As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe rolls into the final weekend before a hasty breakdown of the 250 stages as everyone heads home, Ewan Spence looks back over the last few years of the Fringe, and how it should address the future. How do you face the innovators’ dilemma when there is no competition; can the Fringe survive another year of ‘doing it all again but a little bit bigger?’; and why might the answer lie in the shadow of the global pandemic?