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Friday, March 7, 2008

Perspective # 13 - God is in ‘structures’ – part two

God is in ‘structures’ – part two : In an earlier post I wrote - god is in structures, which was in the corporate context. From the innovation perspective, the ‘structures’ element is pertinent for cities and nations as well.

Many cities go to great extent to create ‘structurual glues’ that stoke innovation. Silicon valley is a great example. Milan ‘competes’ with other cities to retain the fashion capital of the world tag by investing in events like Milan Fashion Week where creations of Italian designers like Giorgio Armani, Versace, and Dolce & Gabbana inspire budding designers.

Barcelona is another great example. I recently visited Barcelona Activa incubation centre. They work with the society, government and even pubs to create a hotbed to attract global ‘design talent’ . Prof Pedro Parada from ESADE business school,Barcelona calls it the ‘social fabric’. At the incubation centre I met bmat who create algorithms for music, their software can distinguish and play as per your mood - happy, party, furious, sad etc. You can choose 'upbeat' songs that will cheer up your mood! To create hot software like these one needs software engineers who love music and not the rote coders, and the Barcelona ‘social fabric’ is what attracts them. Another company at the incubation centre gigle is close to developing a system-on-chip integrated circuit for multimedia home networking using any of the existing wires in the home – the power lines, coaxial cables or phone lines!! These are software heavy firms who decided to incubate in Barcelona as the ‘social structures’ of the city helps them innovate faster.

Imagine America without Bankruptcy law ! and the impact on the nations innovation..

On a lighter vein ☺ structures are crazy some times. In Amsterdam coffee shops marijuana is allowed (The reported number of deaths linked to the use of drugs in the Netherlands, as a proportion of the entire population, is lower than the EU average), recently they banned tobacco though ☺☺ Some of the feedback reported in Guardian is hilarious “It's absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they'll look to see if you've got cigarette in your marijuana. It is like saying you can buy a beer, but you can't drink it there - you'll have to stick to whisky, rum and vodka” Yes – structures are sometimes crazy but don’t discount them w.r.t innovative behavior.