UK Sort of Innovates, Depending On How You Measure It

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:23:05 GMT

In the August 4 printed edition of The Economist, the magazine examined Innovation in Britain (The good, the bad and the ugly) and once again, looking through the lens of the industrial age, we read about policy makers driving toward goals better set for factories than for gatherers and disseminators of factoids. Innovation is measured incorrectly. Productivity is measured incorrectly. ETc.

If we live in a culture that says you can't improve it if you don't measure it, and we repeatedly discover that our latest discoveries create economic realties that can't be measured, we should put our money where our yardsticks used to be.

And even though education outcomes need new measurements too, basic facts about UK schools tell a poor story about potential, however it is measured. Perhaps as the British government measures industry it should turn that skewed lens around and look at how it measures its own innovations and determine how its own ingenuity measures up. And we should do the same on this side of the pond.

(for more on measurements see my earlier entry at the IIIP blog).

The Future of Information Work: Innovation

UK Sort of Innovates, Depending On How You Measure It