Applied Research

Innovation literacy: key driver of productivity

2012-01-18T12:12:00.002-05:00

A recent survey by the Ontario Ministry of Trades, Colleges and Universities indicates that job growth will favour college graduates over university graduates. These numbers are skewed somewhat given that colleges and polytechnics also offer degrees. The point here is that education is a key driver for future job and productivity growth. Another recent story on innovation literacy shows the extent to which both colleges and universities are promoting innovation and entrepreneurship as central to the innovation economy. Over the past few years GBC has promoted innovation literacy as a core outcome for our students engaged in applied research with our partners; it is nice to see this turned into a meme. The language of innovation, and the literacies attendant on it, is important for not just our students and graduates, but also our industry more generally across the country. Future-proofing our economy requires us to promote and understand innovation as a essential skill.

TRRA Report on College Applied Research Offers Insight on Innovation

2012-01-04T09:52:00.003-05:00

A report released a few months ago by the Toronto Region Research Alliance, written by the University of Toronto's Peter Warrian, Stephanie Tombari and Adam Hempstock, offers some good insights into how Ontario colleges are supporting innovation in manufacturing sectors. The discussion makes some very good points about how both universities and colleges support industry innovation, and the need for better communication among all innovation agents. The report is a good snapshot of the early stage, ad hoc approach that Ontario colleges have as we orient our institutions to serving the innovation needs of our industry partners and rely on informal connections to bring applied research into the college mainstream. This is a necessary step in the evolution and modernization of the college system, which includes applied research as a key vehicle for training the talent for the innovation economy. It also emphasizes how innovation is primarily a social activity.

The report makes a useful distinction between large and small enterprises and the relative value each kind of company places on working with a public R&D system support.The assumption here is that R&D is important.

Another useful and correlative report just came across my virtual desk, this one from Innovosource. Perspectives on University-Industry Relationships surveyed 102 leaders from 18 industries and places the responses in the context of relationship terms (attraction, approach, value, inhibitors). While the piece is focused on US research universities, it is instructive to all in Canada who are orienting research capacity toward an instrumentality that looks for opportunities to apply talent and research capacity to business innovation. Canada would do well to not see this application as sullying the research enterprise, but instead as a key way we can become price setters in the global innovation game.

Innovation 2012: Tipping Point or Tilting at Windmills?

2011-12-30T11:13:00.000-05:00

It's fitting to end the year with a rumination on innovation and a look to the year ahead. Yesterday I was on BNN's The Close talking with Michael Hainsworth on Innovation in Canada. In the discussion I said that 2012 will be a tipping point for innovation in Canada, largely because it has to be. With the Euro-zone crisis and our own debt to GDP ratio, now is the time for Canada to up its game with respect to adding value to raw resources (rather than simple extraction) and to create innovative products that command price premiums, rather than be a low cost manufacturer. This is about culture change, and fostering business innovation and an innovation mindset as a hedge on the future.

I've written often about productivity, and my comments on the Close yesterday benefited from discussions with Bert van den Berg, Director of NSERC's Knowledge and Technology Transfer and the CCI Program. Creating innovative products means being a "price setter" - being able to charge more for items instead of simply trying to wring out more value from specific units of labour. Doing so will enable us to connect our world-leading basic R&D system to the needs of the market - be these defined or undefined. Market- or user-driven innovation is key to enabling businesses to compete in global markets. Central to this is the point made by the Council of Canadian Academies' 2009 report on business innovation, Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short. In this report, the expert panel outlines the need for businesses to have innovation as a core business strategy. This points to two challenges for Canada: increased focus by our business sector on high-value market opportunities, and increased focus by public actors on supporting businesses focused on value-add opportunities.

Companies are handsomely rewarded for successful innovations, while not innovating can be a short road to extinction. Innovation implies a risk - companies are doing something others cannot or have not done. Better enabling our world-leading basic R&D system to support market innovation increases the potential for Canadian success. For Canada, being more innovation-focused is about changing business culture - fostering, supporting and recognizing the innovation mindset which we need for future success, and about increasing public R&D support for business innovation.

An example of a business that does employ innovation as their core strategy is GBC Research partner Infonaut. Infonaut is addressing the need for innovation in healthcare (through the application of innovative technology) while addressing a "must solve" problem - hospital acquired infections - the fourth leading cause of death in North America. Their product, Hospital Watch Live, is currently being installed in the Transplant Ward of the UHN's Toronto General Hospital. This is an example of an innovation-focused company who has successfully commercialized technology as enabled through a partnership with college faculty and students.GBC Research has partnered with Infonaut over the past several years, enabled by NSERC CCIP funding, that explicitly supports business innovation and our capacity to put students to work with Canadian companies like Infonaut.

College applied research connects supply and demand in the innovation economy in two ways: we work with industry partners on applied research to help bridge capacity gaps and get products to market. We do this by mobilizing our talented faculty and students, the latter who learn key innovation literacy skills. This is our hedge on our future innovation capacity. Not only do we help Canadian companies become more innovative and get products to market, but we are future-proofing the work force by instilling innovation literacy in our graduates. Innovation is a social activity, and it requires communication - about the needs of the market, and the sources for solutions for these needs, including the application of science and technology (applied research).

The Jenkins Panel recently reported on business investment in R&D (BERD), and the CCA expert panel on the State of Science and Technology in Canada which I am part of is reporting in 2012 on public sector R&D (HERD and GOVERD). Many have pointed out that there have been numerous expert panels and reports on why Canada lags in innovation and what can be done about it. The time for action is now. A recent report indicates that at least one of the Jenkins Panel recommendations may be enacted as soon as this coming year. We can go further and implement innovation vouchers for companies wishing to partner with a college or university to do applied research - this idea was presented by Polytechnics Canada recently as one way to let the market decide how to access innovation support services from the public post-secondary education system. The recent extension of the ARC Initiative by FedDev is another way to get companies innovating in partnership with training the talent for the innovation economy.

It is incumbent on all of us involved in supporting, sponsoring and spending on business innovation to work together to catalyze our collective efforts. To not move forward is to continue tilting at the innovation windmill.

FEDDEV launches ARCI extension

2011-12-13T06:26:00.004-05:00

Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear yesterday announced an extension to the successful FedDev Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative. This is welcome news to businesses in southern Ontario who wish to partner with college, universities and polytechnics on business innovation. The announcement comes on the same day as Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney urged businesses to increase investment in productivity. This follows the recent launch of the Federal R&D Review which has recommended stronger supports for business innovation, as well as the launch of the Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program (DTAPP). DTAPP is an initiative being launched by the National Research Council aimed at aiding business investment in productivity-improving technology. As Carney says, it is time for Canadian businesses to step up. Accessing the many programs supporting business innovation and partnering with colleges and polytechnics on applied research and innovation will aid the economy.

George Brown College, like our counterparts, is open for business innovation.

Innovation, competitiveness, productivity: who is responsible for research outcomes?

2011-11-23T16:55:00.001-05:00

The ACCT Canada conference concluded this week, and as indicated in my last post, featured many good speakers discussing the role of technology transfer and commercialization of research in Canada. Highlights included a Debate on Commercialization Systems & Supports, in which John Molloy, President & CEO, PARTEQ Innovations, asked rhetorically: given that Canada spends $6B per year on R&D, who is responsible for commercialization of research? The notion of responsibility resonated with me, as it foregrounds a very useful discussion relating to Canada's poor record on innovation and productivity.

I've noted here before that not all research need be oriented to a commercial outcome. That said, all research has a purpose, be it discovery or applied. The difference is in the time horizon of this application. It is disingenuous of us to say that we conduct research for its own sake, for even curiosity driven research has an outcome rooted in an unspecified future.

The panel I moderated on the role of colleges, polytechnics and CCTTs featured an excellent discussion by the panelists on these issues. Nobina Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, Polytechnics Canada, Michel Trepanier, Professor, INRS UCS and Institut de recherche sur les PME/UQTR, Niall Wallace, CEO, Infonaut, Inc., and Vanessa Williamson, Executive Director, Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation engaged ideas such as the role incremental innovation, increasing productivity in low technology areas of the economy, the need to facilitate partnerships between academic and industry where the client is the focus and fostering risk and responsibility in our approach to innovation. This perspective on applied research foregrounds the difference between push versus pull research, and a good point was made that in the Canadian R&D scene there is no real voice for the industry partner, particularly small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Bringing this voice to bear is something Polytechnics Canada has been a particularly strong advocate for, and underscores the college applied research mandate of linking the training of highly qualified and skilled personnel (HQSO) to the applied research endeavour as one way to foster greater innovation literacy in the economy writ large.

The audience engagement was interesting given the scope of the questions. We are at a unique juncture in Canada with respect to the engagement of the college applied research layer of the R&D ecosystem, and working together in complementary ways to link basic and applied research with industry and commercial outcomes is an entirely appropriate thing to do given our need to increase innovation, competitiveness, and productivity. To shy away from this is to abrogate our responsibility to the future as entrusted to all of us who receive public money to engage in our work.

Other interesting discussions included an overview of Canada’s Commercialization Challenges by Sorin Cohn, Chief Program Officer, i-Canada, and an excellent review of Trends in Industrial Research: Implications for tech transfer by Ron Freedman, Co-founder, The Impact Group in a luncheon keynote. Freedman's slide deck is online here, and is well worth a read.

Chad Gaffield, President of SSHRC, convened a panel on People Centered Innovations, that sparked interesting discussions relevant to the notion of responsibility and the ability of the education system to respond to the needs of the labour market. I've written before on Gaffield's notion of people centred innovation particularly as this relates to supply and demand for talent in the innovation economy. This is a very important point and highly relevant to what Gaffield termed customer-centric innovation, which is a good link to the recent Roger Martin article on this topic.

The preparation of human capital for the workforce, what Prof Jean Charest of Université de Montréal on the People Centered Innovations panel termed "human capability, is vital to the national economy. To dislocate the academic enterprise from the economy is to endanger the future of our productivity. People are the basis of innovation and entrepreneurship, and innovation is inherently a social activity. The responsibility - or response-ability - that all publicly funded people have is to help prepare the talent for the economy of the future. This includes integrating what I've termed innovation literacy across academic programs as we engage all HQSP in the R&D enterprise, whether basic or applied.

On the subject of talent and HQSP, SSHRC is currently engaged in a renewal of their Talent Program. The discussion document outlines SSHRC's approach to this renewal, and contains a call to action for all of us engaged in education and research. I encourage everyone so engaged to review the Talent Program Renewal discussion guide and to respond to the questions posed therein. This represents a key moment to influence the future of our innovative capacity, particularly as it relates to people at the centre of the innovation economy. Key elements of the discussion include adopting a more consistent approach to research training across all of SSHRC programs, provisions for multi-institutional (and cross-sectoral) partnerships to support research training, and a range of further modifications and improvements to existing programs of direct support. The deadline for feedback is 15 December. As noted above, we have a responsibility - and an ability to respond - to this call to action. It is important that we do so.

Policy innovation for an innovation policy

2011-11-21T09:17:00.001-05:00

I am writing from Innovation 2011 - the annual conference of ACCT Canada, Canada's R&D Partnership conference. There are many interesting and relevant sessions, including the luncheon keynote by Polytechnics Canada CEO Nobina Robinson. GBC Research partner and CEO of Infonaut Niall Wallace is here to participate in a panel discussion on how colleges and polytechnics can aid industry partners in taking products to market.

Of interest also is an article in today's Globe by Rotman Business School Dean Roger Martin. In "Canada, like Steve Jobs, should zero in on innovation," Martin talks about the need for Canada to focus on innovation, not invention, as a key way to solve our productivity problem. Pointing out that Canada invests more per capita than the US on invention, with little to show for it, Martin makes a good point about how some policy innovation around funding and support for industry to innovate will lead to an innovation policy that puts "the user, rather than the scientist, at the centre of the picture."

There is very timely advice here from Martin, including that it is time we taught innovation skills in the K-12 education system.

This article follows a good piece in Saturday's Globe business section called "Canada's innovation window of opportunity." It discusses the Canadian productivity problem, innovation and R&D incentives. The Jenkins panel is cited, as is Jenkins himself who says: "the closer we can get to rewarding the outcome instead of the input, the better." This relates well to the need for us to provide the talent for the innovation economy and to educate industry on the need for productivity and the relationship this has to innovation skills.

The ACCT conference on R&D partnerships is a very timely discourse on the need to work together to link industry to the Canadian education system, and to focus these efforts of providing value for industry first and foremost. An open, participatory approach to innovation where we foster and reward market oriented outcomes will lead the way to a more prosperous Canada. Putting the user first means focusing not on what we do, but on what we can do to support social and economic innovation.

ACCT Canada's Innovation Partnerships in Montreal next week

2011-11-16T17:33:00.001-05:00

ACCT Canada is holding their annual R&D conference in Montreal next week. Innovation 2011 runs from 20-22 November and offers an agenda full of excellent presenters on R&D partnerships in Canada.

Polytechnics Showcase: Students show their innovation and entrepreneurship skills

2011-11-14T14:59:00.000-05:00

The annual Polytechnics Canada Applied Research Showcase was held at Humber College last week, sponsored jointly by BDC. The event featured great presentations from students from each of the member institutes. This is a highlight whereby students from each polytechnic showcase their work with an industry partner and compete for a prize for the best presentation. This year George Brown College student Alecsander Granger took the first prize - congratulations Alecsander!

New this year was a panel discussion of three employers who have hired a polytechnic graduate. Each pair spoke about the role of innovation and entrepreneurship and how the innovation literacy skills learned as part of applied research project work added value to the partner organization. GBC Chef School graduate Geremy Capone, now resident chef at the Electronic Living Lab for Interdisciplinary Survivorship Research, appeared with ELLICSR scientist Dr Sara Urowitz, spoke about the BRUNCH project.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Minister Diane Finley attended the conference both days, and presented the students with the awards in addition to giving a lunch time key note address. The text from her speech are available on the HRSDC website.

Day two of the conference featured an SME Summit, whereby industry partners worked with Polytechnics Canada members to shape the coming advocacy agenda. Michel Bergeron, Vice President, Corporate Relations, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), kicked off the day outlining the business innovation support that BDC offers. Bergeron in particular discussed how BDC adapted their approach to focus on incremental innovation, versus disruptive innovation, as this was the need expressed by industry. (Also well supported by OECD publications.)

Clair Gartley, Vice President, Business, Innovation and Community Development, Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), Bert van den Berg, Director, Knowledge and Technology Transfer Division, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Tom Matulis, Acting Executive Director, Ontario Region, Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) also presented on the various supports their respective programs ofer SMEs. In short, it was an excellent SME survival guide that links the preparation of HQSP with the demands of the innovation economy.

Investments in research, education and the "dividend of innovation"

2011-11-01T05:59:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of press recently about the state of undergraduate education. A recent article by HEQCO’s Harvey Weingarten on measuring skills attainment and educational efficacy offers timely input on the issues of growth in demand and quality. The point here is that we need a more focused approach to measuring outputs from the education system in order to ensure we can continue to produce the workforce and citizens the country needs. To avoid this is to side step responsibility for ensuring our future economy can be more innovative and productive. We can look at this as a combination of lagging and leading indicators, and the discussion is also relevant to research.

For example, in today's Globe editorial, there is a brief piece on the role of basic research and its relationship to an unspecified future of serendipitous discovery. While the Globe goes for a soft target to set up its argument, the distinction between basic and targeted - or applied - research is a false dichotomy. The issue here is when the research gets applied. Awards such as the Gairdner and the Nobel prize are important indicators of excellence in science and discovery. These are lagging indicators, as they appear many years after the fact, providing strong evidence of the time lag relationship between basic to applied research. A leading indicator may be the propensity of a funding body to invest in a particular area - whether basic or applied - and the variable response to present conditions in the economy or culture that is producing a need for innovation in the first place. For the latter, any example of R&D into internet technologies - whether for healthcare or consumer demand - is an example. TO think of these two aspects of R&D as polar opposites is counter-productive, yet seductive, especially in a country with a GDP the size of Canada's. For even though we spend more per capita on R&D than most every other country in the OECD, our focus on lagging indicators only betrays a provincialism that is, according to many, responsible for our continued poor productivity and innovation performance.

Kevin Lynch, in an editorial today, makes this point well. Lynch focuses on the need for greater innovation in government, using online media and procurement methods to foster greater Canadian innovation. His point is that we can have austerity and stimulus at the same time if we think differently about the issues at hand. Namely: innovation. In an earlier piece, which I reviewed previously, Lynch and Munir Sheikh discuss their view that "Productivity growth is the dividend produced by innovation." I would add this to the discussion about education and the stimulus of innovation writ large (through targeted investments in R&D, whether basic or applied). That is, our investment in education, and in modernizing our approach to education with a focus on outcomes, enables us to produce a society with relevant skills and resiliency. This resiliency is the ability to transcend opposition thinking, and to apply innovation to issues as Lynch describes. Doing so enables a focus on the complementary ways in which education and innovation can work with the foundations of our excellent basic research infrastructure and to apply what we know and learn into the complex issues and problems facing society today.

The BBC's The Story of Science is perhaps one of the best things I've ever seen on this issue.

Jenkins Report Released

2011-10-17T15:30:00.001-05:00

The Jenkins Report on R&D in Canada is linked here. I'll get to some detailed analysis in due course, but on a read of the Executive Summary there are many good points that will serve Canada's innovation needs well. This includes:
1. The creation of the Industrial Research and Innovation Council - effectively the council for commercialization.
2. The increase to IRAP and the creation of a national commercialization voucher program

3. The creation of an innovation navigator service - a guide to all federal programs

4. Talent: the inclusion of college graduates in future business innovation talent creation programs, i.e. in NSERC programs for undergraduate internships and faculty scholarships.
5. Procurement: using procurement to help spur SME innovation

The full report is available here. I am looking forward to the discussion on this.

R&D Panel to release report today

2011-10-17T10:37:00.000-05:00

The R&D Review Panel, chaired by Open Text's Tom Jenkins, will be releasing its report today. Jenkins is giving a talk tomorrow at the Economic Club to discuss the findings.

