Is Innovation overrated and what is the role of design here?

Design Culture Salon 12

Government think-tanks, policy wonks, business gurus, management book publishers and lots and lots of design commentators stress a need for innovation in order to ‘compete globally in these turbulent times’. Alternatively, innovation also gets tacked onto thinking about how new social arrangements, welfare services or participatory processes can unfold. But has innovation become an unthinking default position? Is this verve to aim for invention actually missing important challenges like implementation, poor leadership or infrastructure? What is the role of the State in promoting particular versions of innovation? Can designers provide a critical space where something else might happen? This Salon investigates how a certain cultural understanding of innovation has emerged, what it is doing and how alternatives might be forged.

Panel:

Jamie Brassett, Subject Leader & MA Course Leader, Innovation Management, Central Saint Martins, London.
Duncan Fairfax, Lecturer in Design, Programme Leader MA in Design & Environment, Goldsmiths, London.
Lucy Kimbell, Principal Research Fellow University of Brighton and Associate Fellow, Said Business School.

This event is free, but booking is essential.