The Speed of Innovation

OK, hands up if you, or your parents, cancelled Christmas yourselves way before Boris did? Or stopped travelling into the office last year ahead of lockdown? Or, in this cold new year, stopped going to parks when they are crowded for your exercise walk?

You can put your hands down. Very good.

The speed of innovation and international exchange of medical information to help combat Corona Virus in 2020 was pretty staggering and very heartening. One year on, we have three approved vaccines plus improved treatments and new uses for medicines. Let’s hope the current situation is the darkness before the dawn.

The human capacity for collaboration and innovation is immense and, importantly, speedy when faced with a deadly threat. Corona Virus, Nazi invasion, Ebola, losing face to the Russians in the space race, we can and do get on and DO IT when we have to.

hands holding plant collaboration

So… Climate Change. What is it about this impending planetary doom that doesn’t seem to be having the same effect on government-led action as that which is listed above? Margaret Thatcher, luckily a trained scientist, said 31 years ago at the 2nd Conference on Climate change “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations,” and whatever you feel about her policies and ethos, she was right about that. 31 years have passed since then, and getting close to a century since the first scientific theories of global warming, attributed to British atmosphere experimenter Guy Callendar in 1938.

Though global/national and local government policy to help with climate change seems to me to need a blinking great rocket up it (fueled by something carbon-neutral please) our human capacity for doing before we are told to means that a lot of brilliant innovation goes on anyway before the shove from policy. Thank you to all those innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, collaborators, universities, scientists, and manufacturers that are out there taking the leap before they are pushed. 100%Open salutes you, and we’ll be there to find you for our future clients and investors.

This, of course, is the same mindset as locking down before lockdown, Happy New Year and we wish you a very safe 2021. Hasta La Vaccuna!

Here is more about Guy Callendar.
Here is Radio Four’s 39 Ways to save the planet, featuring all sorts of green genius.

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