The new Catapult will bring together technological expertise to help the UK’s world-leading digital businesses to develop, test and apply new technologies, reducing the risk associated with creating hugely profitable products and services in the future.

The centre may focus on areas such as:

· How digital media and content are traded and used – in order to find sustainable ways to help businesses co-operate to create profitable services;

· The pervasiveness of digital services – addressing the impact of new technologies and systems such as cloud computing and identity management, as businesses and industries become more digital;

· The blending of digital and physical worlds – looking at how our devices, clothes, cars and other consumer goods become better connected to enhance our physical lives.

The Connected Digital Economy Catapult will also help businesses that traditionally are less active in the digital market place, such as health, retail and education, by transferring knowledge and experience from industries which are leading, such as the media and creative sectors. This will help a broad spectrum of UK business take advantage of digital technology and quickly exploit profitable new business models.

The Catapult will also enable small and medium enterprises to collaborate with the wider digital value chain and showcase their products using state-of-the-art demonstrators that will be found at the Catapult.

via innovateuk.org

Next Steps… and where?

The location of the centre in not yet confirmed but over the next few months the Technology Strategy Board will be working with interested individuals, companies, research groups and key stakeholders to plan the establishment a Connected Digital Economy Catapult.  TSB expect to publish a document in February detailing the vision, scope, ways to engage and the next steps for establishing the Catapult.

I will watch with interest whether this digital centre will be a means of supporting regional growth of the digital economy, linking with hubs like Manchester and  Media City: UK , or possibly Bristol, or whether the government will continue to pool digital and tech investment around Tech City in Shoreditch. If we hope to grow the *national* digital economy, I believe it should be the former.

Keep in touch

It seems that the main forum for discussion on this Catapult is through the Digital Connected Economy  _connect group.

A new public twitter list has also been created for the project, though at time of writing there are only 3 members and 6 subscribers. If you want to follow, go to https://twitter.com/#!/Catapult_TSB/connected-digital-economy and a #Hashtag of #CDEC appears to be in use!

Details below for opportunity to join interesting new project, running to 2015.

Hats off to Lancaster and FutureEverything – continuing to work up some exciting and ambitious work that’s highly relevant for our time. I’ll continue to watch with interest.

Salary is £25-29k – Deadline is 2nd February 2012

Apply: http://hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=A327

Research Associate for Knowledge Exchange in the Creative Industries

We are looking for a talented individual with a background in knowledge exchange, innovation and digital design to join the newly funded (£4m) Knowledge Exchange Hub.

Employer: Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University

About The Creative Exchange

The Creative Exchange is a space to share knowledge and to co-create compelling new forms of experience, participation and personalisation in an open, accessible, digitally connected world.

It is a Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Creative Economy led by Lancaster University in partnership with Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and delivered in collaboration with FutureEverything.

Small, medium and micro businesses, individuals, agencies and not-for-profits within the creative economy will be supported to share knowledge and to co-create new content, products and services, in collaboration with each other, major corporations, and leading researchers in the arts and humanities.

About The Job

Based within ImaginationLancaster, you will be a member of the Design section of the Department and will undertake work that supports the delivery of our AHRC funded (£4m) Knowledge Exchange Hub. Though based in the broad field of digital design, you would benefit from a demonstrable research interest in digital design, innovation, knowledge exchange and their relationship to the creative and digital economies. During the first two years, you will undergo training to take on a more managerial role within the project.

via futureeverything.org

“Details about incentives to spur companies to innovate and grow, including £75 million of additional funding targeted at small and medium-sized businesses, have been published by the government.

The Innovation and Research Strategy follows the inclusion in the Autumn Statement of additional finance for technology innovation, and outlines the new and expanded programmes to be delivered by the Technology Strategy Board.” via innovate.uk

In summary:

Additional funding will be made available for the Smart scheme – previously Grant for Research and Development.

The SBRI programme, which uses the power of government procurement to drive innovation by providing opportunities for innovative companies to engage with the public sector to solve specific problems, will receive additional funding. SBRI enables the public sector to engage with industry during the early stages of development, supporting projects through the stages of feasibility and prototyping.

The TSB will extend the Tech City Launchpad initiative to support new and emerging clusters in other parts of the UK.

The Technology Strategy Board will plan a new innovation voucher programme to support collaboration between SMEs and external knowledge providers, such as universities and the Catapult centres (the new technology and innovation centres).

In addition to the further support for SMEs, the Technology Strategy Board will work with a range of partners to implement:

• £25 million investment to enable large-scale demonstrators in areas such as integrated systems for cities;
• Investment in R&D in emerging technologies, with an initial focus on synthetic biology, energy efficient computing and energy harvesting;
• Working with BIS and the Research Councils to establish a joint fund with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to pilot co-funded bilateral research;
• Additional assistance to help UK businesses secure greater levels of EU finance for R&D. This will include a review of the support system for potential UK proposers to EU funding programmes.

Now this is a way to become a real Open Data city…

The first OpenData Hackathon for New York City kicked off today with 750 datasets and a prize of $2500 for the best hacks.

In 2009 I was involved in the early stages of Open Data Manchester, and helped the FutureEverything guys get a grant from the Manchester Innovation Investment Fund, but I’m not sure what happened after the initial support ended. Maybe their catalytic work was done …?

Open Data featured strongly at #Futr2010, and the initiative was successful in supporting Greater Manchester Local Authorities & the GM Public Transport Executive make their sets available.  But austerity bit. The public purse paying to develop relationships between data owners and developers would seem frivolous these days. As a result opportunities for innovation, and social and economic development are being lost.

I hope that this activity and investment in NYC helps to move Open Data back up the UK agenda and we’ll see some cool new apps coming out of the sets released by Manchester and Trafford Councils.

It’s positive that the NY Times and VCs are involved in BigApps3.o. It might now be timely to warm up relationships between OpenData developers and GM investors and media. Similarly, it would be good to get some exciting brands (and private sponsors) involved in #OpenDataMcr to really pick up the spotlight again.

If you’re interested in reigniting the OpenData spark which was kindled by the FutureEverything team, I’d love to join you in that conversation – please get in touch @capitalrels or call +447540 373489.

IBM Intelligent Operations Center via Chris Haller at EngagingCities.com

New analytics software from IBM Global Business Services allows leaders to observe how the core systems of a city — such as the economy, housing, education, public safety, transportation, health care, government services and utilities — work together and affect one another.

“Municipal government is still very much a world of silos,” said Michael Littlejohn, Vice President of Strategy for Smarter Cities at IBM, in a recent release. “The various departments — transportation, education, public works, and so forth — often have very little interaction with each other, dramatically increasing the possibility that an action in one area of government will have an unexpected affect on another area.”

…Would you expect transit fares to have any bearing on high school graduation rates? …

Smart planners realize they don’t know everything and can’t take every citizen’s opinion into account — unless they implement methods that allow for greater perspective. “Engaging planning,” then, is just the human side of thinking outside the silo. IBM’s service app provides algorithms to enhance the knowledge gained from public engagement, painting an even bigger picture about how systems and policies affect each other within cities.”

via engagingcities.com