In advance of this, there is a very useful article in today's Globe where Barrie McKenna outlines the significance of the opportunity the R&D Review Panel has for meaningful change in Canada's approach to innovation.Clearly we need to fix our broken R&D system, and McKenna rightly posits that the Jenkins panel represents the best opportunity we have to do this. As I noted in my last post, Canada needs an innovaiton policy, and this will involve making some very hard choices indeed. McKenna refers to this as the difference between an R&D democracy and an R&D meritocracy. The latter is a preferred model that looks at making targeted investments to produce results - a focus on outcomes versus spreading everything around.

There is enough expertise across the country to fashion a complementary R&D ecosystem, to be sure, and Canada, while spending more per capita than most other OECD countries, frankly does not have the GDP to support unfettered research in any and all domains. Revamping our tax regime to provide more direct supports (like Germany et al) and providing more upstream support for business innovation will help modernize our approach to R&D. Our future productivity hangs in the balance.

Canada needs an innovation policy

2011-10-03T06:30:00.002-05:00

"Canadians are an inventive lot, but have trouble making it pay," reports Barrie McKenna in today's Globe and Mail, outlining the worn adage about Canada's failure to capitalize on R&D discoveries. McKenna talks about the need for Canada to start focusing on extracting value from our R&D, lest we become a nation of innovation renters. Are we innovation serfs? The example of Nortel shows that we are close to this, letting go of prized IP whose development was been heavily subsidized by Canadian taxpayers. It would be worth finding out how much of the Nortel R&D spend was financed by SR&ED tax subsidies, and if this was repaid when the IP assets were sold off. For the latter, likely not. We will be renting back that IP for generations to come.

Nobel Laureate John Polanyi's editorial in today says that science needs freedom in order to discover. Good point. However, his point that the focus on relevance shrinks scientific horizons may cloud the issue of ascertaining how our world-leading R&D system can provide the most benefit to Canadians. Canada spends more money than most other countries on per capita R&D. We need to think instrumentally about how to use this incredible capacity to address the pressing issues of today - climate change, energy use, food security. An interventionist, instrumentalist applied R&D policy can enable countries to sponsor basic R&D and realize both basic and applied science gains. Think: the Internet. With greater value extracted from scientific discoveries we will be able to increase per capita R&D (theoretically, at least). Without this value extraction, our per capita R&D spend will only decrease. This is not a zero sum game, and we should be careful not to posit that we must privilege one over the other.

Here is a useful overview of Canada's approach to invention, showing our anomalous focus on S&T and our collective assumption "that there is a continuum from knowledge creation to development of application, and finally commercialization and utilization." Canada needs an innovation policy that lets us fund basic science (invention policy) and to focus on where these inventions have application and value and follow through on taking these to market. The last federal budget announced a new program for college and university collaboration. This is a perfect example of an interventionist approach to funding basic research, linking it to the applied research capacity in Canada's colleges and polytechnics, and out to industry. We need more of this, not less. It does not diminish the quality of science. Quite the opposite: it shows Canadians that we have the capacity to invent and innovate in order to make our lives better.

Witness the Nobel Prize for Medicine, announced this morning, shared by two Americans and one Canadian, Ralph Steinman. It's worth quoting the Globe's lead sentence on this story: "Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about the immune system that opened new avenues for the treatment and prevention of infectious illnesses and cancer" (emphasis mine). There you have it in one sentence: basic + applied research.

A focus on adding or extracting value from inventions is what Canada needs more of. We need an innovation policy with the capacity to fund basic science, even as it links applied research to business innovation for the good of social and economic productivity.

Education is not a zero sum game

2011-09-30T06:06:00.003-05:00

Reports this week about the value of a university education have led to much debate over the purpose of education: is it to enrich people through knowledge or simply prepare people for the world of work?

The Globe reported on Monday that "University education no guarantee of earnings success", and examined the payoff for people entering undergraduate education. Academica's Ken Steele says in the report that options such as college and apprenticeship programs should be explored. Patrick Keeney, in a column in the National Post back in August laments the turning of education into vocational training. Keeney in particular decries the "hollowing out" of education as our society seeks an emphasis on results and returns on investment. While a laudable goal to provide a liberal education for its own sake to a population, Keeney overlooks the history of university education as a purview of the elite. We know that education leads to a more productive and inclusive society, hence a world-wide desire to increase education attainment at all levels. Emphasizing outcomes at all educational levels does not cheapen education, but rather increases its value to a society. Failure to see this represents a failure of the imagination and an atavism for a past elitism.

I've written here before on Canada's number one ranking in the OECD for tertiary education. It bears repeating: this is only when you include both college and university. Given the fact that many students come to college with university degrees already in hand (up to 25% at George Brown College), these data are somewhat skewed. Nevertheless, the real story here is that education is both useful (knowledge gains for its own sake) and usable (instrumental to a country's social and economic productivity).

Instrumentality and outcomes based learning are applicable to research. There is no zero sum with university teaching and research, as pointed out today in an opinion by Stephen Saideman. The same is true of education. I've quoted this here before: as John Godfrey, head of the Toronto French School has said, "The goal of education is to make people privately happy and publicly useful."

The sooner Canada gets past thinking about education and research (basic and applied) as an either-or proposition, and start seeing complementary as a worthwhile goal, then the sooner we can work on fixing our long standing productivity problem. Making informed decisions about public policy and spending linked to outcomes where appropriate is necessary in a country with a GDP the size of Canada. We must choose where to invest in research, and to support the entire spectrum of basic and applied research through to market entry, because doing so provides balance and a hedge on the future that leverages our talent pool. The same is true for education where we produce this talent pool. We owe it to ourselves and to those who want an education and a job or career to enable everyone to take their place in advancing knowledge and in finding full participation in our society. Not doing so risks impoverishment of the mind and society as a whole.

Just what is productivity, and why does it matter?

2011-09-16T06:52:00.004-05:00

Kevin Lynch and Munir Sheikh outline a prescription for fixing Canada's innovation woes in an op-ed in today's Globe and Mail. The piece is a shortened version of their recent article in the Policy Options September 2011 edition on "Innovation Nation." Their premise is a good one: "Innovation can be thought of as the process by which successful firms understand this dynamic [constant change in world markets], change, adapt and modify their products, processes or concepts of markets to take advantage of the changing environment" (p.1). Low business spending on R&D accounts for our low productivity and that "productivity growth is the dividend produced by innovation" (p.2). Importantly, they also posit "the crucial point that productivity growth is as much a social issue as an economic one because it defines our aggregate living standards" (p.2). There is also a weak understanding in firms of how productivity is measured and impacts firm performance: "The challenge with multifactor productivity as an explanatory framework is that no firms sit down and establish a multifactor productivity strategy; they have no idea what it is" (p. 4). Indeed, research done at George Brown College shows a very weak understanding in local firms of the relationship between productivity and innovation.

All of this is not news, but Lynch and Sheikh do point out that we need to foster better upstream investment in R&D rather than downstream tax incentives. More direct support for innovation in firms rather than tax incentives after the fact is a better way to incentivize firms to spend on R&D. This is precisely the point of the College and Community Innovation Program, administered by NSERC, that is funding college applied research efforts. The CCIP is showing positive effects in prompting R&D investment in firms who partner with colleges and polytechnics to address innovation gaps and needs. Applied research conducted in concert with student learning gives our students innovation literacy and entrepreneurship skills. The CCIP is a small but positive step in the direction of fostering greater firm-level innovation and R&D spending. Analysis and evaluation of the program's effects and effectiveness will lead to fine tuning and iterative improvements. But certainly in George Brown College's experience we have enjoyed positive interactions with industry partners who access faculty and students in an effort to get new products and processes to market. With college applied research accounting for about 1.5% of total public investment in R&D, this is an excellent return on investment. It is also an excellent return on Innovation that increases industry R&D spending and our collective capacity to innovate, leading to improved social and economic productivity.

The imperative to improve undergraduate education

2011-09-15T06:07:00.001-05:00

An article in today's Globe and Mail offers some insight into undergraduate education at Canada's universities. For undergrads at Canada’s universities, a new way of learning presents a reported uncustomary "high degree of consensus among Canada’s universities about the need to focus on best practices in undergraduate experience,” according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada's Paul Davidson.

It is good that the universities are focusing on undergraduate education, as this is a core strength we need to shore up; the future of Canadian social and economic productivity demands a renewed commitment to supporting talent across the entire spectrum of education. It is interesting to note that the the AUCC is acknowledging that "15 years spent focusing on high-level research has left them unable to give many undergraduates the experience they expect." This includes, according to Patrick Deane, McMaster University president, meaningful contact with accessible professors, and varied types of learning such as co-operative and field opportunities, problem-based assignments, and chances to do undergraduate research or self-assigned study." It is noteworthy to point out that these are the hallmarks of college and polytechnics education. George Brown College in particular is focused on offering our students field education opportunities - working with our industry partners on applied research is one avenue we achieve this.

A concerted effort across the post secondary education spectrum to improve undergraduate education with a focus on developing the highly qualified and skilled talent we need across the entire work force is imperative. Articulating college and university programs, enabling the mobility of learners across institutions and provincial boundaries, and providing life long and life-wide opportunities to learn new skills are all positive steps toward modernizing Canada's approach to talent generation, retention, and application to society's needs. A key feature of the college system is a focus on outcomes based learning. To decry this as a form of corporatizing education is to abrogate our responsibility as educators to ensure that students can apply what they learn to their future work. Universities and colleges alike would do well to ensure students emerge from educational programs with a clear sense of what they can do to add value to our society. As I've noted here before, quoting John Godfrey: "The goal of education is to make people privately happy and publicly useful."

Business+Academic R&D=Greater Productivity & Prosperity

2011-09-14T07:29:00.000-05:00

An article today on linking businesses with academic institutions outlines key benefits to articulating higher education with the needs of industry to innovate. James Millway of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity correctly describes this need - using the Waterloo region Technology Triangle as an example - though his focus on universities only misses the mark. The article does refer to Conestoga College - a member of Polytechnics Canada - as a constituent that participates in the training of highly qualified and skilled personnel that also supports business innovation in firms.

Linking industry and academic institutions is something done very well in many other productive economies (Finland, Germany, Singapore, UK, US). Canada has made good progress in this area, particularly with investments in college applied research that is geared explicitly toward aiding businesses with innovation supports. The last federal budget announced new funding programs for colleges, including a new fund for colleges and universities to work together to support industry. This is a strong example of a public+private partnership approach to R&D support that is advancing a de facto Canadian innovation policy. At present Canada has a strong invention policy - as noted here Canada is fourth in the world for Higher Education Expenditures in R&D, but 15th in the world for Business Expenditures in R&D. That is to say, we have a world leading basic research infrastructure that produces top talent and inventions. What we need now is an innovation policy. An innovation policy will foster greater ties between business and academic institutions, leverage our world-leading level of tertiary attainment (from colleges and universities), and address key challenges and opportunities in R&D for greater social and economic prosperity. The Review of Federal Support to R&D will likely address this given its focus on business innovation.

As we collectively modernize our approach to research, development and innovation, we would do well to recognize complementary strengths across the entire post-secondary education system as drivers of innovation and downstream prosperity and productivity. Yesterday's release of the OECD's Education at a Glance clearly shows the value of all forms of education. The Martin Prosperity Institute has recently published two reports on The Value of Education (Part 1 and Part 2) that further support the investments in education and the potential this represents for the Canadian economy. Linking education and workforce preparation with the needs of the innovation economy is the most sure route to future prosperity.

OECD releases Education at a Glance 2011

2011-09-13T15:56:00.002-05:00

The OECD's Education at a Glance statistics for 2011 were released today. Detailed reading is required to see where we place on international tertiary attainment, for example. Data presented at the OECD conference last June indicated that Canada may not have retained the top spot, though it appears from my initial read of this that we have (Type A and B across all age groups).

In the section on How many Students will Enter Postsecondary Education, there is a good point made regarding the need to grow spaces in PSE, but also to ensure that instruction methods can meet the demands of new types of learners.

There is a strong correlation made on the attainment of tertiary education with innovation and productivity: "Having a more educated work force gave these countries a head-start in many high-skill areas. This advantage is likely to have been particularly important for innovation and the adoption of new technologies." It is also noted elsewhere that unemployment for those with tertiary education is on average 4%, well below averages for those with no education. In short, "Higher levels of educational attainment typically lead to greater labour participation and higher employment rates."

For colleges, there are some good data and insights on what the OECD terms Vocational education and training (VET)": see pp 122 ff. The data show that this kind of market-oriented education pays good dividends for learners who enter the job market.

Infonaut CEO Niall Wallace on Innovation, Healthcare

2011-08-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

Infonaut CEO Niall Wallace is featured on The Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation website in a good post about what Infonaut is doing to promote innovation in healthcare in the province. GBC Research has been supporting Infonaut's applied research and innovation for the past few years; their product is a game changer that will result in saving lives and money in our healthcare system.

New Waterfront Campus one year from opening

2011-08-30T06:12:00.000-05:00

Join us today at Sherbourne Common Park to celebrate the one year count down to opening our new Waterfront health Sciences Campus. Today's Globe has an interview with GBC President Anne Sado discussing the new campus and its focus on interprofessional health sciences education. The new campus will also feature significant new applied research capacity for GBC; it will be the nucleus of the Interprofessional Online Research and Technology Assessment Lab (I-PORTAL).

I-PORTAL will be a prominent element within George Brown College's East Bayfront Campus currently being built on the Toronto waterfront. This new campus will see the consolidation and further integration of GBC's health sciences education and training programs, with an even greater emphasis on interprofessional health care practices (building upon GBC's leading Interprofessional Learning Centre). I-PORTAL will form part of the GBC Research Labs and encompass new or expanded clinical simulation, visualization, prototype fabrication, design studio, operational community clinic and incubator/accelerator business venture development infrastructure that accesses the realistic training facilities serving our educational mandate. The Waterfront Campus will be the centrepiece of our business innovation support, and will be linked through cutting edge networking and video conferencing to advanced prototyping facilities at our Casa Loma and St James campuses, and our world-leading prosthetics and orthotics clinical, education and applied research facility at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Together, these areas will offer local industry a prominent point of access to all of our applied research and innovation support services through the revitalized port lands on the Toronto Waterfront.

GBC Chef School receives food research funding to support Ontario food markets

2011-08-10T16:03:00.000-05:00

George Brown College's Chef School is the recipient of funding to enhance the use of Ontario food products at the college and within industry. The project continues the Chef School's innovative approach to industry-focused teaching and learning while helping generate economic benefit for Ontario. Funding from the Broader Public Sector Investment Fund was announced at teh Chefs' House yesterday by Carol Mitchell, Ontario’s Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, who was joined by MRI Minister Glen Murray. Read the press release and the Globe story on the announcement.

Canada needs to think about R&D ROI3

2011-08-08T08:41:00.000-05:00

Saturday's Globe and Mail has an interview with the National Research Council's president John McDougall, who offers a very refreshing perspective on the need for Canada to make choices around the R&D we finance. Echoing statements I've made in this space myself, McDougall says that we should be looking for a return on investment for our R&D efforts, and directing the use of public monies into those areas that Canada needs addressing and can excel in. While his choices of areas may not be to everyone's liking, the idea of directive research efforts is something Canada would do well to listen to. While our ratio of HERD spending per capita is fourth in the OECD, our GDP is not large enough to enable unfettered research in all areas. McDougall decries the "slice and dice" mentality Canada brings to the distribution of funding, and posits that correcting this is one way to address our long standing innovation gap: “We’re dealing with limited resources, and it’s not as if there is a mattress full of money that keeps replenishing itself. We’ve got to get value out of it.”

As the article notes, this is a fairly controversial stance. Regardless, kudos to McDougall for addressing the need to balance our commitment to funding all basic research with the very real need to turn Canada's brightest minds to addressing significant problems we face as a country.

Canada's enviable status at the top of the world research heap is to be commended, but it is time for us to make concerted efforts at producing results based on this deep pool of excellence. Part of the issue here. McDougall notes, is that the general public is not able to understand the connection between basic science, innovation and productivity: “We aren’t clear with the public in Canada what we are doing. They can’t see it,” he said. “Part of success means being able to communicate with people so they understand what you’re doing and why it matters.” This is essential to enabling our industry to see the connections between innovation and productivity and for our research community to see the crucial links between getting ideas out of the labs and into the market, while helping industry innovate and compete.

Helping industry innovate is what colleges and polytechnics do well. Linking the Canadian research enterprise to industry needs does not sully research nor lower quality. Quite the opposite. Rather, articulating basic research, universities, government labs and colleges with industry will help Canada address our long standing innovation gap and poor productivity.

As I said earlier: Doing so will achieve a threefold ROI:

A Return on Interest from basic research that provokes thought and ideas, leading to disruptive innovations through long term research investment;
A Return on Innovation from applied research that increases industry R&D spending and our collective capacity to innovate, leading to improved productivity; and
A Return on Investment from experimental development through the creation of new products and processes and through the training of students, who enter the workforce ready to innovate.

Innovation visas: passport to a productive future

2011-08-02T05:59:00.000-05:00

The Globe's Time to Lead article today offers an opinion piece on the notion of an innovation visa for immigrant entrepreneurs. This follows on their story yesterday about "Attracting the Entrepreneurial Immigrant." Both are good reads on a very simple policy change that will capitalize on the entrepreneurial nature of new immigrants and make it easier for people to come to Canada to create companies and jobs. The Globe's editorial is succinct: lets make it easier for those who will generate new ideas to set up shop in Canada. These follow another story ran in early July featuring two entrepreneurs caught in the immigration system. The innovation visa is being tried by the US; here's a good time to follow the lead.

Speed to market and user-centred innovation

2011-07-02T06:56:00.004-05:00

On Thursday I was interviewed on BNN's The Close, addressing "Innovation in Canada". The segment afforded an opportunity to showcase some of the work that the George Brown College Research Labs are doing to support business innovation in Canada. The interview was timely given the release last week of the Science and Technology Innovation Council's latest report that outlines Canada's still-lagging innovation performance.

