The Naked Diplomat by Tom Fletcher

Author:Tom Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Each year the World Economic Forum compiles a list of essential skills. For 2015, creativity was ranked tenth. As artificial-intelligence technology becomes more sophisticated, WEF judge that creativity will become more important, so that by 2020 they predict it will rank third.

New power will also demand that creativity is prioritised. No ministry of foreign affairs has a Department for Creativity. Indeed the very idea is probably a contradiction in terms. Ronald Reagan joked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’; likewise, no one needs a civil servant to tell them how to be creative. Yet the countries that will succeed in the Digital Century will develop for themselves an outlook of restless pioneers, an ability to innovate, explore and engage the world around them. Historically, that is when they have always been strongest.

Marshalled effectively, the technology tsunami that I have described creates more space for that creativity and innovation. This is what makes the Internet so much more influential in social and developmental terms than, for example, television or the telephone. It is our creativity that sets us apart from computers, and what will give us a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

We also have to protect intellectual property rights if we are to preserve ingenuity and creativity. The counterfeiters have always been a fact of life (although they cannot replace the creators). In a world where anything can be copied, we need a digital Pantheon, a way of branding or kite-marking the genuinely innovative. Quality has to matter. The first attempt to define intellectual property was made in the UK, under Queen Elizabeth I. Globalisation and the Digital Age have made the issues more fiendishly complex and contested in the second Elizabethan Age than the first. Emerging economies such as China’s are going to have to play fairer, and to be part of a rules-based system.

For the global economy to work, and for our national economies to compete, governments and diplomats need to agree those rules, create the conditions where the best thinkers and ideas can speed-date across national boundaries, and then stand back and let it happen.

Governments will need to send their diplomats where the innovation and ideas are, and ensure that our best innovators have constant access to the most creative ideas out there, and the tools and networks to benefit from them. They should be constantly scanning the horizon to see where the next innovation is. They should be much more creative in how they bring people together, and in how they use their convening power to drive growth. They need to chart the ways in which people are making connections within and between societies, and be present there, supporting and nurturing exchanges that contribute to the common good, that further genuine diplomacy in its purest form. In the Digital Age, diplomats will need to be able to capture and hold attention, interest, relevance and influence. As veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke used to put it, ‘attack the problem from every angle, and bring in unusual people’.

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