
Innovation in the UK has suffered a short-term decline in expenditure. In continuing to attach high priority to innovation CEOs have evidently been distracted by the need for fire-fighting. While Nesta and the TSB seek to chart the paths forward for innovation, CEOs need to provide support, as does the Association of Managers of Innovation in the US in its own valuable way, for the embattled members of their staff whose job it is to build innovation into their organisations. (http://wp.me/p3beJt-5x)
We are planning to run one or more seminars in the Autumn for CEOs and Heads of Innovation – people whose role is to deliver innovation
Curating support for inventers, innovators and creatives
Leaders of Incubators, Accelerators and Science Parks provide opportunities for their participants to learn from others – other innovators, creatives and mentors, as well as to reflect on their learnings. What makes for a good cocktail of support?
Accelerators getting more choosy and more targeted
Accelerators attract quantities of applicants, a number of whom have ideas for new businesses that are very evidently non-starters, some even barmy; many have ideas of limited scope, some of whom present poorly. A few have an immediate appeal as really disruptive, or as having an innovative approach to a big issue, though not necessarily demonstrating outstanding entrepreneurial qualities. How are selection processes trying to deal with these issues?
A website for aspiring entrepreneurs – who have no money!
A website is developing fast that can help the many thousands of people in the UK who want to start their own business. It offers some of the guidance that incubators and accelerators provide,
and it does so free of charge. It uses a collection of information to provide an assessment of the maturity of the enterprise – as a venture, and to help raise that profile. It will become increasingly widely useful. (http://wp.me/p3beJt-5D)
The Centre for Leadership in Creativity (a ‘virus for creativity’) carries out research and provides con-
sultancy and peer-to-peer learning for organisations looking to enhance their creativity and innovation.
Copyright John Whatmore 2013
The Centre for Leadership in Creativity 138 Iffley Road,London W6 OPE
Tel: 020 8748 2553 E-mail: john.whatmore@btinternet.com
Applied Creativity 
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