Innovation Culture - an Answer for Resource Constraints

Michael Robertson. Urban Ecology Australia. 2006.6

Introduction

Energy, water, land, minerals, and other material resources are becoming more expensive or less available due to increasing competition plus environmental concerns.

In order to meet stringent restrictions on material resource consumption and still have economic growth we need to:

This in turn will require developing a society-wide culture of innovation.

Apply existing solutions more rigorously

There is much that we can do now to reduce demands on energy, water and land. But that we aren't doing, not because the solutions are prohibitively expensive, but because applying them requires thinking in new ways, and modifying practices to accomodate them.

Example: the use of eaves, insulation, ventilation, well-placed windows, thermal mass, double-glazing, and outdoor vegetation to control the temperature inside buildings by means of ambient environmental conditions rather than imported energy. Solutions employed at Christie Walk and in some other housing developments and individual buildings, but not yet applied across the board.

What stops architects, developers and building companies from applying these solutions in all new buildings or building upgrades? Often because of cultural inertia within these organisations - inhibitions about discussing such alternatives and putting them into proposals.

One way of motivating support for a more innovative culture within organisations through imposition of tougher performance standards. If existing designs and practices will soon no longer be acceptable, an organisation will become more receptive to new ideas with the prospect of keeping the organisation in business.

Develop new solutions using established technologies

Established technologies can be applied or combined in innovative ways that exploit potential synergies. Often new solutions arise when existing solutions are applied in a new context, with appropriate adjustments.

Example: Bus boarding tubes in Curitiba Brazil. Here the system used for underground metros in many cities - buy your ticket, use it to get onto the platform, then when the train comes, step directly from the platform onto the train through an open doorway - was applied to buses.

An enclosed platform on street level is accessed through a turnstyle activated by the bus ticket; when the bus arrives, doors on both platform and bus are aligned, so that passengers step straight through with no change in level. This allows for rapid boarding; the bus does not have to wait for passengers to funnel through the ticket checking point.

A similiar solution for peak-hour city buses in Adelaide would do much to ease bus congestion and the need for sprawling bus stops (multiple bus zones). But getting it up will require a greater intolerance of the problem and hunger for a solution - important prerequisites for innovation in many societies.

Develop new solutions using emerging technologies

As new technologies become available, they open up potential for a range of new solutions, some of which have been thought of already but not taken up because of existing technology contraints; many yet to be thought of.

One problem besetting sprawling, low-density cities such as Adelaide is how to shorten the travelling distance between home and workplace. One solution is telecommuting, where office workers link into their office via the internet from a remote computer, either at home or in a local, neighborhood "telecommuting centre".

Telecommuting means less opportunity for casual, face-to-face contact between colleagues than would occur if they were colocated in a central office. This disadvantage can be offset by new software packages that facilitate interpersonal contact online, that better document ideas and information for posting on websites, and that allow colleagues to make better use of the times they do meet face-to-face.

Such software will not be developed unless people see a need for it. (Luckily such solutions are being developed, because many large corporations are widely geographically distributed, and because they facilitates communication and hence productivity in offices where colleagues are colocated.)

It will also be fostered by people willing to embrace new technology for its own sake - to try out new solutions just to see what they are like, to tolerate glitches and to throw themselves at steep learning curves.

Anticipating needs and embracing new technologies are hallmarks of innovation cultures.

Develop new technologies to bring new solutions within reach

The sciences of bio-technology and nano-technology are opening up new ways of handling materials and organisating industrial processes. Industrial process can be implemented on a smaller scale but with greater complexity, facilitating the use of by products from one process as the feedstock for another process. New processes are being developed using micro-organisms, and self-replicating "nano-machines" that can occur under ambient pressures and temperatures (thus requiring less energy and water). The new technologies are allowing researchers to replicate solutions already developed by nature (biomimicy), solutions using small-scale mechanisms within complex systems (because developed by nature within living organisms).

Developing and applying new technologies will require concerted research effort and imaginative thinking, as well as a greater respect for nature and desire to imitate it.

Increasing the intensity of technology development and application will require greater investment of funds into innovative projects.

It will also benefit from a greater willingness on the part of talented young people to enter the field. Fostering such interest involves more than just the lure of bigger salaries. It involves building a culture of innovation - interest and excitement at the prospects opened up by new technologies - in society at large, not just among scientists.

Conclusion - The Need for an Innovation Culture

The era of economic growth based on expanding resource consumption is over. From now on economic growth must come from opening up new kinds of resource - the cleverness and imagination of people, and the yet to be exhausted potential for new technological discoveries.

But bringing such resources online will be hampered by a culture which spurns innovative uses of existing technologies, and refuses to recognise significant problems and demand solutions for them now.

Not to mention a culture that devalues cleverness among young people, and dismisses calls for less resource consumption and greater respect for nature as environmental extremism. (Such culture is fast becoming obsolete, at least in Australia, but still lingers in some quarters.)

Proponents of economic growth, and strong participation by Australia in the emerging global economy, are advised to don T-shirts sporting the following slogan: Nerds and greenies rule. OK?

2006.6.30