Where does the frontline of systemic innovation lie?

If you limit your company to highbrow academics, techies fed and bred in the Silicon Valley, enlightened policy-makers and civil society leaders the future looks shiny.

This is how I spent last week discussing the innovation society ideology, innovation cascading phenomenon and how we can devise multi-stakeholder solutions to steer innovation towards a socially sustainanable future – the title of the seminar organised within the European coordination action INSITE at the European Centre of Living Technologies, University of Venice Ca’ Foscari.

Brilliant company but leaving Venice a question comes to my mind: Does the outside world share the same view?

Actually, already a conversation with the economist Andrea Ginzburg I had over Friday breakfast raised a fundamental issue: implementation. Andrea made me notice how I give priority to results and not enough to process. A gentle way to say I’m ready to leave democratic processes aside to make sure that the right solutions are taken and implemented.

I strongly believe the debate has to be centred not on democracy but the complexity of our globalizing society that requires highly-trained and responsible people. Perhaps the real challenge for the democrats is how to train people to understand complexity and fully take part in designing and implementing solutions. This is 21st century democracy to me.

I got further confirmation spending the WE in Milan. Surprise, surprise I went clubbing. I had to change crowd to refresh my mind.

I went out to have fun but got bored finding myself in a crowd of zombies. I was shocked by the quantity of alcohol and drugs people consume over the WE. I mean adults in their ’30s and ’40s from all class background, not spoiled kids. 

I’ve never pretended to be a moralist but our society faces a moral dilemma. We bestow rights and responsibility equally on every citizens but a more or less large number of them don’t give a damn. On the contrary, their irresponsible behaviour increases social costs – eg health, unemployment, security – feeds illegal activities – drugs cartels – and ultimately will weigh over the people who work hard to improve their own lives and society. This is neither fair nor sustainable.

What does our debate on innovation have to say about this challenge? We will have to persuade people into changing their behaviour or force them. Otherwise, irresponsible citizens will kill our democracy. We know the history of innovation in the past century.