What's the big idea?

What I might be expected to know about architects, town planning and property development would fit very neatly on the back of a beer mat.  When I was introduced to the speaker, an architect of some renown, at a seminar on 21^st Century Cities I was worried about finding common ground.  

We were destined to take part in a round-table discussion and spend 30 minutes identifying some pearls of wisdom for the assembled delegates – most of whom seem to own large chunks of the UK. Despite not speaking the same designer language, it was a relief to find we were actually in the same line of trade.   Most of us earn a living by having customers.   Up-market they’re called clients and they usually know what they want.   If they don’t know what they want we are in the business of discovering their inner needs. 

But the very best projects, the most tempting opportunities, are those that don’t have a client.  These are the big ideas we’d like to deliver if only there was a client; if only someone, or everyone, would dare to demand a difference.

This is the very root of creativity and innovation.   We mostly get by from day to day with clients who want stuff that is precisely specified.   Sometimes, sadly, this falls well short of the potential; well short of the extra benefits if only they understood the opportunity to change things around here, open their minds, break their rules and see things a bit differently.   Our big creative challenge is how on earth to get some traction around an idea and nurture it until the penny drops.   Time and again we see folks letting go of something they haven’t fully grasped, and once again we’ve failed to get the big idea across. 

So we were sitting there, wondering what we had in common, and I recalled my days in a giant Telco.   To make things happen, I’d write very official-looking but totally un-called-for reports.   These circulated at a senior level and, amazingly, no-one ever questioned their authority.   Eventually these reports would come back with fascinating comments and, more often than not, some unexpected encouragement.   No-one had asked for this work and most employees wouldn’t dare risk the potential criticism.   These were ideas looking for support and legitimacy.   The secret was not to claim ownership of the ideas but just find a way of seeing if they’d float.   This subversive process was like so much that we now see as a benefit of the Internet - ‘Innovation without Permission’. 

The architect, Terry, says ‘The space is the client’.   He worries that the scope for great and radical creative ideas is so constrained by the normal rules that they might never get a hearing.   There can be no client because these big ideas cut across umpteen boundaries, even more rule-books and the accumulated jobsworth fear of failure.   The space (the opportunity) is the client and the challenge is to learn how to get traction, how to build an eco-system to support the idea, and how to find people who are simply not prepared to put up with business as disappointingly usual. 

So what has all this to do with the CMA and the telecoms industry?   Sir Terry Farrell’s big idea is to turn the backside of Britain into a great place to live and work by designing the entire Thames Gateway to be more like a National Park and, by the way, save London from being flooded.   One of our own sector’s big ideas might, in comparison, seem quite modest.   Fibre to every home and business is not on any UK Telco’s agenda.   No-one owns this project.   It is a dramatic failure of creative imagination.   The gap between tomorrow’s need and today’s reality is vast.   It’s something we should all be working on.   This space is the client.

This article was first published in NetworkingPlus December 2006.