It's worth summarizing a few key points: Innovation is adding value - social or economic. It's not about invention - it's about translating invention and/or ideas into something of value. Innovation is not necessarily new to the world (this is invention), but new to a market. Canada has a world leading basic R&D system, but no innovation system and no innovation policy to support knowledge translation into innovation. Businesses don't invest in R&D (c.f. our HERD/BERD imbalance). We need to capitalize on our talent pool - which STIC also reinforced - in order to foster the diffusion of user-centred innovation throughout Canadian culture. George Brown College links the supply of talent to industry innovation demand by mobilizing our students and faculty to address industry needs. Here are three examples:

Theralase - this is an example of new to a market (definition of innovation) - not new to the world. Watch a CTV news clip here. We are collaborating with Theralase Inc. to do a feasibility study and to explore the possibilities of using cell destroying power of the Photodynamic compounds (PDCs) to attack and destroy bacterial contaminants of food. The company also wants assistance in ascertaining the market opportunity and potential commercialization products in this field. The objective of this study is to Do background and market research; List competitive technologies; Scope the project; and Deliver recommendation on PDC application to the sanitation process in the food service and food manufacturing industry.

Memotext - we are working on helping this company to create protocols for medication compliance prompts for people taking medication. Personalize emails, voicemails, text messages, SMS - prompts to improve medication compliance.

The Green Syndications Vertical Axis Wind Turbine - our faculty and students helped take an unworkable patent and create a product ready for market by establishing proof of concept based on a new five blade VAWT design. See GBC grad Edward Wong's award winning video of the project here.

Connecting the supply of talent to industry demand for innovation is necessary. When colleges engage students in applied research, they gain crucial innovation and entrepreneurship skills. This will lead to downstream capacity to innovate in industry contexts, thereby meeting industry demand for innovation. Colleges occupy this space almost exclusively, connecting our students to crucial innovation experience and socializing industry to spend on R&D. Our role in fostering greater innovation and productivity across the country is unparalleled, and our capacity to increase industry innovation is heightened with recent federal government budget announcements. I will be picking up these threads later in the summer and into the fall as we work on connecting industry to our talent pool, and making a mark on Canada's innovation performance.

George Brown College: Open for Business Innovation

2011-06-24T15:06:00.002-05:00

About 200 people attended three industry networking breakfast events hosted by GBC Research at The Chefs' House, GBC's restaurant. The event was a resounding success. Attendees learned about our applied research and business innovation in three core areas of expertise:

Sustainable building technologies
Culinary arts and food product development
Health technologies

A highlight of all three days was presentations by our students, who showcased the applied research projects they have worked on with our industry partners. Faculty were on hand to talk about their role in addressing business innovation needs, and the following industry partners spoke about their experiences working with us:

John Tuerck of Blue Heron
Donna Carmichael of Mill Pond Cannery and Preserves Company
Mary Ann Scandiffio of Square Snacks
Carlon Paz-Solden, of Tenet Computing Group

A common theme of all three days was that our students gain valuable real life, real time experience working with our industry partners on applied research projects as a core part of their learning.

Our main take-away message: We are open for business innovation. Collaborators wanted. Contact us as research@georgebrown.ca.

We thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) for providing funding for the event.

Jobs, employment, innovation: more on supply and demand

2011-06-21T06:57:00.000-05:00

The Globe and Mail has been running some articles on the job market and employment, notably this week on youth employment. Today's installment is a good piece on the (future) fit into the job market for those emerging from school. Notable is the focus on skills for employment - skills that area transferable in any market. We've often referred to these as innovation literacy, a skill set that represents capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovation and the innovation economy are key drivers of employment, and the Globe's series on manufacturing (Remade in Canada) portrays industries seeking to remake themselves to better fit with the evolving needs of global markets, and, importantly, what this means for employment writ large across the country. Saturday's installment is of particular note as it refers to the role Canada's colleges play in promoting applied research in industries like the textile industry, as well as in preparing workers for new roles in evolving industries. This is the impetus for us to teach innovation literacy, and to foster broadly innovation and entrepreneurship skills across all programs in the entire post secondary education sector.

As I noted earlier, there can be a disconnect in what employers want and what they need, and linking the supply of talent to industry demand is an issue of central importance for all of us. Statistics Canada's new plan to provide data on labour market supply and demand is welcome news in this regard. Focusing our efforts in education on providing the skills our graduates need is a laudable goal that will help Canada remake itself for the global innovation economy. Innovation literacy is one way to promote a plasticity of being able to learn new skills for new jobs, now and future forward.

George Brown College President Anne Sado receives honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto

2011-06-17T06:46:00.000-05:00

The George Brown College community proudly celebrates President Anne Sado's honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto. Anne's speech is available via archived webcast. Read our press release here, which outlines Anne's many achievements.

Collaborators Wanted: Join us at our upcoming Industry Networking Events

2011-06-11T09:28:00.000-05:00

The George Brown College research office is sponsoring three Industry Networking Events, on 22, 23, and 24 June, from 730AM-930AM. Join us for breakfast at The Chefs' House, GBC's restaurant, to learn about our applied research and industry innovation supports in three areas:

Construction and Engineering Technologies, with a focus on green and sustainable building: June 22
Hospitality and Culinary Arts, where we focus on healthy food product development, June 23
Health Sciences, for health technology and health promotion product, process and protocol development, 24 June.

Innovation transmission, or, Supply and Demand in the Innovation Economy

2011-06-08T11:52:00.003-05:00

Last week I had the good fortune to attend the Canada and the OECD: 50 Years of Converging Interests conference in Ottawa. The event was sponsored by the Public Policy Forum and featured many notable speakers who addressed not only the history of Canada and OECD (I didn't know that, for a brief spell, we were the only/first member as we were first to pay our fees), but also the implications for our interactions with the OECD, and why the OECD is such an important instrument for public policy.

The conference echoed some interesting thoughts and conversations I've been party to recently regarding Canada's innovation engine, and what one colleague stated as "a failure to engage the wheels." That is, we have a high performing R&D engine, but the wheels are not fully engaged to ensure that this R&D translates inventions into innovation and market value (social and economic). The R&D translation component - the clutch - is what we are starting to engage in earnest across the country with our renewed focus on business innovation.

Speakers at the OECD conference spoke a lot about Canada's enviable tertiary educational attainment rate (first in the world, though demographics are apparently unseating us there in favour of South Korea). Every speaker who mentioned this, from OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria to BMO's Kevin Lynch, failed to say that this includes what the OECD calls both Type A (university) and Type B (college/vocational). All the speakers focused solely on university attainment, which the facts do not support. As I wrote last year, we are first only when we include colleges and polytechnics; we are 11th (now 12th I believe) for university attainment. We need to recognize the role of college and polytechnic education in Canada, and work toward better integration of our capacity to strengthen our economy through our industry-focused programs. It's worth noting that, in the 9 polytechnics, we educate half a million people per year (25% FT, 75% PT), and that 20-22% of these people already have a university degree.

Barbara Stymiest, RBC, Group Head, Strategy, Treasury & Corporate Services, gave a very good introductory speech on the need to engage industry in R&D so that government does not drive innovation in the economy. Governments have a role in promoting and providing open and active environments to encourage innovation and the sharing of ideas. This is the basic premise of applied research and experimental development. As Stymiest put it: "We need to train our business people, researchers and government people to be entrepreneurs, not just employees." We need more private sector engagement and leadership to drive innovation from the demand side, rather than government's supply side or providing the talent pool for the private sector.
We can call this demand-driven innovation, which includes user-driven innovation and the engagement of producers and consumers in the diffusion of innovation.

Secretary General Gurria outlined the OECD's perspective on "green growth" a theme of the conference. Green growth is the only responsible growth, he said: It's not a matter of austerity versus growth; rather, it's a matter of responsible growth, and this growth is green growth. To this end, all OECD member states must identify the skills learners need and what skills the economy needs for future growth. There is "untapped potential" in all areas of the green economy, and our education systems need to encourage innovation skills with an eye toward sustainability broadly in order to realize future markets and opportunities that will continue to develop world wide. This points to a differential between what employers want and what employers need. GBC's work in this area is notable, as we are providing employers the employees they need with the requisite skills. We need to push further as a country and ensure our employers can recognize the need to invest in the skills for the future as well.

This last point was made very forcefully by most of the speakers I heard at the conference. It further supports the government's (and the education sector's) role on the supply side of the innovation economy, which includes encouraging business innovation as well as being the compass on the growth potential of the future. The panel discussion on Innovation for Growth addressed this directly. The speakers were Alistair Nolan, Senior Economist, Structural Policy Division, OECD, Chad Gaffield, President, Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and Amit Chakma, president of the University of Western Ontario.

Nolan outlined the OECD's innovation strategy and focused on the "intangibles issue" - those components of an innovation system that are not easily measured or articulated (like the soft skills GBC provides for example). Measuring innovation is imprecise, Nolan told the audience, and we face the necessary challenge of decoupling innovation from resource depletion. For example, patents are only one way to measure R&D output. Digital business models, art, design trademarks are increasingly more important for realizing latent innovation potential. "Entrepreneurship serves as a carrier for innovation and innovative ideas" Nolan said, and "public research institutions require reform to enhance and encourage R&D links with firms." These statements echo many ideas posited by Polytechnics Canada at the recent annual conference, where we focused on innovation and entrepreneurship skills development, and our role in fostering business innovation. On this front, according to Nolan, "we need to understand more about the complex trade offs in public R&D commercialization and firms." This means a more thorough understanding of what kinds of R&D investments translate more effectively into downstream innovation uptake. This is the clutch of innovation.

UWO's Chakma spoke directly about the supply side of innovation, confining his remarks to the university sector, but he did call for a "national project" whereby we direct science into certain sectors. This is a positive view of Canada's limited capacity to be all things to all areas of science. While we can encourage innovation and R&D into any and all areas, we would do well to be proactive in our spending to ensure we can maximize future potential and play to our strengths.

SSHRC President Chad Gaffield gave an overview of people-centred innovation, a topic I've been promoting since I first heard Gaffield speak on this topic last year. Gaffield reminded the audience that there is no longer a linear flow of idea to invention to the market. we are moving into a multi-directional flow of ideas (c.f. user-driven innovation) that is a transition from making (20th Century) to using (21st Century). My post a while back on thinking, making and innovation literacy points to the recent Globe article that outlines the need for a more nuanced approach to skills, including the science, technology engineering and math mixed with social sciences, humanities and the arts and design. All are necessary for increasing our innovation and entrepreneurship capacity. Integration and connecting digital technology, content and literacies, and business innovation and social innovation are core aspects of a 21st century people-centred innovation. People-centred innovation is about demand, not supply Gaffield reminded us.

Kevin Lynch's lunch time keynote was instructive here as well. Echoing comments he made at the Incremental Innovation conference a couple of weeks ago, Lynch reminded the audience that "pervasive globalization is both the opportunity and the challenge of the present age." The OECD is key to global guidance and Canadian policy setting in an interconnected, global innovation economy. It is the charting of the future course that the OECD speaks to, informing government policy as to what's next in the global economy.

Budget 2.0 Supports Innovation [reprise]

2011-06-06T16:15:00.000-05:00

Today's federal budget is a reprise of the applied research and innovation supports and continues the important work Canada's colleges and polytechnics do to support industry innovation. Notably, new funding is as outlined in the first iteration of the budget:

$80M in new funding for IRAP to link businesses with colleges
Supporting 30 new Industrial Research Chairs at colleges with $3 million in 2011–12 and $5 million a year on a permanent basis starting in 2012–13.
Allocating $12 million over five years, starting in 2011–12, through the Idea to Innovation program to support joint college-university commercialization projects.

Both the ACCC and Polytechnics Canada have worked hard with our industry partners to show the value proposition that college and polytechnic applied research brings to the Canadian innovation system. These are important structural changes that will have positive downstream social and economic productivity effects.

As an enabler of the innovation economy, George Brown College is committed to supporting business innovation, and will be utilizing these new funding opportunities to further help build a robust and complementary innovation system in Canada.

What employers want; What employers need

2011-05-28T10:24:00.003-05:00

How Next Happens: Building our Economy through Incremental Innovation was held this past week in Toronto, and featured many excellent speakers on the need for an innovation policy in Canada. A paper was produced to spur discussion, linked here. MRI Minister Glen Murray opened the day, reminding us that "disruptive innovation is the exception; incremental innovation is the rule." This point is not often articulated, and the day's speakers impressed with a focus on the economic and social value of incremental innovation, which is responsible for most innovation productivity.

Minister Murray posited "innovation has replaced production as the primary driver of wealth creation and productivity," and that our collective failure to embrace this and the value of incremental innovation is one of Canada's failures. But this can be corrected, and the day's speakers outlined useful ways forward in this regard.

One way to do this is to teach innovation. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, says we should start this at the secondary level. To one point raised in the audience about innovation being unteachable, Martin replied: it's not unteachable; it's just not taught. He's right. It is this gap that we in the colleges and polytechnics are trying to fill with applied research and educational programs that teach innovation literacy - a constellation of skills that cohere around job-specific capabilities and enhance these with critical thinking and problem solving. As noted in the Polytechnics annual conference summary, the sector councils understand the need for these sorts of innovation skills, even when Canadian employers may not. This is the role of government policy as outlined in the "How Next Happens" event: provide leadership around innovation and entrepreneurship, and create an innovation policy that focuses on business innovation and helping firms plan for the future.

It was Roger Martin who presented good data on what he calls Canada's invention policy. That is, if you examine what the granting councils promote, they focus on invention, not innovation, and certainly not incremental innovation. Bill Mantel, ADM of MRI, did make the point that colleges, notably through the MRI-sponsored Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII), do a lot to help firms with incremental innovation. More of this is needed to increase Canadian productivity. Mantel put this very well: "if you're going to talk about innovation, you have to talk about companies." CONII is an excellent model, Mantel told the audience, for working with SMEs and getting them to the right resource to help them innovate. The focus on firms is what will drive our future productivity. Invention from our world-class research labs is important, but focusing on what we can do to enable firms to innovate will be what lifts us out of our innovation nosedive.

Peter Nicholson, of the Council of Canadian Academies, offered an excellent quadrant analysis of invention and diffusion. I've replicated this below. He grounded his discussion in a review of multifactor productivity and a point encapsulated by a good quotation from Zvi Griliches: "Most of the economy is quite far away from the boundaries of the current state of knowledge." That is, the State of the Art (upper right quadrant) is where most value is achieved by society for any given innovation, and this is where we need to move. This means encouraging firms to innovate, and linking our educational system to sponsoring innovation through applied research, but also through offering relevant educational programs that promote and foster innovation, entrepreneurship, and a move to the state of the art.

Diffusion of innovation model: P Nicholson

Kevin Lynch outlined four principles that should guide our approach to an innovation policy and improving productivity:

Competitiveness is changing
The globe is restructuring
There is now "great global talent hunt"
Information is the new global currency

Lynch's point is that Canada needs to adopt information-driven competition - to use global benchmarking to drive innovation and productivity. We need to make explicit efforts on figuring out where we are (for example, within Nicholson's quadrant) and make every effort to move to where society gets the most value. Perrin Beatty summarized the day's discussion succinctly, saying as a society we have not put enough emphasis on the need for continual innovation. Our firms - and our workforce - needs to be able to understand the need for incremental innovation and its role in fostering improved productivity A challenge noted was that these concepts need to be made relevant - and resonant - with the Canadian public.

What does this mean for college and polytechnic education in Canada, and indeed the entire post secondary education (PSE) system? It means focusing on offering programs that equip graduates for work in today's and tomorrow's innovation economy. It means understanding that employers want graduates with the skills to do today's jobs, and helping them understand the need for skills for tomorrow's jobs. Governments are instructive and do lead here, but can only do so much. The PSE system has a job to do in educating employers on what is needed to encourage greater innovation and productivity across the economy.

George Brown College excels at providing graduates with job-ready skills. By equipping our graduates with innovation literacy, gained through applied learning and practical research and innovation projects, we are giving the economy the skills employers need. Our collective public education mission is therefore two-fold: to educate the students that come to us for job skills and career pathways, as well as to educate employers on the need for adopting and adapting innovation and the skills required to future proof Canadian industry. The future of Canadian productivity is a team effort.

George Brown College student wins OCE Discovery video contest

2011-05-25T04:37:00.001-05:00

Edward Wong, GBC CCET student, won the OCE Connections video contest last week at the OCE Discovery conference.

Edward's video beat out competitors from universities and colleges across Ontario. Edward received $2500 for his win, and was lauded for his efforts. See the awards presentation video here - Edward is on at 3:47. We had two others in contention: the Portable wind generator, and Resilient City.

GBC's booth at the conference enjoyed a distinct increase in visitors after Edward's win; many people came by to learn more about the vertical axis wind turbine innovation project and to speak to Edward and his colleagues - including CCET professors Leo Salemi and Tyler Krimmel - about their work with industry partner Green Syndications. Video from the event, including MRI Minister Glen Murray's luncheon and awards ceremony speech, is available on the OCE website.

The OCE Discovery is the premiere event showcasing academic/industry innovation in Ontario and Canada. The GBC applied research team did an excellent job of organizing an outstanding multimedia presentation. Faculty members, staff and students from CCET, CHCA, and BAD were present with our industry partners showcasing many of the applied research and innovation projects conducted across the college. Attendees saw first hand what innovation looks like in Ontario's colleges and universities.

Please join me in congratulating Edward and the rest of the VAWT team, as well as all of the faculty, students and applied research staff who made a significant effort to mark us on the innovation map.

George Brown College Research Labs: Enabling the Innovation Economy

Thinking, making, and innovation literacy

2011-05-11T06:25:00.000-05:00

The Globe's latest article on education in Canada provides a useful reference to our ongoing discussion on credentialism, differentiation and instrumentality. Creeping crendentialism is evident as art schools now offer undergraduate degrees - the article outlines the difference between degrees (study) and apprenticeship into art (practice). This is not a bad thing in and of itself. An additive approach to education and fostering innovation and entrepreneurial thinking in all areas of education will better enable Canada to enhance productivity. Art schools in particular represent a key facet of enhancing our wider industrial capacity to leverage design talent in business innovation. This is not something we have done much of to date in this country.

