Roy Nyberg

I return to my earlier point in these blog postings about how innovation is much more about doing than the idea. On the Weekend FT (Financial Times, 3-4.9.2011, Life and Arts section, p.8) there is an article about an alternative to the TED lectures. The Do Lectures, taking place in a forest in Wales, tend to be smaller gatherings than the better known TED lectures where the focus of presenters’ talk is apparently about doing and accomplishing, as opposed to great ideas as in the TED lectures. Among the topics the article mentions for this year’s talks are, perhaps unsurprisingly, micro-lending and alternative energy, these very trendy social enterpreneurship subjects.

My initial attention was caught by the action oriented focus – as I said before in the first blog posting, there is no shortage of ideas, but we should put more effort into thinking about and discussing how to build those networks of relationships with people and things that make these things take their place in our daily lives. Yet, the journalist in question has interpreted these lectures to be another way of passing along or exchanging good ideas. According to the article text, the stories of these lectures are supposed to inspire the listeners ‘to go and do amazing things too’. Of course it could be that drawing any deeper underlying insights from these stories and other cases will still in future need to be left to academics, who are supposed to do that for living. But certainly it does not require a PhD to think about patterns and recurring themes in cases like these, mere common sense will get you far already. What better raison d’etre there could be for a program like the Do Lectures, where one would expect it to be the next step.