Creating innovation blog

Following on from the pioneering ‘cash-point art’ project carried out by CSM’s award-winning Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) we’re thrilled to be able to offer a fully funded PhD studentship starting in October 2012. Research activity will be based around ‘Innovation Against ATM Crime’ with academic support from DACRC, funded by the UK cash machine network LINK.

The purpose of the PhD is to develop a practice-based and design led approach to enhancing customer experience and improving safety in the fight against cash-point crime.

The PhD Studentship totals £20,200 per year for three years, with the potential to extend it to 4 years. This covers full tuition fee support (currently at £4,200 per year for Home/EU students) and an annual tax-free stipend of £16,000, with some additional budget available to encourage and maximise the dissemination of key outputs.

We’re looking for a student with strong skills in design practice/strategy, a postgraduate qualification and first degree of 2:1 or above in a design related discipline. Prospective students should definitely take a look at the Designs Against ATM Crime publication, downloadable free of charge from the DACRC website.

To apply for this exciting opportunity download the RF1 form and briefing document from the University of the Arts London applications page . You can email Research Management and Administration for more information researchdegrees@arts.ac.uk (<mailto:researchdegrees@arts.ac.uk>) or call 0207 514 2120.

Completed forms must be emailed to researchdegrees@arts.ac.uk (<mailto:researchdegrees@arts.ac.uk>) by the closing date 1^st March 2012.

CSM Innovation’s Director Dani Salvadori tells the Guardian higher education network’s Matthew Caines what her job actually entails.

Read the full article here.

MA Innovation Management: A Synopsis

Innovation, it is said, happens at the edges.  At the points at which certainty starts to dissolve and wide areas of risk hove into view, innovative opportunities abound.  Whether they are followed demands a state of mind which welcomes such riskiness: one which takes comfort in the uncomfortable and experiments with edginess.

Here on MA Innovation Management we are happy working in these uncertain spaces, at the edges.  As an inter-/multi-/transdisciplinary course, looking to push the boundaries of socio-cultural engagement, business discourses and creative practices we find there are many ways to take innovation; many innovative journeys that need to be managed.  Not only is this allowed, it is demanded.  On one project, students will pass only if they have failed on the process.  This is not only true of the course as it is structured, but of the students who are accepted onto it.  Our students have all worked prior to joining and have a range of academic and professional backgrounds.  Coming here, they are already opening up the limits of their own practice to be influenced by others in, oftentimes, life-changing ways.

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CSM graduate Karou Parry at the Pulse trade fair

One of my tasks in the last week writes CSM Director of Innovation Dani Salvadori has been to contribute to the HEFCE (1) consultation on the way the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) has been allocated to English universities. It’s essentially an issue of metrics: are we being measured on the right thing; should we be measured on something else? We are actually measured on the income generated by our activities; fine if you subscribe to the Schumpeterian view of innovation as a driver for economic benefit (2) as I do.

But measuring the money doesn’t come near to measuring what we do day to day, and it isn’t the only way we judge how successful we’ve been at doing our jobs. How could we measure what we really do? As money is a proxy for measuring success in delivering innovation, is there a proxy for success in doing innovation? Could it be teabags?

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Cash point art by Steve Russell

In the last week some of the highest profile government cuts have hit the media: Arts Council England’s (ACE) announcement of its national portfolio. While the overall amount has not been that great (£100m) the coverage has been enormous. I’ve been struck though by the narrowness of the ensuing debate. There seem to be only three sources of income discussed: grants, sponsorship and philanthropy writes Dani Salvadori, CSM Director of Innovation.

I know the real picture is far more diverse than that, arts organisations of all sorts earn money in many different ways from their audience. But they just don’t think about their earned income with the same level of energy and creativity that they put into getting grants and sponsorship. Time for some new thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of pundits and theorists talk innovation. This blog will shine light on actually doing innovation in one of the most creative environments you can imagine: a London art, performance and design school. Dani Salvadori CSM’s Director of Enterprise & innovation writes.

To me it’s very clear what innovation is: to paraphrase Schumpeter it is ‘doing things differently in economic life’.[i] It isn’t just being creative, it isn’t a cool new technology and it isn’t answering a client design brief, it’s making something new happen which has an economic impact. And no one can do things differently in economic life on their own. However if it isn’t hard to define what innovation is, it’s a good deal more difficult to describe how to do it.

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