Differentiation in education is an idea gaining credence, as we move away from a one size fits all approach to developing educational pathways that fit labour market needs and the needs of students seeking to find their place(s) in the national economy. That is, enabling people to access credentials in an additive fashion, integrated in work, and with the capacity to return to education to retrain, reschool, and renew as the labour market itself evolves and industry shifts over time. And, related to the point above about design, there is nothing wrong with instrumentality - the directed leveraging of talent (design, artistic) into improving business innovation. "Applied talent" is one way we could describe this, and this does not sully the purity of art as expression, but rather recognizes that art and design have a place in the world of business innovation. As Sara Diamond, president of OCAD University says: “[Graduates] need to be thinkers who are highly adaptable as well as makers.” This is the essence of instilling innovation literacy in graduates: being able to add value to innovation and entrepreneurial activities.

And speaking of innovation and entrepreneurship, the proceedings of the Polytechnics Canada Annual Conference are available here. There are lots of good points - see in particular the opening address by BCIT President Don Wright, who offers some salient predictions on future directions in education. This is part of moving the conversation on education forward. We need a collective courage to really examine the premise of our education system as we redefine it for the 21st century.

Polytechnics and skills for the innovation economy

2011-05-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days have seen some interesting articles in the Globe and Mail about postsecondary education and the rise of college and polytechnic credentials. The latest one refers to polytechnics and colleges and our role as finishing schools for those graduating university with BAs in need of work related context. The debate here is about the relative utility of a BA, and while an interesting argument, the focus on how polytechnics and colleges can offer post-graduate programs to give graduates practical job skills on top of these BAs is most relevant. As Rick Miner puts it in today's article, if we had a fully articulated postsecondary education system with full transferability, then we would better be able to give students more seamless education in less time, and for less money invested overall.

These points were made very clearly at the Polytechnics Canada Annual Meeting last week hosted by BCIT. As I noted in my brief summation, our focus on innovation and entrepreneurial skills, labour market mobility and credential laddering is pushing forward a necessary conversation in Canadian postsecondary education. A lot of the discussion focused on the "context skills" commensurate with working in teams and for greater workplace productivity. We know these as a group of skills we call innovation literacy, and it was good to see so many of our industry speakers calling for the integration of these skills. The Plenary Panel: "Start-up Canada: Building entrepreneurs through polytechnic education" featured a group of speakers (myself included) who had a very engaging discussion on the opportunity we have as a country to chart a course of differentiated education that is "outside in" focused, rather than "inside out." By this I mean we can offer laddered credentials, integrated within applied workplace projects (such as we do with applied research and capstone projects), that are focused on what employers need, and the needs of those seeking skills, training and education to become full participants in the knowledge economy. We can make a bold statement with education delivery in this regard, and help transform Canadian education for the 21st century. This transformation integrates science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills with nonSTEM skills, realizing that a people-centred innovation and the innovation economy requires us to remain flexible and nimble in our approach to innovation and entrepreneurship more generally.

And this leads nicely into the summation of the innovation and entrepreneurship session I moderated at the conference. The group landed on the following three priorities:

1. Integration
- of innovation and entrepreneurship skills in all PolyCan programs - start early, not just capstone, but foundation of programs
- ensure graduates understand the importance and relevance of I.E. skills
- of STEM/nonSTEM skills across curricula (inclusion of technical, soft, and context skills
- of benefits to industry in core messaging

2. Harmonization
- of messaging with sector councils and industry, government and community audiences, and other PSE advocacy organizations to jointly advocate for innovation and entrepreneurship skills, importance, and retraining/ongoing education needs of workforce

3. Differentiation
- between innovation and entrepreneurship
- in our focus on applied research - switch from outputs to outcomes - benefits to industry, other audiences
- in PolyCan programs - make a bold shift to lead the way in redefining innovation, entrepreneurship and links to education

These are good thoughts for this day, or for any day, as we work together to redefine education for the innovation economy.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Skills for the innovation economy

2011-05-05T19:11:00.000-05:00

Today at the Polytechnics Canada Annual Meeting we had a very good discussion on the evolution of polytechnic education, applied research and the links to social and economic productivity. Specifically, we addressed the following topics:

Innovation and entrepreneurial skills and their benefits for graduates, industry and Canadian society
Applied research in curricula as one avenue of “learning by doing”
Unlocking the innovation potential across the educational continuum

Our focus was on building our role as innovation intermediaries, as conduits for enhancing industry capacity to innovate, and on focusing on the diffusion of innovation and entrepreneurship. We discussed a wide concept of innovation, many points of which I have addressed here in the past, and expressed as a word cloud below:

Our opportunity is to define Canadian innovation, and work with other actors in the education system to create an innovation value chain that prepares graduates for the world of work today, as well as tomorrow.

GBC joins PMH in Food Fight for Health

2011-05-04T18:29:00.000-05:00

George Brown College has joined forces with Princess Margaret Hospital in the Food Fight for Health. Go to this site to vote for our cause:

Victory will be achieved when an army of Youth Touched by Cancer (YTC), food fighting warriors, embraces healthy living habits. Our mission is led by a vibrant team including a trained chef, registered dietitian, and dedicated volunteers. The enthusiasm in the kitchen is contagious, motivating our food fighters to adopt new practices both in their own lives and to share with their communities. Week-long training camps for YTC will provide the skills and knowledge for a new generation of healthy living.

If we win the vote we will get the funding needed to launch this worthy initiative, which builds on our successful partnership in creating healthy recipes for cancer survivors.

Vote early; vote often!

ORION Summit 2011 a Success

2011-04-25T12:22:00.003-05:00

The ORION 2011 Summit - Innovation Needs A Backbone - was one week ago, and I've been remiss in posting some thoughts on it (other than through Twitter). In short, it was a very good conference that included many excellent discussions on the future of RD&I: research, development and innovation, as enabled by high bandwidth technologies such as ORION. On Monday I convened a panel discussion on the role of colleges in applied research. It was an excellent overview from knowledgeable people who are focused on improving our record on innovation and productivity. The role of student training was nicely discussed - reflecting earlier thoughts on the multiplier effect of preparing a future workforce with innovation literacy skills.

Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS, introduced day 2, reminding us to galvanize our local assets as highly qualified and skilled people are highly mobile globally. Significantly, she said we need to generate "stickiness": an affinity to Canada that will help get our best ideas into the market. During a panel convened by MRI on the new Research and Innovation Centres (RICs), one panelist commented on the need for virtual density - the way in which RICs and all actors in the innovation ecosystem are connected through ORION to provide any point of access service to discoveries seeking market entry from university labs and/or firms seeking innovation support. The notion of distributed research clusters is one that Canada can particularly excel at, given our wide geography and distributed expertise. Linking talent across the country to provide innovation support services - a point GBC made in our submission to the R&D Review Panel - is one way we can build Canadian capacity to accelerate innovation, and enable the innovation economy generally. And there is good precedent for this: have a look at a recent study on clusters in Norway referenced in this Blogging Innovation post: Innovation Requires Global Pipelines Not Local Clusters.

It's worth providing the following in full; it's food for thought:

The results indicate that firm innovation in urban Norway is mainly driven by global pipelines, rather than local interaction. The most innovative – both in terms of basic product innovation and radical product and process innovation – firms are those with a greater diversity of international partners. Local and even national interaction seems to be irrelevant for innovation. Furthermore, the individual attitudes of the manager make a difference for the firms’ engagement with the outside world. More open-minded managers have a greater diversity of international partners and rely more on global pipelines, whereas those with higher levels of regional trust depend on local and, to a lesser extent, national contacts. (p5)

When local interaction does not suffice: Sources of firm innovation in urban Norway, by Rune Dahl Fitjar and Andrés Rodríguez-Pos.

Dr Gilles Patry, President of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, gave an overview of infrastructure supports CFI provides, including the new College-Industry Innovation Fund. He reminded the audience that "it's people not organizations who innovate." Innovation is a social act; promoting people-centred innovation is a key focus for those of us engaged in supporting Canada's innovation system. Patry outlined three issues:
1. We are in a global war for talent (see Ilse Treurnicht's comment, above)
2. Innovation is a national agenda
3. The power of networks.
Patry's point is that we need to develop an entrepreneurial, risk-taking culture as part of a national innovation strategy, and this should be enabled by the training of skilled workers through research-based education. Part of this involves developing what Matt Ratto, UofT faculty member and founder of the Academic-Private-Public consortium DDMIT lab calls "interactional expertise." This is a great term useful for describing the kinds of amorphous skills we can associate with people-centred innovation and innovation literacy - the capacity for adoptation and development for in situ innovation.

GBC Students to showcase OCE Connections Projects

2011-04-13T08:42:00.002-05:00

Join George Brown College faculty, students, and industry partners on Tuesday 3 May at the Casa Loma campus (see map) to learn about the applied research and innovation projects conducted this past year as part of the Ontario Centres of Excellence Connections program. For those that cannot attend the whole day, you are invited to join us for the Networking Lunch to learn more about George Brown College's applied research and innovation industry support services, and what our talented faculty and students can do to enable your innovation.

Please RSVP to research@georgebrown.ca.

10:00 AM Opening Remarks
10:10 AM Sustainable Housing Design in Earthquake and Tsunami Zones
10:25 AM Prototype of a Wheelchair Hockey Stick
10:40 AM The Design, Implementation and Integration of IP PBX and Google services
10:55 AM City Systems Year Two: Universally Local Urban Revitalization Strategies
11:10 AM BREAK
11:25 AM Genetic Variation and Fat Taste
11:40 AM Nuevo Chiflon del Diablo: Sustainable Tourism Development in a Post‐Mining Economy
11:55 AM Portable Wind Powered Generator Test Bed
12:10 PM Integrated Energy and Home Automation Systems
12:25PM NETWORKING LUNCH
1:25 PM Afternoon Opening Remarks
1:40 PM Heart Monitoring Vest – Female Vest Prototype
1:55 PM Comparative Pectin Analysis for Mill Pond Fruit Butters
2:10 PM Community in a Container: Community Systems Exploration and Design
2:25 PM Powered Water Pump for Developing Countries
2:40 PM BREAK
2:55 PM Remote Operated Vehicle Test Bed
3:10 PM IP PBX and Application for VoIP Based Home Automation System
3:25 PM Resilient Cities: Exploring Community Resiliency After Natural and Man‐made Disasters
3:40 PM Vertical Axis Wind Turbine: From Proof of Concept to Production
3:55 PM Closing Remarks

Entrepreneurship, or, Enabling the Innovation Economy

2011-04-13T06:21:00.001-05:00

I've been giving innovation and entrepreneurship a lot of thought - particularly since we are having a whole day on this at the Polytechnics Canada conference on 5 and 6 May. Part of the conference will be working sessions designed to articulate solutions that leverages all aspects of the education and innovation system and the innovation skills needed for Canadian productivity.

One thing that I came across recently that is of interest to anyone in this space: Skills for Innovation and Research (2011) OECD Publishing. There is a good definition of entrepreneurship, including the summation: "creativity seems to be a necessary but not sufficient precondition of entrepreneurship." To this I would add the ability to analyze, think critically, and focus on human-centred product or process development and what I have called "adoptation"--the ability to adopt and adapt: precepts central to innovation literacy.

I've written before on the double helix nature of the multiplier effect needed for our "innovation DNA": the need for both graduate/undergraduate trained innovators with complementary STEM/nonSTEM skills as essential for productive innovation. A mixture of skills is needed for innovation, but this mixture is always in flux. There is no static model for what constitutes the optimal mix of skills as these are variable and according to the need of innovation-in-context. This is a very important point as it means there is no magic bullet solution for fixing innovation. Rather, we need a constant commitment to reinvention and an additive ability to learn, to translate (user needs to design specifications, for example), to embrace change and adoptation. These skills are additive both in terms of what it means to an individual and in terms of the multiplier effect in work groups or teams, but also in the ongoing iterative nature of innovation that builds on histories of innovation and invention.

OECD's Skills for Innovation and Research tells us that there are several influencers of what innovation skill sets are required. These include: "the stage of innovation, the type of innovation, and the industry structure," to which I would add industry context vis-à-vis other industries. This last point refers to concepts such as open innovation, participatory innovation, and the ability for firms to collaborate across industries. Here again, the OECD Innovation Strategy skills show the value of nonSTEM skills as a complement to STEM skills in providing ways to develop business ideas based on science. Technical skills are the substrate on which innovation is based. We must assume this "ground", and look at the ancillary skills we associate with innovation literacy as being the "figure" of innovation. This figure is the entrepreneur, set against the backdrop of innovation-in-context.

One thing this OECD document states is that "More evidence is needed on the relationship between specific skill groups and innovation" (12). I've not mentioned this in this space before, but GBC is leading a large scale study on Measuring Innovation Literacy that will do this - the first of its kind in Canada. I'll post more on this study later, but our hypothesis is that we will show the value of the double multiplier, particularly the STEM/nonSTEM mix aspect - to be crucial to improving our innovative capacity as a country. In the Skills for Innovation section (p31 ff) we see the difficulty of coming up with a taxonomy of sorts to define what is needed to foster innovation. This is our collective opportunity to define the genre of innovation in Canada. That is, a complementary mix of skills is needed, including a solid grounding in STEM disciplines. But innovation leadership requires more than this. STEM grads need business training in order to fully realize their place in the innovation economy. Managerial and entrepreneurial talent are the purview of nonSTEM disciplines. This does not get enough discussion. Pundits typically decry the lack of STEM skills in North American society - and to be sure we need scientific literacy firmly grounded in our educational psyche. But we must not ignore the nonSTEM disciplines as adding a lot of value to the mix. Again, this is not a zero-sum game. (As an aside, here are two Twitter posts on both sides of this equation: People-Centred Innovation: WSJ.com - Vint Cerf's Opinion: How to Fire Up U.S. Innovation and Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities. My opinion: neither is right; neither is wrong.)

Education is the single biggest element of innovation here - providing it, encouraging it, and supporting it life-long, and life-wide. What I am arguing for here is an "entrepreneurial upskilling" of STEM/nonSTEM talent alike, as well as the need for innovation literacy at all levels of the workforce. Complementarity of education systems - university, polytechnic and college - is essential. Here the OECD tells us that universities are adept at disruptive innovation and basic research, whereas the vocational college/polytechnic is adept at incremental innovation - the applied research and experimental development parts of the innovation value chain. Both are necessary. This complementary linkage of differentiated actors in the educational/innovation system was nicely highlighted in the discussion that followed my appearance, alongside Queen's University's John Molloy at the R&D Review Panel last December.

The Public Policy Forum recently published Innovation Next: Leading Canada to Greater Productivity, Competitiveness and Resilience, which further underscores the need for bold leadership across and within sectors and silos. We are all oriented to the same goal of increasing and improving our productivity. Our discussion in May will be drawing on these insights and leveraging the group convened to push this agenda forward. Entrepreneurship is key to enabling the innovation economy. The responsibility for improving innovation does not rest on any one system actor, group, or set of disciplines. Rather, it is in the mix of a people-centred, participatory innovation.

MEIC launches new Board, charts the future of innovation

2011-04-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I attended the inaugural Annual general Meeting of the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre (MEIC). The MEIC is led by OCAD, and is bringing together public and private organizations to support and sponsor innovation in the mobile technology space. The AGM featured presentations from some nifty mobile start ups - including one called Guardly that is doing some cool social media stuff with emergency alerting and the like. The AGM featured the election of a Board of Directors - myself included - and I am looking forward to working with my colleagues to move our innovation agenda forward. MEIC has really been leading in the mobile innovation space for the past several years, and what's next promises even more excitement. Stay tuned.

Polytechnics Canada welcomes NAIT as new member

2011-04-04T06:52:00.002-05:00

Today marks the return of the Northern Alberta institute of Technology to the Polytechnics Canada fold. Read the press release here.

Desgning the Future: World IP Day

2011-04-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is participating in Designing the Future: World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April, with events all month. CIPO offers Canadian schools access to good case studies on IP issues. These are excellent resources relevant for anyone learning about or working (or about to work) with applied research where IP will arise (read: likely all). Understanding IP - and the rights and responsibilities we all have when working on all forms of research - is an important component of innovation literacy.
See www.cipo.ic.gc.ca/worldipday.

George Brown College awarded NSERC ARTI funding

2011-03-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

George Brown College has been awarded NSERC funding under the Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants program. $150000 has been awarded to Winnie Chiu, of the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts to advance the CHCA Culinary Innovation Institute food research program. Professor Leo Salemi of the Centre for Construction and Engineering Technology has been awarded $85000 for equipment for his green energy innovations: the “Vertical Axis Wind Turbine: From Concept to Commercialization.”

Applied research and the goals of education

2011-03-29T05:45:00.002-05:00

Lat Friday I attended a very interesting and informative event: Brain Power - Science Meets Media. The event was sponsored by NSERC and organized by Dr Sylvain Moreno, lead scientist at Rotman Research Institute. George Brown College collaborated with Dr Moreno on the development of MusiQKids: our Game Design faculty and students worked on the prototype for this innovative product. The focus of Brain Power was on the application of brain science to education, and the use of innovative media to increase educational development. It was a fascinating look into the mind and how leading scientists are working toward building better educational systems through brain science application. Also presenting at the event was Dr Tom Chau, with whom GBC faculty (and CCET Innovation Coordinator) Jamie McIntyre collaborated several years ago on the development of a microelectronic-enabled pen designed to give feedback on a child's ability to grip and so use the pen. Projects like these show the value of articulating complementary expertise between universities and colleges. The application of brain research to education as a theme supports the judicious allocation of resources into our education system in order to maximize effectiveness - a worthy goal. As attendee John Godfrey, head of the Toronto French School put it: "The goal of education is to make people privately happy and publicly useful."

