Local R&D

These days I am excited by finding ways of improving local research and development - which I take as another word for userdriven innovation - how to take that local creativity to other nodes in the network, and grow and come back. I know one example - the idea of quality circles which traveled from the UK to Norway, to Japan and to Europe - bu that is in a way a sad story, because it lost it's situatednes along the way. Will a statement like 'Humans first' help people to remember that such practices die if cut off from the lokal working culture?