I recently had the opportunity to visit Berkeley, California, to look at the "Silicon Valley" phenomena. How is it that Silicon Valley continually fosters innovative technology start-ups that often progress to become tomorrow's "next big thing"? And are there lessons from the Valley's model that we could adopt and learn from here in the UK? How should a country best foster a sense of innovation?

The answer, of course, is that there is no simple formula but a mix of factors that include technology, universities, access to venture capital (and knowledgeable, supportive venture capitalists), Government policy on research combined with education spending, taxes, and share options policy. Silicon Valley has developed a sustainable culture in which innovation thrives and built strong social capital from (human) networking. Our own "Silicon Fen" is an attempt of course to emulate that model here in the UK.

Silicon Valley also has a strong belief in "Let's try it - failure is not a sin". Failure (and learning from failure) is one of the most positive learning experiences and yet all too often it feels in the UK that our tendency towards being risk adverse runs the far larger risk of not allowing the opportunity for tomorrow's successful entrepreneurs to succeed by giving them the space they need early in their careers.

With this in mind, yesterday (May 6^th) we held an Innovation Day at our central London offices. Whilst I've been involved in these events in the past on a pan-European basis (in Brussels of course) this was our first in the UK. It brought together policymakers, researchers and partners to showcase the UK's innovation and to identify the steps needed to ensure the UK remains a worldwide innovation leader. The event was opened with a keynote from Baroness Morgan (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Intellectual Property and Quality at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills), who stood in for the Rt Hon John Denham MP (Secretary of State for DIUS) at the last moment.

As well as the plenary sessions, the event included a variety of demonstration pods (showcasing immersive new technologies such as Thinsight[PDF]) and a wide variety of round-tables.

I found myself Chairing the roundtable on "Innovations in Identity Placing the citizen at the centre of online public services", with speaker contributions from a distinguished cast. The session was well attended and sparky a true reflection of the passion the topic of identity arouses and the sheer intellectual horsepower we have in the UK across the spectrum of technology and policymaking.

As the discussion was held under the Chatham House Rule I can't reveal who said what to whom, but some key themes emerged including:

• Sir James Crosby, in his recent report on Identity Assurance for the Prime Minister, was right when he said "It's the consumers identity" (no-one else's) and that identity systems must recognise this fact
• any successful identity system (including a national identity system) needs to honour the concepts of transparency (ensuring people understand what information they are disclosing to whom and what will be done with that information); understand the difference between identity and credentials (and recognise that establishing our initial entitlement to a service is different from our daily use of that service, when minimal disclosure can operate as a key principle); and that data aggregation or consolidation is not a necessary pre-requisite for smart data sharing (indeed, data itself need not be shared so much as confirmation of entitlement eg 'this person is entitled to a free bus pass' need reveal nothing else about them)
• there has been a flip in trust on the Internet. Until around 2007 the most experienced users were using the Internet the most. But that model has reversed, with the most experienced Internet users now wary about ecommerce, including online banking, and wary of the problems of social networking sites with their inadvertent disclosure of personal information that could be used elsewhere for malicious purposes
• the technology is not the problem.Systems already exist that enable strong protection of personal information and privacy and which would strengthen citizens' ability to better protect their personal security. The issue is reaching a level of understanding of the art of the possible at the policymaking level so that the UK can deliver a truly innovative, positive improvement in identity that takes all of the best that a scheme could provide without any of the downside of models based on out-dated technology
• the Internet is inverting traditional models, with citizens/consumers controlling their own personal information and records. You can see this in systems such as Healthvault where users themselves choose to place their medical records under their own control and decide who can have access to them. The implications of this citizen-centric model do not yet seem to have been understood in the UK. What is happening is a transformation in governance models at a fundamental level.

This is just a taste of what was a very lively debate of course! And, in best British style, towards the end of the roundtable I was keen to turn this into something positive. What should government and the private sector do to impact issues of identity in a positive way? These were some of the thoughts that surfaced:

• listen to what people want to do and how they want to do it. And then design the system around those needs (don't impose a service-provider centric model on a world increasingly citizen/consumer centric)
• don't over-design and over-complicate. No-one "designed" the Internet. It started as a set of protocols and was shaped (and continues to be shaped) by users themselves. Learn from this model.
• listen carefully and early to key technologists to learn what technology makes possible. Don't build for the world that has already passed by.
• understand the difference between online/offline models, and the potential for verified but anonymous identity (ie. I can prove something about myself without revealing any personal data and without anyone being able to track where, when and why I used that proof)
• look at the citizen-centric models of personalised health models. And think about what implications they have for the role of the State and public sector IT architectures in general

The Innovation Day convinced me even more that the world is not flat. A handful of leading locations around the world have disproportionately contributed breakthrough innovation. And that has included the UK up until now. But we all need to work hard to continue to ensure that the UK remains a leader in the creative industries and innovation.

We are still in the formative stages of a digital era of services and production transformation so profound that it will present us with changes of a nature that we have not witnessed since the industrial revolution. And that requires all of us to work together to continue to ensure the UK remains a great place in which to live, learn, work and play.

Technorati tags: innovation creativity Web 2.0 technology policy identity creative technologies