Hey mama, she said, I don’t understand
He won’t look my way, he won’t take my hand
I might as well live in another land
Oh mama, please help me, I need a plan

His mother looked up from her garden spot
You have to make use of the things you’ve got
Charm him with basil and bergamot
Invite him to dinner, but make it hot

Serve him pasta with pesto and a bottle of wine
Then add Tiramisu of the classical kind
Top it all with good coffee, the best you can find
I assure you my daughter: He’s yours in no time

Hey mama, she said, you were right again
Pasta with pesto surely beats champagne
If you’re looking for love or a sweet refrain
Serve him pesto with pasta and a bottle of wine

Pasta with Pesto recipe
How to Make Pesto like an Italian Grandmother Recipe

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What are the next challenges for innovation policy development?

I have had the pleasure of taking part in the annual meeting of Taftie , the Association for Technology Implementation in Europe. This is a club for industry oriented research councils and innovation policy agencies in (and beyond) Europe.

It was a very interesting conference program, and our Turkish hosts from TTGV did an excellent job. Still, I am not going to make an attempt to summarize the various interventions here.

I was asked to contribute to the session on global trends on innovation, skillfully led by technology policy veteran Juhani Kuusi. I presented what I believe to be some of the most important challenges for innovation policy development in the coming years:

1. A shift from a technology push perspective to a vision of learning. The linear model is dead, but it won’t lie down, and I am amazed to see how many policy initiatives are based on the notion that most ideas and technologies are born in universities.
2. A better understanding of innovation in resource based industries. There is nothing wrong with investing in high tech industries. Still, one should remember that “low tech” industries like agriculture, fisheries, wine production and oil and gas can be very profitable activities. Moreover, they are very knowledge intensive, even if the companies themselves do not invest much in R&D.

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You know I told you about music mashups, DJs mixing different songs into one coherent whole?

Well, one of the masters of the game, Britain’s Mark Vidler, is releasing his whole collection of “bastard pop” remixes making them available for download.

Mark is better known as the man behind Go Home Productions.

There are no less than 16 albums of mashups, remixes, rarities, MTV jingles and radio snippets, the mashup albums being in majority.

Some of the tracks are just brilliant, and I am amazed to see how he is able to make jointless seams between artists from totally different traditions. He can mix Eminem with Paul McCartney, 10cc with Marvin Gaye, Disney’s Pinnocchio with the Beatles, the Beastie Boys with Las Ketchup and ABBA with Echo and the Bunnymen.

All right, some of these tracks are mostly for fun, but most of them stand solidly on their own two tracks!

Moreover, I enjoy his ability to use material from the last four decades. This is like a revisit to my own record collection. Hm, I must be getting old…

Here is one of my favorites: A mix of Blondie and the Doors courtesy of Mark Vidler. The video — which is edited by a fan — features the Gorillaz, but that band has absolutely nothing to do with the soundtrack.

And here’s one mixing Disney’s I’ve Got No Strings (yepp, the one with Pinochio), Radiohead’s Creep and The Beatles’ Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, called — of course — Pinocchiohead On LSD.

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Nordic success may partly be caused by the autonomy and learning capabilities of the employees

In my post on the Norwegian Puzzle – i.e. the fact that Norway is one of the richest and most productive countries in the world in spite of seemingly low R&D investments — I pointed out that there may be socio-cultural explanations for the Norwegian ability to innovate and modernize.

However, I also noted that we have no statistics that can underpin such arguments.

It actually turns out that we have!

In a chapter in a forthcoming book from Edgar (Caraianniss, Kaloudis og Mariussen 2008) Åge Mariussen of NIFU STEP will present research based on the European Working Condition Survey.

In this survey approximately 1000 employed or self-employed in each country are asked about their work (27 countries all in all).

They are for instance asked about who determines the pace of work.

“At this point,” Åge points out, “most Nordics (73% in Denmark, 78% in Norway) say that some external actor, such as the customer, determines their deadlines, as opposed to 68% in the entire EU27. In a somewhat more restricted form of work organization, which may have similarities to a hierarchical organization, one would expect the boss (a superior) to be monitoring progress.”

The percentage of Europeans reporting that their boss is monitoring their progress (35.7% in EU27, 47% in UK) is indeed much higher than in the Nordic area. (Sweden, 16.4%, Finland 15.5%.)

Åge argues that autonomous actors more easily will learning new things and apply new ideas at work, thus making the organization more flexible and innovative:

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In spite of what many believe,there is actually much innovation going on in the public sector.

The public sector is often described as “bureaucratic” – in a negative sense, as a slow moving and rigid hierarchically organized system, as time-consuming, oversized and expensive. This may indeed be the case in some instances.

