This session, chaired by Tom Loosemoore of Channel 4, discussed “Staying Ahead of the Game”.
Considering that this was so late in the day, there were quite a number of people at the session and none of the lacklustre questioning that you sometimes hear towards the end of conferences.
Birmingham’s creative industry was a key topic in the discussion, and it was acknowledged that it is a great asset to Birmingham. Issues that cropped up were around educating graduates so that they have the skills that employers want; monetising content so that people can make a living from what they produce; developing, attracting and retaining talent; and mapping Birmingham’s creative industry so that it is clearer to everybody how strong it is.
To round off the session a member of the audience representing BusinessLink broke the encouraging news that there is support and money for emerging businesses — so everyone over to BusinessLink!
Here is a very patchy live-blog of what happened:
Tom Loosemore, Channel 4, introducing the panel.
Mary Matthews, Loose Games;
Nick Appleyard, TSB (not the old bank);
Lucy Hooberman, now Digital Media and Innovations Laboratory, Warwick University;
Dan Licari, Digital Media Cluster Manager, AWM;
Pam Waddell, Science City.
Mary Matthews: DB report is a useful, big snapshot of where we are now and what we need to address. It’s useful because it can be presented to decision-makers. But not so strong around people issues: as a games company, our business model has come from developing intellectual property around low-risk areas. Need a mind change around attitude to risk. Cultural development, as well as skills development, needs to be thrown into mix.
As a nation, we are great at innovation but not so great at exploiting it. The main gap is around bringing hubs of minds together. The free exchange of ideas between experts in different areas.
Some truth in the allegation that the report is a vision without a strategy. Innovation around business models is important. And we need to make money: free-to-use content is great, but in terms of employment and security of future for people who want to contribute to a whole, we need business models that can afford to pay people to be involved.
Nick Appleyard: Endorses pretty much everything that Mary said. Government and public service procurement requirements will drive sector; DB report points the way for that to happen. New services, new ways of tackling issues, enabled by infrastructure.
TSB’s ‘test bed’ idea came about because people needed somewhere to try out new business models in a controlled environment so they can gain confidence.
Lucy Hooberman: ‘Innovation industry’ has phases of different models. Now we are moving into a phase where the best R&D creative people can do is collaborative, which will happen with people from around the world. People will contribute freely, and worry about monetisation later down the line. So open models are very productive, even though they are threatening to some established organisations. The time for experimentation is now. Test beds will be very useful.
Really welcomes report, good to see sector being brought together. The job of government is to make environment better for people to invest; it’s up to the rest of us to take advantage of those opportunities and come together.
Dan Licari: Minimising risk for investors in infrastructure is important, e.g. through co-investing. Graduates need to be up-to-speed with modern developments, so universities need to work with industry to ensure that universities are delivering the skills that industry wants.
Changing business models in an important area.
Pam Waddell: A lot said about collaboration and ‘mashing of minds’. Science City has been around since 2005, but has only become prominent recently. Now it’s making large investment. SC has a strong knowledge economy focus.
There is a huge scope for cross-cutting initiatives, e.g. using technology to address environmental issues.
We haven’t heard a great deal in this session about creating new markets, and SC is working to do this by combining the power of the markets with the power of the public purse. E.g. working with Birmingham City University and hopefully University of Birmingham to create a digital hospital. That can then be taken out to national and international markets.
Question about semantic technologies, and surprise that it hadn’t been mentioned yet.
Talk about semantic technologies, how to make the web more customisable and tailored to what people want. People are guarded about disclosing personal information but becoming less so — which is why they put all their personal information all over the web on the likes of Facebook.
People tend to volunteer personal information when they can see there’s a real benefit for them in doing so.
Question about brain drain — how do we attract and retain talent? The question of fostering and retaining talent is being discussed at length, and Birmingham’s thriving creative industry is acknowledged. Having creative hubs and support mechanisms makes for community enterprises with clear business opportunities.
Lucy Hooberman — Birmingham’s social media scene and creative industries need to be ‘visualised’ in some easy to understand way; in other words, they under sell themselves.
BusinessLink — there is funding there, so people should go and talk to them!
Tom Loosemoore closes the session and thanks the panel and audience.
