The Nesta Innovation Edge

Speaker Profiles

Profile

Charlie is a leading authority on innovation and creativity.  He has advised companies, cities and governments around the world on innovation strategy.  He has drawn on that experience in writing his latest book We-think: the power of mass creativity, which charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning.  We-think, published in March 2008, is the latest in a string of acclaimed books.  As well as advising a wide range of organisations on innovation including the BBC, Vodafone, Microsoft, Ericsson, Channel Four Television and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Charles has been an ideas generator in his own right.  As an associate editor of the Independent he helped Helen Fielding devise Bridget Jones's diary.  He wrote the first British report on the rise of social entrepreneurship, which has since become a global movement.  As well as being a Visiting Fellow of NESTA, he is also a longstanding senior research associate with the London think-tank Demos and a visiting fellow at Oxford University's Said Business School.

Profile

Richard was elected as a Councillor for Manchester City Council in 1984. He served as Deputy Leader from 1990 to 1996 before taking on his current role. Prior to joining the City Council, he worked as a teacher in Coventry and as an exchange teacher in the USA before moving to Manchester where he was employed variously in youth work, community work, and education research. Richard’s political interests include the links between economic development and social policy, developing open democracy and the community leadership role of local authorities; and the role of cities in creating a sustainable future. He has been the driving force behind Manchester’s regeneration activity and sits on the board of the East Manchester Urban Regeneration Company and acts as Chair of Manchester Airport Group’s Shareholders’ Committee.

Profile

Solarcentury is the UK's largest solar solutions company and winner of multiple awards for innovation and sustainability, including the 2006 Sunday Times / Microsoft TechTrack 100 R&D Award.  Jeremy is also founder and Chairman of SolarAid, a charity set up by Solarcentury and a founding director of the world's first private equity fund for renewable energy, Bank Sarasin's New Energies Invest AG.  He was a member of the UK Government's Renewables Advisory Board from 2002-6.  While on the faculty at Imperial College, he worked with the oil industry, among other things researching oil source rocks, funded by BP and Shell among others.  He has also worked as an environmental campaigner, during which time he won the US Climate Institute's Award for Advancing Understanding.  He has recently been appointed a CNN “Principal Voice,” and was described by the Observer as “the UK's most respected green energy boss”. His critically-acclaimed books “The Carbon War” and “Half Gone” cover climate change and peak oil.  In the 1980s, while at Imperial College, he set up VERTIC (the Verification Technology Information Centre), and served part-time as its first executive director for four years during the tail end of the Cold War.

Profile

Magic Lantern is a multi-award winning company which creates engaging interactive media with clients and partners including the BBC, ITV, C4, Guardian Media Group, Tiscali, Google, Entertainment Rights, ABC, PBS and many others.  Anthony has worked on a variety of major international content brands including Top Gear, Spooks, Dr Who, Guardian Unlimited and Planet Earth as well as co-creating and executive producing the BAFTA and Peabody Award-winning FourDocs for C4.  Anthony is a member of the Content Board of OFCOM, a director of the English National Opera and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.  Previously he has been Vice-Chair of PACT, Chair of the UK Digital Content Forum and on the board of BECTA.  He has a regular column in the MediaGuardian and speaks and writes widely on media issues; last year he gave the televised RTS Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture.  He is the appointed News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at the University of Oxford where he lectured in January and February this year.