06 June 2007

"Learning a new language of collaboration"

The ORION R&E Summit took place at Toronto's MARS Discovery District these past two days, featuring many interesting speakers and ideas on how high bandwidth technologies are leading to innovation in Ontario.


Alex Jadad from the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation gave the closing keynote, in which he reminded us that we are "learning a new language of collaboration." While speaking specifically about healthcare, these words are applicable across any context in which innovation can be applied. I attended the workshop on collaborative technologies, among others, and heard about business innovation as a model for orchestrating development. Collaborations function within information ecologies and what Larry Hargrove of IBM called an "environment of innovation" that embeds innovation within corporate cultures by using web n+1 technologies to facilitate connection and ideation. This same workshop saw Charles Clarke speak of "collateral collaboration in which we interact with the past, present and future by data mining. Making this data relevant, useful and useable is the challenge facing us today.

The Tuesday lunch keynote address was given by futurist Jim Carroll. He reminded us to prepare for (constant) generational change, saying the current generation is change averse. This is a good reminder for applied research to work with industries to anticipate new skills and demands on our workforce and technologies. If we live in what Carroll calls a "global idea loop" in which we need "foundations of knowledge with constant knowledge refreshment" we need to ensure that our graduates are adaptable and adaptive.

We already produce content experts capable of working in today's and tomorrow's workforce. We need also to create expert, agile learners, capable of shaping and shifting our future state.

2 comments:

alberto said...

The language of collaboration is alive in the data mining and predictive modeling industry. Specifically, it is now moving into the healthcare industry. I believe that the next couple of years we will see collaboration in the biotech and healthcare industry produce incredible results.
See: http://atomai.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

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