LIFT06: Innovation Labs

Thomas Sevcik and his company Arthesia have developed online gaming environments for Pricewaterhouse Coopers, a themepark for Volkswagen, strategies for repositioning whole countries. He's at LIFT06 speaking about "innovation labs".
Innovation is facing challenges today: "silos" structures in corporations; "play" is still questioned; and the faster the world goes, the less time there is to focus on new ideas for a long-enough time. So Thomas suggests a new way to foster innovation: combining think tanks and themeparks.
"Themeparks are a unity of space design, content, and experience", he says. Think tanks are one of the fastest-growing tools for science, publishing, spin, media, communication: "don't underestimate this phenomenon" (think tanks in the USA in 1970: 24; in 2006: approx 1700 - which makes it more difficult for their voice to emerge).
So what he suggests is: Innovation Labs. These are temporarily installed environments where people from different areas, backgrounds, companies and divisions come together for a limited time (3 months?) in a dedicated space to work on specific ideas (these are not only for corporates). Characteristics of InnoLabs: temporary physical space; guerrilla approach ("probably has a budged but it's often not really official"); instant; open to people from very different horizons; allows playfulness. Methods of InnoLabs: in these contexts people collaborate and co-ompete and work in an open-source format. Output of InnoLabs: new ideas, new products, new friends. Outlook on InnoLabs: it's early-stage; it's an idea on how to come up with innovation; it can come up with bullshit but it could also develop a killer app; there are more and more around; and they function at the interface between innovation and communication.
"Think of InnoLabs as physical blogs on speed".
(I'm on the conference's backchannel and someone just pointed out that a similar format already exists: Barcamp).

(LIFT06 site - lift06 tag - LIFT06 on Google Blogsearch and Technorati)