More on the Multiplier Effect

2011-03-25T06:39:00.000-05:00

As per recent posts on the multiplier effect, an entire workforce with innovation literacy puts complementary skills to work on common innovation issues. Students develop innovation skills through applied research project work as linked to workforce skills and education. The articulation of workforce skills development and innovation literacy is made in the OECD report on Workforce Skills and Innovation referenced here in earlier posts (this report is a must-read for anyone engaged in education and innovation). The Globe and Mail today published the Report on Campus Research 2011, which includes many good stories on applied research at Canadian colleges, and basic research from our universities. The online version has a few other stories, including an interview I did in "How Canada can get more R&D bang for its buck." I refer to the multiplier effect of using granting council funding for the development of HQSP to more broadly spur the diffusion of innovation. The point here is that we need STEM and nonSTEM working together. We can expand the idea of the multiplier effect - which I've previously used this to refer to graduate and undergraduate students with innovation literacy working together for improved productivity - to include the idea of adding value to work teams via multidisciplinary collaborative problem solving. This point is alluded to in Budget 2011, where funding for both NSERC and SSHRC can work together to promote the college research chairs through a mixture of business and technical skill-sets oriented to applied research problem solving.

Innovation, entrepreneurship and future-proofing Canadian productivity

2011-03-24T19:11:00.001-05:00

I've just returned from the ACCC Applied Research Symposium, which featured excellent discussions, dialog and debate on the state of college applied research, our collaborative efforts at building our capacity, and how we can work together - and with other actors in the Canadian innovation system - to ensure growth in Canadian productivity. This is the third year I've attended the symposium, and I am very impressed with how we've come together. Innovation support continues to evolve across the college sector.

Panelists and presenters gave delegates a good overview of policy needs as well as practical measures that will build system capacity and let us show our strengths in supporting business innovation. The Symposium was nicely foregrounded against the Budget backdrop, which recognizes the key role colleges play in supporting the diffusion of innovation across the country. As the highlights in my last post show, the recognition achieved in the Budget is a strong signal of the applied research advantage offered by colleges and polytechnics. As I've noted earlier, our advantage is our ability to integrate and link workforce education and innovation literacy. The ACCC and Polytechnics Canada press releases show the value proposition we offer to Canadian innovation.

The ACCC Symposium featured speakers from NSERC, SSHRC and CFI, all of whom spoke about the crucial support these granting councils give to the college applied research sector. The Innovation Enhancement Program (formerly CCIP) administered by NSERC on behalf of the Tri-Council is a key vehicle for developing the applied research capacity in Canada. The CFI's new College Industry Innovation Program, launched last December, is helping us to collectively modernize the Canadian college system while building industry innovation support linked closely with education. SSHRC is a key vehicle for linking applied research and business innovation with downstream social and economic productivity improvement. Innovation is a social act, and it is the human sciences that enable us to bridge technical disciplines with business and entrepreneurship--and to develop "user-oriented" participatory innovation with wide applicability.

The Budget shows we all have a role in ensuring that Canada remains competitive and productivity increases. Key here is the development of innovation and entrepreneurship skills - people-centred innovation and the balancing of STEM and non-STEM skills and attributes essential to building a healthy and robust innovation economy in Canada. More on this in the days and weeks to come: the development of an entire workforce with innovation literacy requires an "and" approach - not a zero-sum this-or-that approach, but rather this and that--complementary research capacity working to build complementary skill-sets to future-proof Canadian productivity.

Budget 2011 has strong support for applied research, complementarity

2011-03-22T15:47:00.001-05:00

Budget 2011 includes many measures that will strengthen Canada's capacity to compete by leveraging the college and polytechnic applied research layer of the Canadian innovation system. I'll post details and analysis later, but for now here is a highlight:

Strong focus on investments in education and R&D, following leading OECD indicators
$80M in new funding for IRAP to link businesses with colleges
$37M each year ongoing for the Tri-Council
$10M for Indirect Costs
Most significantly: Supporting 30 new Industrial Research Chairs at colleges with $3 million in 2011–12 and $5 million a year on a permanent basis starting in 2012–13.
Allocating $12 million over five years, starting in 2011–12, through the Idea to Innovation program to support joint college-university commercialization projects.
Good support for international applied research through a Canada-India Research Centre of Excellence, linked to an international education strategy
Digital Economy strategy supports, including for business innovation and content creation

"no one is as smart as everyone": crowdsourcing and virtual research clusters

2011-03-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

Here is a good article that looks at crowdsourcing with a keen discussion on its benefits and limitations. An open source approach to IP generation and innovation generally is clearly the model for building innovation systems such as what I've proposed in the discussion about a virtual or distributed research cluster, using the precepts of open innovation. But the point made in this article about balancing crowdsourcing with the encouragement of individuals is very trenchant. This illustrates the principle of innovation literacy at all levels of the workforce, what we call the multiplier effect. Conspicuous contribution in open innovation systems is the new normal for the innovation economy.

ORION Summit to promote Open Innovation

2011-03-15T07:28:00.002-05:00

Mark your calendar for the annual ORION Summit, Innovation Needs a Backbone, being held at the MaRS Centre on 18-19 April 2011. This annual event convenes "distinguished Canadian and global leaders and innovators in science, research, education and information technology to discuss and showcase new and innovative technologies that are transforming the way we conduct research, collaborate, teach and learn." George Brown College President Anne Sado, who is also the Chair of the ORION Board of Directors, is giving the welcome address.

I am convening a panel discussion on "Colleges & Applied Research: Key to Innovation Success in Ontario." Panelists include:

John Breakey, CEO, Unis Lumin; Chair, Industry Advisory Committee, Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation
Darren Lawless, Dean, Sheridan Applied Research
Ken Ono, Vice President, NexJ Systems
Dan Munro, Senior Research Associate, Conference Board of Canada

Each will speak to their experiences with the start-up nature of college applied research, success factors and industry engagement, and the role of engaging students and mobilizing our institutions for a future workforce enabled by innovation literacy. We'll end with a discussion about virtual research clusters, such as can be enabled by ORION, that would let us address industry needs where and when needed through advanced collaboration and communication technologies. A virtual R&D cluster would enable distributed work teams to collaboratively address R&D needs emerging from basic research labs for market entry, as well as addressing the applied research needs of industry. Such a portal is a point made in George Brown College's submission to the R&D Panel, wherein we advocate for an articulated innovation system with an "any point of contact" approach to industry innovation support. This is a logical extension of what CONII does, but would take it one step further and leverage the capabilities of the ORION network and offer tools and protocols for triaging industry requests and mechanisms for fostering cooperation and collaboration.

Creating virtual "regions of knowledge" and crafting the Canadian innovation system as an open innovation network will have positive downstream productivity effects. The ORION backbone is a key enabler of this future, a point made very well in ORION CEO Darin Graham's talk to the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance last September.

Soft Landings and International Applied Research

2011-03-13T13:27:00.002-05:00

I traveled recently to Brazil as part of George Brown College's international education outreach. While there, I met with the research offices and faculty of three institutions with whom we are developing international education partnerships. Our core mandate of giving students applied research experience as a vital component of their education fits the Brazilian context very well. The development of innovation literacy is a global core competency for international economic and social development.

In 2004 Brazil enacted the Law of Innovation, an explicit attempt by the government of Brazil to foster business innovation and academic and industry partnerships. I was struck by the parallels with Brazil and Canada - each are encouraging academic-industry partnerships as mechanisms to foster productivity improvement and the diffusion of innovation across their national economies. Brazil's Law of Innovation offers funding and political support for business innovation as linked to academic knowledge transfer and expertise deployment.

The parallels between Canada's and Brazil's fostering of business innovation makes international education an attractive proposition for Brazilian students wishing to learn in Canada about how we promote innovation literacy through industry applied research. Students acquire innovation literacy and entrepreneurship as a by-product of the development of the core skills relevant to their job-ready programs. We have an incredible opportunity to learn from and with our Brazilian counterparts in the applied research space. Canada has perhaps more history of academic-industry collaborative applied research - this is something international students will gain through study in Canada, particularly if this study includes the opportunity to work on industry applied research. These students can then apply what they learned to Brazilian social and economic development. Canadian polytechnics and colleges can learn from the emergent nature of the Brazilian economy, and add value to applied research through a deeper understanding of contexts such as exists in Brazil. The sheer magnitude of Brazil's population makes their markets very attractive for Canadian companies. It is the opportunities in the Brazilian market, contiguous with providing education that will foster innovation throughout international study, that are key for international economic cooperation and development.

One institution I visited was the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), which is home to TechnoPUC - the technology transfer and business innovation arm of PUCRS. What impressed me most about TechnoPUCS - besides their impressive track record in a short time and the quality and number of partner firms working there - was their commitment to business innovation as a driver of social and economic productivity development. Most importantly, I learned about what they call the "soft landing" for companies seeking to enter Brazil's markets. This is an interesting and innovative approach to economic development, one that acknowledges the emergent role of Brazil's economy, and leverages the interests of academic institutions as oriented toward enabling international companies to understand and thus succeed in Brazil. There is a direct correlation between the idea of the soft landing in Brazil and conducting applied research using the principles of human-centred design. That is, both offer an avenue of applied research and social and economic development through keen understanding of local conditions that will enable success. This is a form of people-centred innovation laudable for its focus on the development and support of international companies and the development writ large of Brazil's economy, and so social infrastructure. This is a very forward-thinking approach that mobilizes the innovative capacity of academic institutions to support national productivity growth goals. It mirrors the instrumental approach we take to aiding business innovation through applied research here in Canada:

The key for college applied research is instrumentality, or the intentional application of applied research and innovation services to industry needs and contexts. This means that we are focused on addressing the industry problems faced by firms who are seeking to innovate and create new value in their sectors. We are an explicit instrument for addressing these industry problems, meaning that we respond to what is needed, fitting into the R&D continuum for latter stage innovation support.

CONII, and indeed the entire Ontario Network of Excellence, is similarly oriented to providing soft landings - and/or launchings - to Canadian companies. This concept is one that needs deployment on a national scale, something George Brown College and many others have pointed out in submissions to the R&D Review Panel.

The connection between national approaches to integrating business innovation within economic development activities and the connection to education, as noted above, are important here. Entire workforces equipped with innovation literacy are a main driver of national economies and a strong predictor of future productivity and innovation. The multiplier effect that college and polytechnic graduates provide to our own national workforce is a key component of the college and polytechnic advantage, and a signal opportunity for international students to learn from while studying here in Canada. The global innovation economy stands to benefit from this approach.

George Brown College supports emergency preparedness with Tenet and Bridgepoint

2011-03-10T11:09:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to a press release outlining an innovative project GBC Research is supporting. Tenet Computing and Bridgepoint Health are testing Tenet's Blackberry software for managing disasters. Our School of Emergency Management has been involved in supporting the project. The project has been funded through the NSERC College and Community Innovation Program and CONII.

George Brown College Research Collaboration in the News

2011-03-08T12:29:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to a recent press release on a project GBC Research is engaged in with Memotext. This is a great example of giving our students valuable innovation training while helping an industry partner address innovation challenges.

And while you're surfing the web, check out GBC's new website. GBC Research will be revamping our own pages (content, not look and feel) over the next while. Please feel free to send us your comments.

Productivity through Innovation: More on workforce skills and innovation

2011-02-26T09:56:00.000-05:00

The ACCC recently released Productivity through Innovation: Applied Research at Canada’s Colleges and Institutes. Key themes include the value proposition of college applied research, the instillation of innovation literacy in college students engaged in applied research, and the emergence of downstream indicators for social and economic productivity enhancements. The link between workforce skills, innovation literacy and productivity is a topic of great interest, and one I will be devoting a fair bit of time to in the months ahead as I noted earlier. I'll be presenting ideas on these issues, with a focus on the measurement of impacts, at two upcoming events: the ACCC Applied Research Symposium in Victoria, BC, 22-23 March 2011, and the Polytechnics Canada Annual Conference in Vancouver, BC, 5-6 May 2011.

A lot of my thinking on this topic has been spurred on by the OECD report on Workforce Skills and Innovation. As my previous post on this says, this report is the most significant data to date on the net effects of R&D and the diffusion of innovation. The Canadian innovation system will be well placed to capitalize on a participatory, people-centred innovation that focuses on the development of innovation literacy at all levels of the workforce, and the multiplier effect that results within industry when undergraduate-prepared students (from colleges and universities alike) are paired with those with graduate training. This is a very important point for all involved in R&D: it is not a zero sum game of choosing one over the other. Rather, acknowledging a fully integrated and complementary approach to fostering innovation lets all components of an innovation ecosystem play to their strengths. GBC made this point in our submission to the R&D Panel, as have others.

It bears repeating: All of us implicated in the Canadian innovation system have a responsibility - a response-ability - to step up and continue to work together with each other and other players in the system. We need to think past the immediate and see the longer term goals of improving social and economic prosperity. In these tumultuous and kinetic times, our productivity challenges demand this of us.

George Brown College's Submission to Expert Panel on Federal Support for R&D

2011-02-22T11:36:00.001-05:00

The George Brown College Submission to Expert Panel on Federal Support for R&D is available in full here. Our submission was developed in consultation with our Innovation Advisory Board. A summary of our most important recommendations is as follows:

The government should support the full range of R&D and innovation activities as defined by the OECD.
A Canadian innovation strategy is needed to support business innovation. This strategy should include leveraging post-secondary institutions (PSIs) for innovation support and access to R&D equipment.
Government should support clusters to support firms. Orient marketing, outreach and funding programs to the needs of industry and foster greater complementary linkages among all PSIs.
Expand the definition of highly qualified personnel and implement Conference Board of Canada recommendations on developing national innovation education requirements and linkages.
Continue and expand the suite of programs under the College and Community Innovation Program umbrella.
Streamline application processes and forms, encourage complementary PSI business innovation supports, and reduce overlap and increase cooperation among federal and provincial agencies.
Provide an “any point of entry” contact point for all involved in supporting business innovation.

We look forward to the final recommendations of the Panel.

College applied research and work force skills: our value proposition

2011-02-22T09:22:00.002-05:00

Last week Colleges Ontario convened an applied research symposium that featured students and industry speakers who outlined the college applied research value proposition. Michael Bloom of the Conference Board of Canada was the host, kicking off the day with a good context on the need for Canada to engage ore industry in applied R&D. The student speakers were a real highlight - each outlining what they have learned from their work on applied research projects as part of their college education.

This is the biggest point that emerged for me from the day. Our best way forward as a system is the integration of applied research in curricula, thereby teaching a wider workforce innovation literacy skills. The recent OECD article on workforce skills and innovation offers solid evidence for this integration. While many in the college system are advocating for commercialization chairs or applied research leaders, I believe our most promising way forward is to focus on how we mobilize multidisciplinary teams to solve industry R&D problems. These ideas are perhaps contiguous, but our strongest value proposition is not a focus on individual investigators, but on a more holistic "wikinomics" or participatory and open innovation approach. This means involving students in applied research as a core facet of their education. This will create more innovation literate graduates, thereby promoting the diffusion of innovation more widely. The net effects of innovation literacy at all levels of the workforce is the multiplier effect this can potentially have on all sectors of the economy. I'll be focusing more on this issue in the weeks and months ahead as part of the development of a large, multi-site research study George Brown College is leading on behalf of a large consortium of 19 partners.

Research lands at MaRS: GBC there with Tenet Computing

2011-02-10T07:12:00.000-05:00

George Brown College students and faculty presented at yesterday's launch of the MaRS Regional Innovation Centre, supporting our applied research work with Tenet Computing. George Brown College and Bridgepoint Health partnered with Tenet Computer Group Inc. to test and implement Tenet’s emergency management software. Tenet’s PINpoint™ for BlackBerry® application facilitates cooperation and coordination during emergencies by ensuring that users always have up-to-date information stored in their BlackBerry smartphones, including critical documents and contact lists. Funding for GBC's involvement is from our CCIP award.

The MaRS Regional Innovation Centre is part of the Ontario Network of Excellence - the Ontario Innovation System that support business innovation and market entry for academic inventions.

Reverse Innovation

2011-02-08T16:35:00.001-05:00

Here's an interesting look at the role of global markets and the diffusion of innovation. Reverse innovation refers to "trickle up" from the periphery to the centre where innovations come from under-developed nations and then enter developed nations. What is interesting about the HBR post is the realization of being on the "cusp of a new era" (as well as the posters claiming neo-colonial bias). Language aside, perhaps what this means is that we are seeing less one way innovations and better integration of global mindset and market places with more fluidity and flexibility. Or, to put it more simply, this is what people-centred innovation is really about. In my last post on the OECD workforce skills article (a must read for anyone in this space) I linked to the article which provides solid data on the prevalence of incremental innovation being key to increasing productivity, and the role that those with intermediate skills play in fostering innovation. Those of us working on technology design have seen how the "RWX" approach to has transformed the user experience from one of passive browsing to active interaction (not quite a tautology...) where the end-user is a viable and active contributor to the continual refinement and ongoing development of the technology itself. This is innovation as perpetual beta, what I have earlier coined as adoptation: the adoption/adaptation of innovation.

Interesting article on workforce skills and innovation

2011-02-02T14:46:00.000-05:00

The OECD has released an excellent overview of major themes relevant to workforce training and innovation.

This is one of the best papers I have read in a long while that articulates what we refer to as innovation literacy and the role of instilling this in our graduates, as well as the potential downstream effect on the economy of graduates so trained. Many topics of high relevance are touched on: the evolution of academic programming to meet labour market needs; the importance of training innovation-related competencies and what we in Ontario call essential employability skills; the role of innovation intermediaries in the overall economy - by this I mean our role in helping our industry partners to innovate, as well as the intermediary role that our graduates with innovation experience play in their future occupations; and the role of high performing organizations and the supports required to enable firms to innovate. There is very useful data on the relative percentage of types of R&D performed versus innovation in the economy (the bulk of business innovation is Development, not Research), and strong evidence cited to support the fact that the majority of innovation conducted is incremental, and is best enabled by innovation intermediaries - people with intermediate skills. A participatory, people-centred, open innovation is clearly enabled by education that supports the acquisition of advanced skills, education and training alongside those skills we include in innovation literacy. These data also show that firms that train and promote education of their work forces have clear competitive advantages.

This is well worth the read for anyone in the innovation system - firms, post-secondary institutions, and governments alike.

Generation Y and the innovation economy

2011-01-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

George Brown College President Anne Sado was joined at the Toronto Board of Trade yesterday by OCE CEO Tom Corr and Wind Mobile CEO Anthony Lacavera, to discuss the results of a recent study on Generation Y and the knowledge economy. The study, commissioned by George Brown College and conducted by Leger Marketing, offers interesting insights into a mismatch of expectations between Gen Y students and employers. There is much to be learned about aligning these expectations. Education is key to the diffusion of innovation. A key focus for us is on the development of what we call innovation literacy: communication skills, teamwork and the ability to develop ideas. And speaking of ideas, here's a short video on Where good ideas come from. It's worth a watch.

On innovation, education, and building

2011-01-26T20:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday US President Obama gave the State of the Nation address, focusing on the need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the world. The speech is worth a read if you didn't catch it. What strikes me most is the tone of cooperation and conciliation, and the similarities with the changes we are navigating in the innovation system in Canada, and our need to focus on complementarity. Working together toward common social and economic productivity issues is clearly the way to future prosperity. Partisan fighting over who got what is a shadow of the past. Imaging ourselves into the future is perhaps more difficult to do, but certainly more worthwhile.

Patents, innovation

2011-01-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

Here's some good news on the R&D front in terms of patents. One problem with this article is its equating of patents with innovation. Not all innovations are patented, or even patentable. A quick review of how the OECD defines innovation (product innovation; process innovation; marketing innovation and organisational innovation) shows that this is more in keeping with a people-centred approach to innovation.

Credit Transfer in Ontario

2011-01-17T07:32:00.002-05:00

George Brown College today hosts MTCU Minister John Molloy who will make an announcement of credit transfer in Ontario. An article in today's (or yesterday's if online) Globe provides some details and context about credit transfer and educational articulation. This is an absolutely necessary step for modernizing the post-secondary education system. The article notes BC, Alberta and Quebec as having strong, centralized credit transfer systems. The point of these modern education systems is that they enable the province to compete as a larger jurisdiction, enabling learners to progress through education and into the job market much more easily, thereby focusing on social and economic productivity over and above any single actor in the system. Educational complementarity thus executed will foster a better set of outputs for the economy generally, mirroring the "any point of entry" innovation system that, while inchoate, is streamlining business innovation for Ontario firms.

Here are some links to news items about the announcement:

Province makes it easier to move from college to university – or back.
parentcentral.ca
Greg Evans started to study film at Ryerson University, but had a change of heart and switched to social work at George Brown College in second year. ...

New credit-transfer system for Ontario students
CTV.ca
Anne Sado, president of George Brown College and a spokeswoman for Colleges Ontario, says she is eager for the program's implementation, but notes that ...

Colleges applaud credit transfer system
Canada NewsWire
"We look forward to this system becoming operational as soon as possible," said Anne Sado, president of George Brown College and member of the credit ...

Province aims to make transfering easier
Metro Canada - Ottawa
Anne Sado, president of George Brown College, said she is eager for the program's implementation, but notes that willing partners will be needed to make it ...

Three themes for Innovation in 2011

2011-01-10T19:20:00.001-05:00

This is an update from my last post of 2010 from the GBC Innovates! newsletter.

The past year has been an exceptionally good one for applied research: for polytechnics, and for colleges engaged in instigating industry innovation. There can be no debate that we need to increase productivity and our national capacity to innovate. Polytechnics and colleges involved in applied research will play a vital role in achieving this—and we’ve made strong gains in the past year. Increased government sponsorship is helping us to help industry and community partners innovate.

As George Brown College embarks on our Strategy 2020, it is worth noting that the three themes guiding our development are well enabled by applied research and innovation:

Partnerships – working with our partners on innovation activities gives our students good exposure to industry trends, and helps us attract investment in the college, both directly and indirectly, benefiting our students.
Innovation in teaching and learning – applied research is one form of innovation activity that we can help support. Students can engage with partners on problem solving as part of their course work, gaining credit, valuable experience, and developing innovation literacy: research, development, problem solving, leadership and entrepreneurial skills, along with the ability to recognize innovation in work contexts.
Field placements –we will enable our students to gain work and learning experience in real work contexts, often through working on applied research projects.

Our goal is to foster a culture of innovation at George Brown College and support ongoing teaching and learning experimentation, thereby promoting scholarship and innovation broadly.

For the year ahead, GBC Research has three themes:

The diffusion of innovation: our ability to be responsive to the innovation and productivity challenges is contingent on complementarity and cooperation. We work with our industry and community partners, and other educational institutions, to promote an innovation mindset throughout all areas that we teach and influence.
People-centred innovation: a grounded way to promote participatory innovation - our way of engaging students, faculty and our partners in mutually rewarding innovation activities that support student learning and partner problem-solving objectives. This fosters innovation literacy in our graduates while being focused on the downstream results of our work. People-centred innovation acknowledges that innovation is a social activity.
Using our imagination: Our faculty, staff and students are limited only by our imagination when thinking of how to get involved in applied research and innovation activities across the college. Many of you are doing innovative things in your courses on a daily basis. We need to celebrate what we do, and imagine ourselves into doing new things to support student learning and the 2020 Strategy objectives.

Join me in celebrating our successes – many of which are on our website (georgebrown.ca/research). And use your imagination! We invite you to conceive and share new and innovative ways we can work together to support excellence in teaching and learning.

Participatory Innovation

2011-01-07T11:18:00.001-05:00

Here's a link to a good article by Todd Hirsch on the need for a more extensible funding model for education. It relates very well to an integrated, participatory approach to open innovation. And while we are on the topic of complementarity, here is a piece that further debunks the myth of the individual inventor that posits an additive approach to innovation. A participatory, people-centred innovation assumes a collaborative and collective approach to furthering common innovation needs. As noted in my last post, this is a strong theme for the coming year.

Looking back, Looking ahead: Investing in Applied Research

2010-12-22T13:04:00.004-05:00

Properly speaking a post so titled should come in January, but as we close out the year I thought it would be useful to summarize some key points from the past year, but more importantly, what I see as some key themes that I will be focusing on in the year ahead.

The past year has been a good one for applied research, for polytechnics, and for colleges engaged in instigating industry innovation. The Federal R&D Review is one of the more significant policy opportunities that emerged, with its focus on business innovation and what public policy measures can be taken to foster this. There can be no debate that we need to increase productivity and our national capacity to innovate. Polytechnics and colleges involved in industry applied research are working toward this and have made strong gains in the past year. Government sponsorship is helping us to help industry innovate. The increased funding we have received is not part of a zero sum game that pits colleges, polytechnics and universities against one another. The internecine reflex that encourages such thinking prevents us from moving forward.

For the year ahead I have three themes:

The diffusion of innovation: to my point above, our ability to be responsive to the innovation and productivity challenges that beset us is contingent on complementarity and cooperation. This doesn't mean less of a focus on excellence. Rather, it means focusing on excellence while promoting a national, participatory and unified perspective on fostering greater business innovation. The intentional application of applied research and innovation services to industry needs and contexts means we focus less on discovery, and more on the design and diffusion of incremental innovation. Our focus is not on us, but on what we can do downstream by enabling industry innovation.
People-centred innovation is a grounded way to promote participatory innovation - our way of engaging students, faculty and our partners, using the principles of human-centred design. This approach, contiguous with open innovation, fosters innovation literacy in our graduates while being focused on the downstream results of our work, as noted above, while being mindful of stakeholder needs. This is an outside-in, versus an inside-out approach, meaning we need to adopt the perspective of those we are working with and for. This is a basic precept of participatory design that lets us see our responsibility (to improving innovation and productivity for example) against any perceived right (to obtain funding for research). People-centred innovation acknowledges that innovation is a social activity.
Using our imagination. It is time to modernize the Canadian postsecondary environment and create a national innovation system that clearly articulates universities, polytechnics and colleges. This new national system will be receptive to industry engagement, and will foster innovation literacy at all levels of HQSP. Doing this requires a collective will to imagine the future where we can compete in the global innovation economy. To do this we need to take research from ideas to invoice: we must craft an Innovation Policy that encourages firms to invest in R&D and provides an "any point of contact" entry to link industry with our postsecondary institutions (PSIs). Doing so will achieve a threefold ROI:

A Return on Interest from basic research that provokes thought and ideas, leading to disruptive innovations through long term research investment;
A Return on Innovation from applied research that increases industry R&D spending and our collective capacity to innovate, leading to improved productivity; and
A Return on Investment from experimental development through the creation of new products and processes and through the training of students, who enter the workforce ready to innovate.

All of us implicated in the Canadian innovation system have a responsibility - a response-ability - to step up and continue to work together with each other and other players in the system. We need to think past the immediate and see the longer term goals of improving social and economic prosperity. In these tumultuous and kinetic times, our productivity challenges demand this of us.

R&D Review Consultation Paper Released: Your Input Required

2010-12-21T09:30:00.001-05:00

The Expert Panel on Review of Federal Business Research and Development Programs today released the consultation paper that will form the basis for informing the Expert Panel on the role of government funding programs in support of business innovation. The Panel has been asked to provide advice to the government on the following areas:

What federal initiatives are most effective in increasing business R&D and facilitating commercially relevant R&D partnerships?
Is the current mix and design of tax incentives and direct support for business R&D and business-focused R&D appropriate?
What, if any, gaps are evident in the current suite of programming, and what might be done to fill these gaps?

As I've noted in this space many times, Canada's low BERD is an issue that requires national attention. The polytechnic and college applied research approach to applied research and experimental development is one way that we can encourage businesses to invest in R&D, as noted in my recent submission to the Panel.

The Consultation Paper offers an interesting view of the state of R&D in Canada and is asking for input on 15 questions related to business innovation:

In addition to the R&D activity defined by the OECD, should government be funding other business activities related to the commercialization of R&D? If so, what and why?
Does Figure 2, the model of business innovation presented above, capture the key structural factors and inputs to innovation? If not, what is missing?
Regarding capital, is there an adequate supply of risk capital for Canadian firms at each stage of their growth (start-up, small, medium, large)? If not, why not? Where returns on investments are low, what are the reasons and potential solutions?
Regarding ideas and knowledge, do you believe it is important for Canadian firms to perform their own R&D and, if so, what do you believe are the key factors that have been limiting business R&D activity in Canada?
Regarding networks, collaborations and linkages, what are the main impediments to successful business-university or business-college partnerships? Does the postsecondary education system have the right capacity, approaches, and policies for effective partnerships with business?
Regarding the creation of demand for business innovation, what role, if any, do you believe that government should play in being a “first customer” for R&D investments in Canada?
Regarding talent, is Canada producing sufficient numbers of graduates with the right skills to drive business innovation and productivity growth? If not, what changes are needed? Where demand for advanced skills is low, what are the reasons and what changes, if any, are needed?
Can you describe whether and how your firm employs students currently enrolled in community colleges, polytechnics and universities, and what government measures could make it easier to work with students during their academic programs and to recruit them after their graduation?
With which federal programs supporting business or commercially oriented R&D in Canada do you have direct experience and knowledge? In your view:

Which of these programs are working, and why?
Which programs are not working, and why not?

If you have direct experience and knowledge of the SR&ED tax credit, what are your views in relation to the following:

Does the current structure of the SR&ED tax credit encourage incremental investment in R&D? Does it free up capital to invest in other aspects of innovation activities in the firm? Does this vary by size, ownership, sector or nationality of firm?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the refundable portion of the SR&ED tax credit for Canadian-controlled private corporations and to what extent does it encourage the growth and commercial success of SMEs?
Bearing in mind the improvements being made by the Canada Revenue Agency, are there additional opportunities for change to simplify the administration of the SR&ED tax credit and facilitate the applications process?

How could the Government of Canada lighten the administration requirements of its programs on recipients and improve outreach to business?
How could the Government of Canada be more innovative and responsive to meet new needs or opportunities, and try alternative service delivery-approaches in its programs?
Are there any gaps in the Government of Canada’s support to business and commercially-oriented R&D? Do firms performing R&D in other countries have an advantage over Canadian firms because of access to programs that are not available in Canada? What would be the principal features of new programming to fill these gaps?
What lessons and best practices can be taken from provincial business and commercially oriented R&D programs, and how should the two orders of government align their programming?
Is there a difference between R&D and innovation? If yes, how are they different? Should government focus on R&D or Innovation? What should the balance be?

The deadline for submissions is February 18, 2011.

Every participant in the Canadian innovation system should reply, particularly those firms that work with colleges, polytechnics and universities on collaborative R&D. It is important to use this opportunity to inform government R&D policy as we work together to foster improved business innovation in support of downstream social and economic productivity.

On interaction, integration

2010-12-17T07:36:00.002-05:00

Here are some more thoughts on people-centred innovation following this train of thought:

Some time ago I read a book by the founder of Ideo in which they talk a lot about human centred design. In trolling through the G-List search string I came across their site for a human centred design toolkit, "A free innovation guide for social enterprises and NGOs worldwide." It's worth a look. The principles of human centred design (HCD) are, as I've indicated earlier, highly amenable and adaptable to innovation. Focusing on how any innovation will have downstream impact - from people to social/economic productivity - is an essential way to ensure adoption. As noted in my twitter feed a while ago, "adoptation" is my new word to describe applied research and promoting the adoption/adaptation of innovation. Adoptation requires integrated thinking, it requires interaction among the users and producers of innovation, and it requires us to think about the people who will use a new product or service from the outset of design. it also requires conspicuous contribution - an open source approach to collaboration and complementarity.

People-centred innovation

2010-12-14T12:33:00.000-05:00

I am picking up on the concept of "people centred innovation" that SSHRC President Chad Gaffield spoke about in his panel at the recent ACCT Canada Innovation 2010 conference. Gaffield posits that the last century was about understanding technology, and that the next century - the 21st - will be about understanding people. Here is a link to a similar talk he gave earlier this year at the University of Alberta.

The principle here is that we need to recognize that innovation is a social construct or act, and that to pay attention to people is to understand the interactions and interlocutions of how innovation happens on the ground. This is good thinking for the innovation economy. The diffusion of innovation requires not a reliance on technological determinism but rather a nuanced approach to the integration of technology and a reliance on people. Here's an interesting take on people centred innovation from ACM Interactions magazine (a favourite of mine) and its relation to culture change - very much in line with Gaffield's thinking.

As I've noted many times before, our focus on integrating students into applied research fosters in them innovation literacy, a core competency for charting this culture change. Here's a statement that nicely sums these thoughts: "The world we live in isn't about the next new thing but about how well new things can integrate with established applications and processes." This integration requires innovative thinking, human intelligence and translation.

A BERD in the hand...

2010-12-09T09:28:00.001-05:00

A report out today shows a drop in BERD for the third straight year. This is a real problem for Canadian productivity. We need to realign the HERD|BERD imbalance in order to arrest our innovation free-fall. This news comes fast on the heels of the recent report that BERD dropped in the US for the first time since tracking began. The recession is being blamed for the Canadian BERD drop, but as I indicated in my last post, there's no recession in research. Further, if history is our guide, recessions are times when we must push ahead on innovation.

A related story shows that stock markets punish those firms that invest in innovation. This is a sad statement and indictment of the kind of short term thinking that gave rise to the economic meltdown in the first place.

There's no recession in research: Report from Innovation 2010

2010-12-08T07:29:00.000-05:00

ACCT Canada's conference Innovation 2010 concluded yesterday having featured some excellent discussions on building out the Canadian innovation system. Coming on the heels of the successful Polytechnics Canada Showcase, Innovation 2010 brought together R&D professionals from across the country to talk about action steps for continuing to build a complementary R&D system in the country. This is a good evolution from my first experience with the ACCT conference where the discussion was about why collaborate in the PSE sector to how should we collaborate to better enable industry to get inventions and innovations to market.

There were many excellent presentations and discussions - the format was particularly amenable to fostering lots of good dialog. Several things stuck out for me: SSHRC President Chad Gaffield spoke of the emergence of "people centred innovation" that he feels defines the 21st century. This resonates with me strongly given my own focus on human-centred design and how GBC Research integrates this into our approach to the diffusion of innovation. Steven Liss, VPR Queen's University, talked about how we should "own the podium" with respect to R&D and its commercialization. This echoes the "aggressive commercialization" that John Molloy (Partek, also at Queen's) made (see my note on my R&D Panel submission). Owning the podium means we need to pick winners and set priorities,which is in contrast to the usual approach Canada takes where we seek fair representation from all regions/sectors.

The title of this post is taken from a comment said to me by Brian Barber, VP of UHN's Development Corporation. He was referring to the fact that, even though there is a world wide recession that is impacting the availability of capital to take ideas to market, there is no shortage of ideas emerging from the research labs and industry partners we collectively engage with. This is a good reminder to focus our innovation efforts well.

Innovation is the solution: Showcasing Polytechnic Applied Research

2010-12-04T10:39:00.002-05:00

Algonquin College in Ottawa yesterday hosted the fifth annual Polytechnics Canada Showcase. Featuring innovation in action, students, faculty and industry partners from our nine member institutions convened to highlight work aimed at improving innovation and productivity.

The agenda kicked off with a panel that discussed how best to foster a complementary R&D system in the country - something I've discussed extensively on these pages. Rick Tofani talked about the Alberta "Innovation Renovation", and the breaking down of silos between universities, colleges, research centres and industry. Taras Hollyer from FedDev Ontario spoke of their efforts to seed capital in the Ontario innovation system, with a particular emphasis on job creation and capacity building for economic diversification. Margaret Dalziel from the University of Ottawa Telfer School spoke about the gap between the scientific community and the business community - the innovation gap or incentive vacuum where polytechnic/college applied research is most adept at addressing. Dalziel also spoke about how innovation activities in this middle, mediating space is not easily measurable by traditional metrics (patents, disclosures, etc) because getting innovation from idea to invoice involves many nuanced activities that are more qualitative than quantitative. This echoes a point made in my RD Panel submission: the diffusion of innovation requires us to find proxies and precursors to job creation and economic development so that we can begin to measure productivity milestones. Janet Scholz from ACCT Canada completed the panel's discussion, adding that we need long term approaches to collaboration and complementary partnerships in the innovation ecosystem. (NB: ACCT Canada is hosting Innovation 2010 next week in Ottawa).

