Culture & Innovation: Ireland’s Distinct Opportunity

Finbarr BradleyUniversity College Dublin

Dublin, 9 May 2012

“If we learn anything from the history of economic

development, it is that culture makes all the difference.” - David Landes (1998)

2

Where’s the Value?

Making sense- not making ‘stuff’!

“Price is what you pay.

Value is what you get.”- Warren Buffett (2008)

3

Resourcefulness

Industrial Economy

‘Techno – Economic’

Paradigm

e.g., Mass Production,

Manufactured Goods,…

Logic!

Digital Economy

‘Imagine – Sustain’

Paradigm

e.g., Digital Media, Social Networks,

Global Services,,...

Spirit!

Purpose of Economy

• Make Stuff (Do!)• Growth• Consume

• Make Sense (Be!)• Vitality• Develop Capabilities

Concept of Economy

• Machine• Rules, Regulations, Control• Quantity• Mass Produced• Centralised• Efficiency, Costs• Rationality• Independence

• Living Organism• Empowerment, Trust, Self-Expression• Quality• Customised, Personalised• Decentralised• Meaning, Experience, Identity• Emotions, Empathy• Interdependence, Relationships

Learning • About! • To Be!

4

Poetic Technology

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Steve Jobs quotes:

“Technology is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.”

“Creativity is connecting things….a lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences, so they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions.”

“….he (Steve Jobs) was not a technologist. He was a cultural leader, and he drove Apple from that perspective. He started with culture; then followed with technology and design. No one seems to get that.”

- New York Times [Oct 2011]

“Apple’s mission statement doesn’t really talk about what it does; it talks about what it believes in.”

- Forbes [November 2011]

Passionate Products

5

Learning Economy

• Creative

• Self-Direction

[e.g., Artist, Craftsperson,…]

‘Production’ Worker

• Control

Value

‘Knowledge’ Worker

Wo

rk P

red

icta

bil

ity

Work Autonomy

• Repetitive

• Knowledge(s)

• scientifi

c

• synthetic

• symbolic

Resources

6

Co-Creating Shared Value

• Culture-Based Creativity

Meaning is the New Money!

• Sense of Place • Imaginative Traditions

• Collapsing Space/Time

7

Some Stories

8

Go Raibh Maith Agaibh!

Finbarr Bradley

tel: 087- 2835511

e-mail: bradley@intinn.ie

“I find myself wondering whether this “fifth” province might not be a variant of the deepest and most persistent of all Celtic symbols, the human head, the mysterious box which contains the spirit, consciousness..…Is this indeed the underlying ambivalence which we in Ireland tend to stress; the continual presence of the historic past, the indivisibility of birth and funeral, spanning the apparent chasm between past and present, between consciousness and fact?”

- Louis le Brocquy (1916 - 2012)