Momentum for change is often driven by events. Evidenced today by the media coverage of the Stephen Lawrence case, darker clouds always evoke greater efforts to search for silver linings.

What will the storms throw up this year?

In UK-based public debates throughout 2012 we will see ICT directors from Health and Local Authorities demanding action on digital infrastructure investment. We will see small business lobby groups demanding that Ofcom sit up and take note of their innovation-hungry needs for ‘dark fibre’ connectivity.

We will see educationalists and clinicians wondering why their well-connected schools and hospitals are not able (or allowed) to provide better broadband services to their local communities. We will find climate activists urging us to wake up to the need to make it easier to facilitate the ‘circular economy’. We will find small businesses demanding a more sensible (cheaper) and innovative contracting process for public procurement

Transport lobbyists will hope for FttRFCP – fibre to road furniture and car parks – and vending machine producers will call for backhaul capacity to make sure that their machines can also provide free Wi-Fi services with digital advertising. Even energy companies will see some sense in capturing the data from millions of well-connected meters, promoting reduced consumption but also tailoring generation better to match demand.

Media broadcasters and communities will tune in to the idea local TV services provided via the web and young people will call up network providers at 5 minutes notice to demand massive extra capacity for a few hours during their LAN party. Maybe even better-regulated banks will take on the popular African idea of easy cash transfers and payments via iPads and mobile phones. Health service providers will seek new ways of enabling people to look after themselves.

In all these and in many more causes the digital links and bridges are being made. Customers of every sort are running fast ahead of conventionally imagined solutions – these things are easily predictable because they already exist if not yet in the UK then not so far away. We don’t have to look as far as India for signs of sensible coordination between ICT and Energy policies – the Departments for each are already combined under one minister in Sweden. It will be easier to discover how government regulatory agencies can redefine their market-referee missions in order to focus instead on encouraging the achievement of national policy objectives.

Below the surface there is a stirring and bubbling – a momentum for change that is building because so many crucial causes are discovering common threads and becoming impatient with denial.

All it will take is one event, one giant penny to drop, one very dark cloud, (something even more dire than higher unemployment, stagnant growth or fuel poverty) for another bubble of complacency to burst and for fresh thinking to emerge. 

It may take some time and, like Mr and Mrs Lawrence, demand determined perseverance.

There's no reason why great ideas born in one place cannot travel - and travel well.

In this digital world we all live in developing economies.

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