All of these panelists discussed concepts highly relevant to open innovation, a topic that was picked up by Angus Livingstone's (UBC) luncheon keynote address. Livingstone gave the audience an excellent perspective on the need for action in the innovation space, and linking the high performing academic R&D players with the low performing business R&D side of the equation. Livingstone outlined a 5-point scale for assessing a company's innovation capacity, and reminded all of us that our goal should be to get a company assessed at 1 to a 2, and those at 3 to a 4 and ultimately 5. This is a sensible approach to fostering increased business R&D and the diffusion of innovation. Livingstone also picked up on the panel theme of measurement, saying that we need to begin to measure the intangibles like the relationships we form with industry partners. Doing so will take us past simple metrics of innovation as we work together to foster true innovation system capacity across the country.

The highlight of the day was presentations from students representing all nine polytechnics. Each student was given a 5 minute slot to tell about their project and the industry problem they worked on. This was followed by an open discussion and questions from the audience, during which the students displayed the core tenets of innovation literacy: problem solving, entrepreneurial thinking, and collaborative team work. GBC's students presented on our work supporting industry partner Syndications Canada and the development of a vertical axis wind turbine. As indicated in my twitter feed, the quote of the day came from Syndications Canada Managing Director Douglas Chaddock: "We hire GBC grads because they have a can-do attitude. We're CANadian, not CANTadian." He further stated that the advantage of college graduates is that they are not afraid to get their hands dirty as they work their way through the applied R&D world of business innovation.

Polytechnic applied research: it's all about collaboration, economic development, and getting your hands dirty.

College applied research and the diffusion of innovation

2010-11-30T19:52:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity yesterday to address the Expert Panel on Review of Federal Business Research and Development Programs on the role of college applied research in the Canadian innovation system. My slide deck with notes is available here.

Appearing on the same time slot was John Molloy, president and CEO or Parteq Innovations, who was representing the university technology transfer side of the equation. Molloy led with an overview of the need for "aggressive commercialization," which boils down to the need to properly fund industry liaison activities external to, but which are cognizant of, the academic environment. Their focus is on disruptive innovation, not incremental innovation, seeking to take the big science finds and get these to market with as much alacrity and capital as possible.

The college applied research piece of the innovation system focuses on the incremental innovation space and the diffusion of innovation. We were highly aligned on the need for a complementary approach to industry R&D. We are also aligned on the need for integrating students from all levels of education into innovation activities. I've made the point earlier that fostering innovation literacy has a multiplier effect on industry innovation capacity.

Of particular importance to colleges and universities is how well we prepare the next generation of talent for entrepreneurial and innovation activities. Typically in Canada we measure the effects of student engagement in R&D by counting Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP), which refers primarily to graduate students. We need to expand this to include undergraduate college students and count Highly Qualified and Skilled Personnel (HQSP) to capture the larger potential of engaging our entire work force in innovation capacity development. Those with graduate degrees represent a small percentage of our population (less than 5%). HQSP embraces the role of advanced skills and education and reinforces a multiplier effect that innovation literacy can have on the wider population. When we expose our students in colleges to applied research problem solving they gain innovation literacy, as noted above. Colleges offer diplomas through to undergraduate degrees. Students so equipped with innovation literacy are more amenable to working with those with advanced degrees on innovation activities. We need innovation literacy at all levels of the work force. Our productivity and innovation challenges demand of us a consolidated approach to improving the innovation capacity of all workers in all sectors of the economy. Doing so will enhance the diffusion of innovation at all levels of the economy.

The key for college applied research is instrumentality, or the intentional application of applied research and innovation services to industry needs and contexts. This means that we are focused on addressing the industry problems faced by firms who are seeking to innovate and create new value in their sectors. We are an explicit instrument for addressing these industry problems, meaning that we respond to what is needed, fitting into the R&D continuum for latter stage innovation support.

Higher Education Summit addresses innovation, credit transfer

2010-11-23T07:41:00.001-05:00

Colleges Ontario's annual conference was held in Toronto the last two days, and featured many discussions on education as an enabler of downstream social and economic productivity. Highlights included the Conference Board's report on college applied research, "Innovation Catalysts and Accelerators: The Impact of Ontario Colleges’ Applied Research", and expert panels on credit transfer and addressing the future needs of society amidst change and challenge (c.f. demographics and the economy). There was also a great talk by the CBC's Bob McDonald who outlined the role of science in knowledge generation and how we ignore the role of knowledge change over time at our peril.

On the issue of credit transfer and articulation of the Ontario education system, I was disappointed to hear many people talk about how difficult this will be in Ontario and how it won't work, or won't work easily. While it is certainly important to acknowledge the challenges we face in achieving a true educational system, it is clear that we need to modernize the Ontario educational system. Adopting an "any point of entry; any point of exit" model such as Alberta's (to name one jurisdiction) will greatly aid our overall capacity to innovate and compete internationally. It is too easy to say why this can't be done in Ontario; it is much more difficult to work at building a responsive education system that has the needs of students and employers in mind.We need to challenge ourselves as a system, make bold, future-facing decisions, and act now to build the framework for integrating new immigrants and addressing the skills gaps and shortages that are upon us. The innovation economy demands innovative responses to the challenges we face.

Drop in BERD troubling

2010-11-09T13:37:00.000-05:00

I saw a recent news story on US business expenditures on R&D (BERD) having dropped for the first time in the 13 years the sort of study has been conducted. When Googling for a link to the story I found a report that the same is true for the European Union. This is troubling, particularly given that times of recession are better times than most to invest in R&D and innovation. We need industry to step up and invest. College applied research funding programs such as the NSERC CCIP are de facto instruments of the state to socialize industry to spend on R&D, giving our student innovation literacy in the process. This point is made in the recent Conference Board of Canada report on applied research.

Conference Board releases report on college applied research

2010-11-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

The Conference Board of Canada today released a report on college applied research. "Innovation Catalysts and Accelerators: The Impact of Ontario Colleges’ Applied Research" offers important information on the complementary role that colleges play in the Canadian innovation system. This includes encouraging industry to invest in R&D, something Canadian firms do not do on par with our international counterparts. Correcting the imbalance between Canada's high per capita spending on R&D funded through higher education institutions and the lack of spending by the private sector is a key concern of government today. Failure to do so will result in lowered productivity and a continuation of our downward trend on our innovation capacity.

Innovation key to improving productivity, standard of living

2010-10-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

An interview today with Kevin Lynch offers continuing insights into why it is important to foster innovation and productivity as we seek to improve and enhance our standard of living. I've posted a couple of links to some of Lynch's works in the recent past - his insights are sound regarding the need for fostering improved business R&D investment vis-a-vis our investment in R&D through higher education institutions. Realigning the HERD|BERD imbalance is one key step in fostering improved productivity thus our standard of living.

Elsewhere in today's Globe is a piece on the sale of Nortel's Ottawa campus to the federal government. This is a sad indictment of Canada's failure to support private sector R&D. As I noted in my post on the Economy n+1, Nortel was responsible for a large portion of our reported BERD. Economy n+1 is the next stage of growth, past 2.0 and 3.0, anticipating a future state where social and economic productivity growth is part of the fabric of Canadian life. This requires us to be less risk averse. As Canada will rely on immigration for all net new labour force growth starting next year, we have an opportunity to capitalize on those who take the risk to leave their countries to settle in Canada. I think this bodes well for future change. As agents of change we have difficult times to get through to be sure, but change we must as a society to fix our ailing productivity.

Industry Canada sponsors Expert Panel on Research and Development in Canada

2010-10-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear yesterday announced the Government of Canada’s Expert Review Panel on Research and Development. This is welcome news that will enable all partners in the Canadian Innovation System to further our capacity to engage industry in R&D and improve social and economic productivity. As the announcement states, Canada leads in Higher Education R&D investment, but lags seriously in Business Expenditures on R&D. Realignment of this imbalance is a crucial step toward improving productivity and equipping and engaging the next generation of innovation economy workers who will be well prepared to take on leadership positions with entrepreneurial and problem solving capabilities. As I noted in my last post, teaching innovation literacy as a core competency of every student across the entire education spectrum is one way we can help Canada boost our capacity to innovate.

The Expert Panel as announced by Minister Goodyear is a timely temperature check on how well our innovation system is responding to the needs of industry, and what we can do to further the goal of enhancing industry R&D and innovation more broadly. Nobina Robinson of Polytechnics Canada, of which GBC is a member, is a member of the expert panel.

Of note today corresponding to this key announcement is the report from the Conference Board of Canada on the role of immigrants in improving Canada's innovation capacity. With all net labour force growth set to come from immigration by next year, immigrants as "the embodiment of innovation" will be central to our national performance on innovation and improving productivity. Integrating immigrants swiftly into the labour market, taking advantage of their high degree of education and skills, and equipping them with the tools to get working productivity as quickly as possible are key concerns. George Brown College has been very active in this area, with many programs designed to do this, including our Research Commercialization and Innovation program (currently being revamped for its next intake).

10 things to improve innovation

2010-10-13T12:41:00.003-05:00

A report out today from the Coalition for Action on Innovation in Canada lists 10 easy things Canada can do to improve and foster innovation. I've pasted this list below. Download the complete report here.

The list is interesting for its focus on spurring industry R&D spending through incentives, as well as a target on education. We should be fostering innovation literacy throughout the entire school system across the country.

What is missing from the list is simply marketing: letting firms know that the postsecondary institutions that comprise the public sector facet of the innovation system is here and ready to work with them on improving products, processes and practices. A study last year by NSERC that looked at industry awareness of their R&D programs (whereby industry can partner with an academic institution) showed a very low rate of knowledge (only about 7%) on how NSERC for example can help firms innovate with PSE partners.

And speaking of partnerships: NSERC yesterday announced three new platforms for funding college applied research in concert with industry partners.

Ten things Canada can do quickly – and pretty cheaply – to become a leader in innovation:

1. Make R&D tax credits open to public companies and businesses that lose money.

2. Create government-sponsored “co-investment funds” with private investors to finance emerging companies.

3. Adopt the world’s strongest intellectual property regime.

4. Launch pilot partnerships between retired entrepreneur coaches and startups.

5. Enlist more retired executives to help the government dole out R&D funds.

6. Use the federal government’s buying power to spur adoption of new products and services.

7. Set a national target of a 90-per-cent high-school graduation rate and boost master’s and doctoral graduates.

8. Help foreign graduate students gain permanent immigration status.

9. Form a national network to share know-how among existing clusters of innovative companies and industries.

10. Create an independent advocacy group to push innovation by Canadian companies.

Toronto Community Foundation launches 2010 Toronto Vital Signs

2010-10-06T06:39:00.002-05:00

Toronto Community Foundation President & CEO Rahul K. Bhardwaj yesterday launched the 2010 Toronto Vital Signs, a comprehensive annual report on 11 key indicators of Toronto's quality of life. Bhardwaj gave a speech to the Canadian Club to launch the report, which was accompanied by an open letter with advice for the new mayor of Toronto. The letter outlines the need for Toronto to step up to the real challenges we face, promote collaborative leadership, and enable Toronto to emerge as a truly global city. Bhardwaj's speech was broadcast live by Rogers, and will be available online later this week.

The Vital Signs summary offers an excellent overview of some of the challenges we face in ensuring we have a livable and vibrant city. These challenges are germane to our overall productivity as a city and a region. From improving learning opportunities and the conditions of the creative class, facilitating immigrant integration for an active workforce that can meet the skills gaps and shortages with innovation literacy, to ensuring we have an efficient and effective transportation system, we have much to celebrate but also lots to work on with respect to working, getting started in Canada and improving our overall health and wellness. The 11 indicators in the Vital Signs report offer key insights for improving productivity. It is incumbent on us all to heed these insights, and to ensure they are front and centre in our ongoing discussions about how we can best be enablers of the innovation economy and to create a healthy, vibrant and innovative society.

George Brown College is the lead research partner for the Toronto Community Foundation's Vital Signs.

Innovation needs a backbone

2010-09-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

ORION's new CEO Darin Graham spoke to the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance earlier this week on the topic "Innovation needs a backbone." Graham's talk was an excellent call to industry to invest in R&D, as well as for those of us in the public innovation support sector to work together in supporting industry innovation. ORION provides the necessary ICT capacity to enable collaboration in the public R&D sector, and opening this up to the private sector is a good example of what a P3RD (see "the innovation equation") innovation support system can be.

Graham reminded us that innovation does not inherently exist in the universities and colleges; rather, it is inherent in the people who go there - the students, faculty and our industry partners. He also reminded us that innovation in not invention. Innovation has outcomes in the realization of social and/or economic value. Fostering innovation is at once as easy as enabling serendipity and interprofessional collaborations, but as difficult as doing this in a world of competing values, cultures ("academic: publish or perish versus private: profit or perish") and priorities. To enable innovation we need transparency in terms of our interface among organizations (c.f. brokering R&D relationships) and in our approach to intellectual property. This form of open innovation will push productivity improvements through a complementary approach to enabling industry innovation through a robust innovation infrastructure, in this case the ICT products and services that are the interface to collaboration as well as the locus of R&D development itself.

And while we are on the topic of enabling innovation, here is a link to a recent article that reinforces the need to invest in education as a main driver for an innovative economy. This includes integrating immigrants into the work force and addressing the skills gap and skills shortages we face. Ensuring we have highly qualified and skilled people with innovation literacy across all economic sectors will help lift Canada's poor productivity performance.

Education In Formation [reprise]

2010-09-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to a good op-ed piece by Todd Hirsch that details issues relevant to the transformation of our education system to meet both the skills gap and skills shortages many forecast are on our immediate horizon. Hirsch outlines an important precept of education: we must prepare graduates with transformational and translational skills that go beyond work as a noun, and give students an understanding of seeking "a career as something you do, rather than something you are." By this Hirsch means a broader interpretation of skills - what we call innovation literacy - that enables people to think of their work in terms of flexibility. Entrepreneurship is one trait that spans many disciplines. Hirsch reminds us that this means people who can "manage, help, create, design."

These are the skills of the innovation economy.

Public Policy Forum, the innovation system, productivity

2010-09-15T09:04:00.001-05:00

The Public Policy Forum convened a workshop on Monday regarding the linking of industry and academic communities. The session was well attended and had a very good focus on complementarity, and providing industry with an "any point of entry" solutions-oriented approach to improving R&D in Ontario. Relevant to this ongoing discussion is an article in today`s Report on Business: Canada's productivity trap: Recovery running on 'sweat and toil ... not brains and innovation'. It is yet another wake up call for Canadian industries to invest in new technology, one of the surest ways to increase productivity.

Ryerson's DMZ focuses on applied research

2010-09-08T05:48:00.000-05:00

Here's an article on Ryerson's Digital Media Zone - announced some time last year - that focuses nicely on the role of applied research and engaging students in addressing industry problem solving. The piece is a nice example of how applied research is oriented toward innovation support activities, and not supplanting basic research. Both are required to support productivity growth. The Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII) was established for this purpose: to be an explicit instrument for industry problem solving as complementary to the R&D innovation system in Ontario.

Mapping innovation

2010-09-03T15:54:00.000-05:00

Two stories this week on mapping innovation relevant to George Brown College's efforts on the innovation front:

The first is the launch of the “Toronto Labour History Walking Tours” map, on which GBC professors played a pivotal role, lets people navigate the city while learning about key labour events in Toronto's history. This is one of many examples of our support and commitment to social innovation.

The second is a story in the Globe regarding Geographical Information Systems, their use and proliferation, and impact on productivity. GBC Research is supporting Canadian GIS company Infonaut in the testing of their innovative GIS-based solutions for health care and infectious disease management.We have been working with Infonaut since 2009.

Innovation Receptor Capacity for Canada's Research

2010-08-30T05:21:00.000-05:00

University of Toronto president David Naylor and UBC president Stephen Toope today debunk seven myths regarding innovation in Canada. In "Don’t swallow these innovation nostrums," Naylor and Toope make a strong case for complementary research - linking basic and applied research - and the building up of Canada's business receptor capacity to commercialize ideas and innovations. I don't agree with their assertion that governments should not set research priorities. Rather, setting priorities enables us to focus our energies and resources on those areas and issues that will have the most impact on our national economy.

Naylor and Toope articulate the value of science and technology education, but also the importance of producing graduates with social innovation skills gained through non-technical courses of study. Promoting innovation literacy means producing "independent-minded university and college graduates from diverse backgrounds [that] are critical to building creative societies with innovative foundations." This is required reading for prescribing a national innovation system.

Innovation and Human Centred Design

2010-08-23T10:09:00.000-05:00

An excellent article in today's Globe and Mail discusses the relationship of human-centred design and the business of innovation. In "Extreme affordability: Why we must wear the user’s shoes," Neil Seeman and Kenneth Lam illustrate how important it is to foster a user-centred perspective when designing any innovation and its ultimate integration into practical use. Theirs is a case study in the need for applied research and experimental development - the two latter phases of research according to the OECD Frascati Manual - where low cost solutions are found by putting ones self into the everyday experience of the end user of a particular product or service.

There are many examples of this approach around George Brown College. From Jamie McIntyre's (CCET) innovative approach to New Product Development using a quasi experimental/retrospective approach to user inclusion, to RJ Clements' (CSHS) experimentation with the Wu Casting Technique to lower the cost of prosthetics for third world applications, many GBC programs such as the Institute without Boundaries and the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Community Innovation (BA&D), integrate this approach. The Research Commercialization and Innovation teaches this explicitly because we understand the necessity to equip our graduates with an innovation literacy that includes the ability to understand the end-user experience as a foundation for building future innovative products, services, and processes.

