The Big Picture: When change becomes a fear, and difference a threat

The Monthly Big Picture is a PESTLE analysis to give you a snapshot of WAI social network landscape over the last month. Today we take a look at Laws, Regulation and Environment (part 3 of 3).

Laws & Regulation – When change becomes a fear, and difference a threat

In following article from Bernard Ghilon on lemonde.fr, innovation is seen as a victim of finance and stock exchange dictatorship over productivity and long-term investments. From his point of view, US based innovation leaders were able to be successful because of public investment in R&D and long-term investment in productive tools to rapidly spread innovation. When companies are driven by shareholder values, short-term returns on investments and lack support from government, they end up investing less in R&D. Lack of funding and support might not be the only barriers to innovation one can find in France. In this article from Lesechos.fr, Carole Hernandez-Zakine argues that the “precautionary principle” prevents science from going further while keeping stakeholders close to their fear of change. From her point of view, it forgets to look at the wider scope of opportunities an innovation can create IF supported by politics, society, and respectful of environment. It rather focuses on specific issues (which are still, by the way, important issues). These opinions show how hard it is to define a model enabling intelligent financing and regulation to support innovation in a country where changes and differences are still seen as threats, even by most educated people. As a way of defense from the unknown and a protest against government’s repeated failures, France has recently chosen the extreme right to represent their country at the EU parliament, a party notably known for being anti-European. Early July, the French government announced a series of measures to facilitate investments in long-term value added sectors.

Environment – Back to basics to reveal the obvious urgencies

Now let’s take a step back and follow the Stanford Social Innovation Review in their quest to bring society closer to nature. This article shows how going back to basics of natural growth, changes, patterns, shapes and materials can help innovation find new sources of inspiration. Biomimicry is an invite to have “nature as a mentor” and “nature as a mirror” to help us rethink society. Having nature as a mirror would also help us see some dramatic changes that are real threat to us all as human beings, such as the alert given by this new version of the National Geographic Atlas of the World. As pointed out by Adele Peters in Co.Exist, the “shrinking ice sea in the Arctic ocean is the second biggest change other than the breakup of the U.S.S.R”. Enabling mentality evolution to support innovations that could preserve our planet is another upside of being able to consider the world as it is: a single home for us all. Below is a recent video from TED Talks which will help us understand what “one world” means: