Last week I was in an expensively refitted office in central London. It contained a funkily designed ‘innovation space’, clearly marked so you knew what you were supposed to be doing there.

On the walls were inspirational cartoons. Brightly coloured furniture, thought-provoking slogans and some whizzy technology all added to the mix.

I went away wondering what kind of culture of innovation requires an ‘innovation space’ to make it happen. It’s the same feeling I had when visiting Electric Works, the office block in Sheffield once known as a ‘digital campus’, which demonstrates how exciting and creative work can be by having a ceiling-to-floor helter-skelter.

I’ve nothing against giant slides or funky furniture. But I think the starting point is the action, not the ambience.

Tina Saaby, city architect for Copenhagen, shared some of her stories about thinking differently last week. Her talk, for Sheffield’s Urban Design Week, grasped something that’s fundamental to innovation: it’s about experimenting and testing, flexibility and learning from failure.

That experimentation can happen on a wide scale, as in the creation of spaces for parkour during the redevelopment of the giant Carlsberg factory, or by turning the shell of a waste treatment plant into a dry ski slope. But just as important is the micro-experimentation, such as roof gardens that provide new meeting places and views over the city.

Picture by Mikael Colville-Andersen on Flickr
used under Creative Commons licence

Innovation is also about changing attitudes. One of the city’s projects, Gang i Købnhavn, is known as ‘making the city happen’ - as Saaby put it, ‘we’re trying to learn never to say no’. Inevitably, sometimes things go wrong. But it turns on its head the traditional management approach that says you don’t try things that might be risky.

Innovation is also about changing simple things. Copenhagen is famous as a cycling city - more than a third of residents cycle to work or school every day. It also snows in winter, and anyone who’s tried to ride a bike in the snow will tell you it’s no fun. So the city has decided to prioritise clearing snow from cycle lanes, a simple reallocation of resources to keep the place moving.

Copenhagen is also challenging traditional assumptions that high rents mean higher value. Property owners in the city centre are being encouraged to reduce ground floor rents in order to bring activity into empty buildings, arguing that this increases the value of the whole building as tenants are then more likely to move into the higher floors. And as Tina Saaby explains, ‘it’s very important for the city that ground floors are alive’. Walk around some of our boarded-up high streets and you’ll understand that at a glance.

You don’t need to design special places to create this sort of thinking, but you do need people who are ready to design - to take risks and challenge conventions. Too much of what passes for innovation in many of our towns and cities is just seeking out different ways to flog the same dead horses.