As I've noted earlier, our expertise in human centred and participatory design informs our approach to collaborative problem solving with our partners.

Recombinant R&D

2010-08-18T06:08:00.000-05:00

I was remiss in posting another link to a good article in Monday's Globe: "Commercialize or Calcify" by Daniel Muzyka, dean of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. Muzyka adds to the growing chorus about the need to "re-energize Canada's economic engine . . . through innovation and commercialization." Like other university commentators Muzyka's focus is solely on the role of university research, neglecting the importance of leveraging all aspects of the innovation system in the colleges and polytechnics. Regardless, he offers important words of advice on the nature of innovation (it's incremental) and the need for businesses to step up their game, invest in R&D while leveraging financing available from funding agencies such as NSERC who are committed to supporting business and academic partnerships in support of innovation and improved productivity.

Open Innovation in Practice, Not Theory

2010-08-16T07:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to a good piece in the NY Times on Open Innovation: : Innovate, Yes, but Make It Practical http://nyti.ms/9L9hit. It contains a few examples of what it means to listen to market needs in the development of new products and services. Thanks to Andrew Jenkins, member of GBC's Innovation Advisory Board, for sending the link.

On a somewhat related note, Roseann O'Reilly Runte, president of Carleton University has this to say about education and its relationship to civic engagement. While Runte focuses solely on university education and financing it in support of broader wealth creation, the same arguments apply across the education system as a whole.

Comment on Canada's Innovation Malaise

2010-08-10T09:55:00.000-05:00

Conference Board of Canada president Anne Golden's op-ed piece today comments on Canada's Innovation Malaise. Golden does a good job of explaining why Canada is so poor at innovation, focusing on our cultural disposition toward "our traditional sense of caution." It is this sense of caution that prevents us from taking risks. As one of the comments points out, Canada does too good a job at tearing others down, rather than celebrate entrepreneurial thinking. Perhaps this is a throwback to having to live together in a harsh environment - we've taken a sense of community too far to countenance divergence (in this regard we exemplify the Japanese proverb "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"). Regardless, we need to continue to foster education that trains highly qualified and skilled personnel with innovation literacy and with downstream effects on productivity front of mind. We need to reassure ourselves that it is okay to focus on the commercialization of ideas emerging from basic R&D. Taking a complementary approach to conducting R&D within open innovation, and not shying away from risks but rather celebrating risk-taking and finding reassurance in failure as a basis for learning will help us find new ways of doing things to replace simple fealty to resource extraction.

New funding for college applied research

2010-08-06T07:13:00.000-05:00

The Canada Foundation for Innovation recently announced its anticipated College applied research infrastructure program. While details are yet to be forthcoming, this is another positive step toward ensuring that the Canadian innovation system can meet the R&D needs of SMEs. As I've written about previously, improving Canadian productivity is essential. This is particularly so given the world economic crisis from which we are slowly emerging.

Other recent research funding news of note is SSHRC's new program architecture. SSHRC is making headway in fostering partnerships - the focus of their first round of grants under their new program. Partnerships are the cornerstone of complementarity, and, as I've said before, the Canadian innovation system requires a complementary approach that articulates universities, government labs and colleges working together with industry -- and community partners -- toward common goals of national importance.

SSHRC's role in promoting social innovation will be significant. SSHRC is ideally positioned to play a lead role in social innovation and entrepreneurship, essential components of a balanced approach to our collective national attempt to improve social and economic productivity.

Round table report on market trends and public education

2010-06-30T11:09:00.006-05:00

The Learning Partnership yesterday convened a Round Table on Labour Market Trends and Implications for Public Education. The goals was to inform public education policy. Warren Jestin, Chief Economist of ScotiaBank, chaired the event, and offered introductory remarks on the context of the opportunities and challenges facing Canada and public education. Jestin identified three trends that will inform educational and economic policy, reminding the audience that we need to focus on the unfamiliar for growth. That is, the economy will rebound, but will not go back to what it once was. Jestin pointed out that the G20 is now the official voice of the world economy, acknowledging the complexities of the global economic system as being comprised of developed and developing nations.
The three trends are:
1. We must focus on the emerging world where we are not yet plugged in - but could be.
2. Discussions on the environment and sustainability are at a very early stage. Major changes are imminent and will impact all sectors.
3. Demographic changes will mean less people working and more retired.

Productivity must drastically improve if we are to complete internationally, Jestin said, and "there is a crying need for improved education and skills training." Jobs in health care will of course be in demand, as will change in how health care is operated and funded. Urban infrastructure requires investment and renewal if we are to compete on quality worldwide. Skilled graduates with innovation literacy will be in demand: "We need people who know how to do something in a rapidly changing world," including easy facility with language and technology. Driving this should be "more fluid transfer of credits between colleges and universities." This last point is especially important; articulation of the education system will make the innovation economy more effective and responsive to social and economic productivity demands.

Rick Miner spoke about his recent study "People without jobs; Jobs without people." This report is a must-read for anyone with an interest in education and its downstream effects. It is also a wake-up call for all of us to start (re)thinking how we conceive of education, how we structure its delivery, how we measure its outputs and social impacts, and what we need to do to ensure Canada remains globally competitive.

The subsequent discussion was interesting for its common approach - across many educational sectors represented - on change needed in our education system. A report on the Round Table is forthcoming. What is clear is that there is good alignment in education: Innovation is not just a word. It is an activity and a call to action to reformat our thinking and our approach to social and economic productivity.

H20 in Toronto

2010-06-24T05:30:00.000-05:00

No - that's not a typo, and it's not about water. The H20 Summit & Top 100 Awards Breakfast is the Hospitality 20, which I attended this past Tuesday with members of the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts management team. It was an interesting look into the industry, and featured a round table discussion on wide-ranging issues related to the economic recovery, talent management, greening the industry and innovation. The topic of innovation was an interesting discussion as it focused on aspects of improving productivity, but also on meeting current and future demands of consumers in the hotel and food service industries. The applied research of our chefs and food scientists fits into this very well.

When the panel was asked what we can do to better prepare our graduates, one comment was that we should continue to have an open dialog with industry partners. There was acknowledgement that CHCA does an exemplary job of working with industry to prepare highly qualified and skilled graduates, and that our role in preparing our graduates for work in these industries requires us to encourage innovation and productivity in addition to the job-ready skills we are well known for instilling in our graduates. Our preparation of graduates with innovation literacy and exposure to innovation and downstream productivity issues is reminiscent of the points I raised in my last post regarding Stephen Murgatroyd's 10 challenges for colleges, particularly to embed creativity, change management and adaptability in our curricula.

The net effects of innovation and applied research

2010-06-11T05:33:00.002-05:00

The ACCC held its annual conference earlier this week, which featured some good sessions on the practice of applied research at Canadian colleges. Many keynote speakers made reference to the importance of applied research and innovation and colleges' collective close links with firms. Most important was the discussion not on applied research per se, but rather on the downstream net effects on productivity our applied research work with firms has.

Stephen Murgatroyd gave the closing keynote on Innovation, Colleges and Community, where he discussed key challenges for Canada's productivity and what colleges can do about this. Among other things he spoke of the need to encourage flexibility and adaptability in our students, the intangible skills that we call innovation literacy. Murgatroyd calls colleges "the best hope we've got" for improving productivity in Canada. Many topics raised in this space were raised, from the need to encourage more open innovation and coopetition, to "a relentless focus on improving productivity" in firms - the downstream effects of our work - rather than a focus on what we do in and of itself. This is solid, grounded thinking. Our work in applied research is important, but if we are successful we are in the background, an enabler of innovation writ large in social and economic productivity improvement.

Murgatroyd finished with 10 challenges for colleges:
1. Stop focusing on innovation and focus on productivity, design and skills development.
2. Embed creativity, change management and adaptability in all curricula (c.f. innovation literacy)
3.Don't focus on R&D, but rather on design, development, deployment and sustainability - what we can call the effects of applied R&D.
4. Use networks to create local and regional clusters.
5. Build cross-functional capacity within colleges and firms - this is a staple of interprofessionalism.
6. Be glocal - realize our work is local but interconnected to global trends and markets.
7. Invest in futures thinking, and partner with industry to develop innovation roadmaps.
8. Pursue and create Public Private Partnerships - what I have elsewhere termed P3RD.
9. Build community capacity.
10. Communicate our work directly to firms, governments and the public.

Related here is the recent release of the new OECD Innovation Strategy. The OECD continues their focus on people and education and training, and speak about innovation literacy as an intangible asset linked to tacit knowledge, as well as the importance of a highly qualified and skilled work force. The mobility of the work force thus equipped with innovation skills-sets is an important driver of innovation and social and economic productivity.

Food Research for Cancer Survivorship

2010-06-05T12:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's launch of the Princess Margaret Hospital's Electronic Living Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Cancer Survivorship Research (ELLICSR) featured Chef James Smith and Chef School Graduate Sharon Booy demonstrating recipes created as part of a collaborative project GBC is working on with PMH-ELLICSR researchers. Building Recipes and Understanding Nutrition for Cancer-Survivorship Health (Project BRUNCH) has developed over 30 recipes that are simple to make and tasty, focused on making healthy eating easier for cancer survivors. The Toronto Star's story on the launch of ELLICSR has an accompanying photo of Chef Booy. Yesterday's event was very well attended, with over 200 people - patients, clinicians, staff - taking in a variety of presentations from ELLICSR partners, including the cooking demos showcasing recipes developed by the project. Project BRUNCH is part of GBC's NSERC funded program of research. This is an excellent example of how George Brown College works with community, clinical and industry partners, and mobilizes faculty and student expertise to address practical, real-world problems.

Productivity, research, standard of living

2010-05-31T06:47:00.001-05:00

I've been remiss in commenting on the recent announcement of the $190M Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) Program, particularly in light of a couple of opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail. The first by Sumitra Rajagopalan ("When science gets political, long-term knowledge is lost") raises the question of why there were no women candidates in the pool of CERC researchers. However, she also laments the federal government's focus on applied research and the setting of national research objectives and priorities. This is flawed thinking. As I've noted many times before, Canada is first in the G8 (second in all of OECD) for Higher Education R&D (HERD) spending. We lag in Business Expenditures on R&D (BERD). Failure to reorient this imbalance will continue to skew our overall productivity. Jeffrey Simpson offers praise for the CERC program, but also points out that such a focus on research at the university level may be a detriment to teaching undergraduates.

The College focus on applied research sees undergraduate teaching and learning as core to our applied research mandate. That is, we integrate students in all of our applied research projects because it gives them innovation literacy - key problem solving skills relevant to their future jobs.

I was reminded of the importance of these issues when I read an editorial in today's Globe. "Wealthy, healthy and wise" points to the recent report by TD Economics that details the need for further post-secondary education spending in Canada as a key way to arrest falling productivity. The TD report is excellent; however, the Globe gets it wrong by focusing only on university education. Canada may be 11th in OECD university participation rates, but we are first in tertiary education when Colleges are included in the mix. We need to realize that a focus on complementarity for both research and education is necessary - where all facets of the PSE system are combined in a single, focused innovation system that links the provision of advanced education at the college and university level matched to both applied and fundamental research capabilities. Both inquiry based research and the support of industrial applied R&D needs are essential to resolving Canada's overall innovation and productivity malaise.

GBC Research at OCE Discovery

2010-05-21T05:03:00.000-05:00

The Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery conference was held this past week, bringing together industry and academic partners in the Ontario innovation system. MRI/MTCU Minister John Milloy gave the luncheon keynote address, and used the event to announce the website launch of the Ontario Network of Excellence. Many GBC faculty and students attended, including GBC graduate Sharon Booy, who did an excellent job representing the applied research product development of the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts. Sharon worked with GBC food scientists and chefs under the direction of Winnie Chiu and Moira Cockburn to develop recipes for N2 Ingredients. Her presentation was selected from the GBC student projects sponsored by the OCE Connections funding program.

Also in the news is a story about the CHCA work with Mill Pond and the development of fruit butters (as featured in this space previously).

Polytechnics AGM focuses on social and economic productivity

2010-05-17T11:09:00.000-05:00

The Polytechnics Canada AGM was held at Conestoga College last week, and featured speakers from government - including an opening keynote by Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear. His speech outlined the anticipated impacts of the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative FedDev announced recently. Minister Goodyear's comments presaged the day's panel on Regional Economic Development, which featured a discussion about the culture change in Canada as we work collectively to enhance social and economic productivity through targeted applied research investments. An industry panel featuring John Keating (Comdev) and GBC partner Niall Wallace (Infonaut) echoed the value of connecting students to industry through applied research as having an overall positive effect on the industry partners and the students themselves. Of particular note was a comment on the need to broaden the definition of innovation, as we work across the country to link our highly qualified and skilled personnel into the industry sectors the polytechnics serve.

First annual GBC Research Showcase a success

2010-05-07T06:01:00.000-05:00

Applied Research and Innovation and Staff Development jointly hosted yesterday the first annual GBC Research Showcase yesterday. Over 70 faculty from across the academic divisions attended to hear presentations and view posters of scholarly and applied research activity. The day was a great success, highlighting the many innovative projects conducted over the past several years at the College, and making explicit the links between scholarship and the pursuit of advanced degrees and how this positively affects our students. A panel discussion in the afternoon made these connections very clear. Marlene Slopack (Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies), Victor Wroblewski (Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts), Bruno Fullone (Centre for Business), Jamie McIntyre (Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies), and Constantine Campaniaris (Centre for Fashion Management) discussed their own research, be this the pursuit of advanced degrees or applied research projects with their students, and how this has enhanced the connection between their own learning and their role as professors. They nicely echoed Michael Cooke's (VP Academic and Advancement) opening remarks about the necessary connections between scholarship, research, teaching and learning.

A keynote presentation was delivered by Winnie Chiu, Managing Director of the Compliments Culinary Centre, whose work has appeared often in this space, and Donna Carmichael, President of Mill Pond Cannery and Preserves Company Ltd, who we recently featured as a result of GBC's work in helping Mill Pond produce and take to market a line of (very delicious) fruit butters. The Mill Pond story is a great success story for GBC Research, as it is an example of our multidisciplinary approach to industry problem solving: faculty and students from the Chef School, Design and Business all had a hand in helping Mill Pond take their products to market.

A highlight of the day was a "Dragon's Den" where five faculty pitched their innovative ideas in a competition for $2000 in seed financing to kick-start a research project. All five presented excellent ideas, judged by a panel of peers from the audience. The winner was “From Cooking School to Professional Kitchen: The Experience of the Female Chef” presented by Chef Debora Reid and Lauren Wilson. Congratulations Deborah and Lauren.

Another highlight was the presentation of achievement certificates to graduating students for their outstanding contribution to research at the college. All of these students have been involved in at least one research project. These students are from Graphic Design, Culinary Arts, Fitness and Lifestyle management, Fashion Studies, Nursing, Business and Architecture Studies. They have contributed significant time to research activities providing analysis, documentation, and mentoring to other students. They have demonstrated innovation literacy - problem solving and critical thinking skills - and exemplified team work. Congratulations to all of our students for their excellent work - we know that your applied research experience will give you an advantage in the marketplace.

FedDev announces $15M to support Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative

2010-04-19T17:13:00.001-05:00

Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear announced today $15M in funding for the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative, sponsored by the Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario). The ARC Initiative is a significant opportunity to engage the academic and business communities in supporting the innovation economy and the jobs of tomorrow. The objective of this new initiative is to bring together the business and academic communities in collaborative relationships in order to engage in applied research and commercialization activities to develop new products, processes and practices. Polytechnics Canada calls this an "Innovation Game-Changer", and the program will greatly assist the innovation system in southern Ontario to meet the immediate industrial applied research needs of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region.

The ARC Initiative is a pilot program open to all industrial sectors, from those supported in the Science and Technology Strategy to new, emergent sectors where SMEs are located and doing business in Southern Ontario. Funds will help mobilize faculty expertise in the polytechnics, colleges and universities to accelerate innovation in support of job creation and improved productivity. This new format for funding the innovation chain makes a direct link between college applied research and regional economic development, and showcases the value applied research has to industry partners.

The program will continue to build applied research capacity at Ontario’s research-ready colleges and expose students to hands-on applied research by solving timely, practical problems for local industry. The program will provide crucial front-end R&D support for SMEs struggling with minimal working capital. It also complements the NSERC College and Community Innovation Program. The ARC Initiative continues the federal government's support of the applied research and experimental development components of the R&D continuum and will enhance industry investment in R&D overall.

Open Innovation [reprise]

2010-04-13T06:08:00.000-05:00

With thanks to Andrew Jenkins, member of GBC's Innovation Advisory Board, for sending me this link to an excellent article: Open Innovation: from marginal to mainstream. Open innovation is a topic I've written about a few times, and refers to a collaborative, open source approach to the business of innovation - the concept of complementarity that governs our interconnectedness with other R&D organizations.

Productivity, and why it matters

2010-04-05T18:20:00.001-05:00

I was remiss in commenting a week or so ago when Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney commented on the sorry state of Canadian productivity. Needless to say, it's sobering to learn that Canada's productivity continues to plummet. Carney's comments that business needs to do more were met by protestations from some in industry. Regardless, the need to increase Canadian productivity is real. Today's Report on Business has a good op-ed from Gwyn Morgan on Why productivity gains should matter to Canadians. A short while ago I referenced Kevin Lynch's article on our innovation deficit, and here is another piece he has written on Canada's Productivity Trap. Both Lynch and Morgan are aligned on the need to encourage education and innovation as ways to escape this productivity trap. Ontario's recent budget has a very strong and necessary focus on education, and perhaps most importantly in this area, better articulation of credit transfer among Ontario post-secondary institutions. We can liken the coming seismic post-secondary education sector changes in Ontario to moving from a feudal to a federated system. This evolution to an integrated innovation/education system will ensure our population has the education and skills to compete in the innovation economy.

Morgan closes his column with a definition of productivity from "the website of the National Trade Union Congress of Mauritius:"

"Productivity is a process of continuous improvement in the production/supply of quality output/service through efficient, effective use of inputs; with the emphasis on teamwork for the betterment of all."