Still, from my own experience — working in and for the public sector — I have not found proof for the assumption that public sector organizations in general are less innovative than the ones found in the private sector.

Public organizations may be innovative learning organizations

Public organizations are learning organizations with their own share of entrepreneurs and with directives regarding the need for organizational change.

Many ministries, public agencies and public service institutions make use of technologies or services developed and delivered by private firms and organizations.

Public institutions also face technological challenges where the solutions cannot simply be bought off the shelf, and are thus involved in technological invention and development.

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Grandma grabbed his ears
And looked into his eyes
This is what she said to him

Your heart is your drum
And you’re life is your dance
This is your chance
Now, move it!

Circle the sun
Your heart is your drum

Now move it! Now move it!
Your heart is your drum
Now move it! Now move it!
Your life is your song
You’d better be ready
This is your chance
You’d better start moving
And dance

Your breath is your flute
And your life is your song
It’s time to be strong
Now, move it!

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DJs and producers are mixing different songs together into new works of art called mashups, blends or cutups. But what does this mean for the record industry and the idea of intellectual property rights?

The history of innovation clearly proves that new technologies can have very disruptive effects on social and economic systems. Just think about how the advent of aviation changed the world into a truly global arena — now for most of us.

Information technology is revolutionizing the way we think about music creation and distribution. The music industry is always ten steps behind the development, and seems totally incapable of understanding that the old world based on record sales and radio play only is gone for good.

Apple’s Steve Jobs forced them to accept online music downloads as the business model of the future, but this is only the beginning.

Many artists are now bypassing the record companies altogether, producing and distributing their music themselves. Many of them realize that the real money lies in concerts, given all the illegal downloading, and is giving away much of their music for free.

Merging songs

I have recently been studying a new trend that have reached the Web, that can be equally disrupting, namely music mashups.

Disk jockeys have for a long time remixed tracks in the discos and clubs, slightly altering the pitch and tempo to make one song glide seamlessly into the other etc. No record company has found this to be an infringement of their copyright.

Nor did they, as far as I know, protest when some DJs started to merge song, normally putting the vocal track of one song over the instrumentation and rhythm track of another.

However, they did wake up, when some of them recorded these “bastard pop” tracks and put them up online or on bootleg albums. And a large number of record company representatives are now hunting them down online, arguing (probably correctly) that this is a copyright infringement.

The fact is, however, that given the nature of the Web, it has proved impossible to stop these mixes for resurfacing. As soon as one source disappears, another one pops up.

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Clint Eastwood pulled the trigger, ahead
One more stupid bad boy dropped dead
Siddy dropped his popcorn and said
“I wonder what’s behind the silver screen”

The bandits turned their horses to fly
I turned to Sid and gave my reply
“It’s just a pair of speakers, now why
D’you wonder what’s behind the silver screen?”

He said:
“If we’re nothing but a beam of bright light
Moving on a sheet in the night
Caught between our fear and delight
I wonder what’s behind the silver screen”

He left his seat and jumped through the screen
Right between the good and the mean
Since then my friend has never been seen
I wonder what’s behind the silver screen

See also The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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Over at Pandia my wife and I try to keep track of the latest development in the social web scene.

One service we are particularly fond of is Fanpop. It is not as popular as MySpace and Facebook, and for a while we actually believed it would die from lack of oxygen.

Now, a year since we covered Fanpop the last time, it seems that it has reached the critical mass needed to deliver thriving online communities.

So, I spent some time yesterday catching up with the site, and Susanne helped me set up my first Fanpop spot.

A spot is a kind of mini web site or portal focusing on a particular topic.

You may include videos (often fetched from YouTube), add links to online resources, put up comments, start a discussion forum and add pictures. So it is both a directory containing relevant resources and an online community.

I found to my surprise that there was no spot for one of my favorite pop artists Kate Bush. She definitely deserves one, so Susanne and I found some illustrations, added some videos (including the brilliant Cloudbusting video with Donald Sutherland) and put up some links to Kate Bush sites.

If you are into her music, do take a look at the Kate Bush spot. And please add some comments! I gain “points” that way.

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We all have a tendency to think that there is something inevitable about great innovations, but the fact is that timing is extremely important. If you launch a new invention, product or idea before the time is ripe, society will ignore it.

There may be several reasons for this:

• The necessarily infrastructure may be missing (hydrogen cars without hydrogen stations)
• The ideological climate may not allow it (selling vodka in Saudi Arabia)
• The entrepreneur does not have the marketing competences needed (marketing a high quality mobile phone with an old fashioned design to the in-crowd)
• Lack of funding (do you know a good venture capitalist, and can you convince her?)
• Bad luck (didn’t meet the right person at the right time)
• etc.

The electric Th!nk car is an innovation that has failed repeatedly because of bad timing:

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