Volume5 Issue3_Larger_2019_Finalised

Creativity
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most abject forms of poverty (i.e. people
living on under £2 a day) are diminishing,
a number of other societal problems have
proven more resistant to innovative
solutions.
Inequality is today increasing rather than
decreasing. Food insecurity is also
increasing, even in rich countries like the
UK. Issues such as populism, fake news,
and a diminished trust in institutions have
not found the app to solve them – and
many apps seem to actively make them
worse. Despite everything, and despite
the fact that we globally spend an
astonishing £2.5 trillion on innovation
every year (at a minimum, and the actual
expenditure might be as high as twice
that), this year alone more than 700,000
children will die of eminently curable
diarrhoea.
Why this imbalance? Simply put, the
notion of innovation has not been
adequately challenged in contemporary
society. It has been presented as an
absolute good, always making more toys
for the boys, rather than a system that is
prone to biases. Innovation, and the
armies of consultants and pundits that
peddle in it, has become self­obsessed, all
macho swagger and talk of AIs. All this
has led to insufficient analyses of core
questions regarding innovation, including
but not limited to: Who is seen as an
innovator? What kind of innovations get
supported? Who funds innovation, and on
what grounds?
Part and parcel of this is that innovators
are often assumed to fit a few
stereotypical moulds. As Ross Baird
shows in his book, “The Innovation Blind
Spot”, most venture capital in the US
goes to young either white or Asian men,
from a short list of top universities – and
similar patterns can be found in many
other countries. In corporations, the
gender bias seems to be less pronounced,
Volume 5 Issue 3, 201 9
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