How many times have you "poured cold water" over a new idea or suggestion from a colleague? Being receptive to all new ideas and assessing them critically but constructively rather than on the personality of the presenter is essential if a "culture of innovation" is to be created. Equally, the culture of rejecting an idea because "it was not invented here" has to be wiped out.
The major Telecom and IT companies throughout the world have just had to alter their future strategic plans in order to incorporate the rapid rise in the development of the Internet. Their long term plans for development were completely thrown up in the air by the anarchic development of the Internet which has taken off in the last two years. They have all been forced to incorporate it in their development plans.
Such is the nature of the Information Revolution in which we are living. But Europe with its ageing population is less likely to be receptive to change, so can it cope with this need for rapid change and development of new innovations? The answer is - it has to! - in order to survive amongst the new tiger nations particularly from the Far East.
A "culture for innovation" needs to permeate throughout the population. The education and training systems are the traditional, and still are, the key ways to develop new thinking. But these systems themselves and those that work within them need to incorporate a "culture for innovation." Large-scale stimulation of new learning methods and approaches utilising new technologies should be a key strategy for policy makers. After all education and training systems are one of the few systems in society which have not changed considerably over the last 100 years.