Entrepreneurship, or, Enabling the Innovation Economy

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.

ACCC Applied Research Symposium highlights growth, skills for innovation

The annual ACCC Applied Research Symposium held last week in Ottawa featured excellent discussion of capacity building and the continued evolution of college/polytechnic applied research as a key enabler of the innovation economy. Seneca President David Agnew reminded the college community that we are in a lengthy development phase--and of the importance of our unflagging commitment as we chart a future path in developing the applied research layer of the Canadian innovation system. Also productive was recognition of the various tiers of  applied research taking place across the system, highlighting as it did the ways in which the college community can work together as innovation enablers--while teaching graduates essential innovation skills.

A panel on Social Science and Humanities research at Canadian colleges featured the report by Marti Jurmain and offered much that was helpful. This environmental scan shows a wealth of Humanities and Social Science (HASS) research is underway in the Canadian college system. Key here is colleges' ability to recognize where HASS exists and articulate how HASS fits into the S&T Strategy. I've made this point before in noting SSHRC President Chad Gaffield's focus on people centred innovation. It is vital for all of us engaged in research--applied or otherwise--to recognize that STEM skills alone are not enough to ensure innovation and productivity. As Christine Trauttmansdorff, Director, Policy, Planning, Governance and International at SSHRC, outlined in her address to the ACCC Symposium, understanding human thought and behaviour is essential to understanding how people innovate and how economies function, both socially and economically.

Polytechnics Canada's CEO Nobina Robinson, in a recent Research Money editorial, rightly posits that "companies commercialize; people innovate". The development of talent for the innovation economy demands a full and complete perspective on a mix of skills. A piece in today's Globe has some very good insights on this issue. The essential skills outlined by Janet Lane and Todd Hirsch are central to a fully functioning innovation economy. There is another article on skills--Business leaders cite skilled-labour shortage as priority--focusing on the shortage of skilled workers across the country. To put these two perspectives together is to gain a fuller picture of social and economic productivity in Canada.

George Brown College's strategic emphasis on "understanding employment" and our emphasis on soft skills as necessary to employment success reflect our recognition of the need for a skills-combinant approach. To understand employment is to understand the difference between what employers want and what employers need. Research GBC conducted last year emphasizes this differential (employers want higher productivity but do not value innovation; however, innovation is the surest way to achieve productivity gains). This result is in keeping with research by the OECD, Conference Board, STIC, et al., who all call for a complex mix of skills to drive innovation and productivity. The Conference Board has done some good work on the relationship of advanced skills and innovation, though its argument focuses only on university graduates and ignores the fact that Canada is first in the OECD for tertiary (post secondary) education only when colleges are included (they do point out a Japanese college connection). This is the signal opportunity of college applied research and our emphasis on innovation literacy.

Key here is understanding how to integrate essential skills most effectively in curriculum while ensuring our students graduate with the ability to articulate how essential skills/soft skills/people skills relate to their employment. That is, how best can we teach what I would call the language of innovation in order to ensure our graduates can future-proof the economy? Innovation literacy is a term that refers to the bundling of essential skills that represent the recombinant mix of skills essential for enabling the innovation economy. The skills needed for the innovation economy will be a defining feature of the years ahead.

Innovation <clutch> transmission, or, Supply and Demand in the Innovation Economy

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.

What employers want; What employers need

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:

1. Competitiveness is changing
2. The globe is restructuring
3. There is now  "great global talent hunt"
4. 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.

Polytechnics and skills for the innovation economy

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.

The future of innovation is bright: Business Innovation Summit recap

The Conference Board of Canada convened the Business Innovation Summit these past two days, which featured a lot of great discussion on how Canada can step up its game in terms of encouraging firms to invest in productivity and innovation. The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology and the Federal Economic Development Agency of Ontario (FEDDEV) opened the conference with a keynote address that focused on skills development and encouraging students from K-12 through to college and university to embrace innovation in their skills and entrepreneurship. This was an important theme of the conference.

Doug Watt and Dan Munro of the Conference Board picked up the theme of skills with an overview of their updated Innovation Skills Profile and the newly created Commercialization Skills Profile. These are important tools that can aid educators and firms alike to assess and develop the innovation and commercialization skills people need in order to enhance and engage in innovation and commercialization. A couple of years ago I put together a study to measure innovation literacy in students engaged in applied research; Doug and Dan and the Conference Board were partners in this. Our plan was to use the Conference Board's General Innovation Skills Aptitude Test (GISAT) to assess the innovation skills in order to start unpacking outcomes associated with how we foster innovation literacy in our programs and applied research with industry. I am pleased to say that we will relaunch this effort. Part of George Brown College's commitment to Enabling the innovation economy in our Strategy 2020 Balanced Score Card is to create an impact measure that will enable us to asses the downstream effects of our programs and applied research projects. Our Innovation Advisory Board has been very instrumental in helping to move this work along, and we are ready to relaunch the Measuring Innovation Literacy study. Stay tuned for more details.

Another notable element of the conference was a talk about Deloitte's study on The Future of Productivity. This contains prescriptions for industry, government and academia. For the latter, this includes the need to "Align curricula with business and industrial needs for scientists, engineers and leaders" and "Develop, protect and exploit intellectual properties developed at the post-secondary level." Colleges and polytechnics, as well as professional programs in universities, are well attuned to the first point. Canada does a deplorable job on the second. As I've said before, ideas emerging from Canadian basic research seem to be just another raw resource we extract and give away without adding value (i.e. commercializing). It's time to rethink the ways in which we promote basic research and university tenure to foster greater value-added R&D.

Latent in the first point about aligning business needs to curricula is the idea of public-private partnerships for R&D, or what I call P3RD. Taken together - fostering innovation skills throughout the education systems, linking industry needs to curricula, and taking an instrumental approach to aligning R&D outputs and input - are all part of taking a managed approach to innovation and outcomes. On the topic of P3RD, NSERC president Suzanne Fortier announced the results of their mid-term evaluation of their partnerships program at the Summit. The news is good: Sixty Percent Increase in Businesses Doing Partnered Research and Innovation with Universities and Colleges, an increase that can be strongly attributed to the success of the College and Community Innovation Program that funds colleges and polytechnics to work with firms on applied research.

The future of innovation is bright when you see the kinds of outcomes associated with applied research we conduct with industry partners. I convened a session at the Summit on How Colleges Support Business Innovation and Commercialization, featuring Carlos Paz-Soldan, president of Tenet Computer Group and a GBC Research partner, and John-Allan Ellingson, a student in our Mechanical Engineering program. Carlos, who also chairs our Innovation Advisory Board, told the audience about Tenet's Pandemic Planning Toolkit for Mobile Devices product that GBC Research worked on, and outlined Tenet's new Green Rack Service (coming soon to a conference near you) that we are now supporting through applied research engagement. Carlos talked about the value of engaging in collaborative applied research as it enabled him to extend his own R&D and commercialization capacity while being a conduit for recruitment of full time and co-op students.

A real highlight for me was our student, John-Allan Ellingson, who spoke about applied research work he is doing on industry partner SOS Customer Service's crane project. The project is being led by Professor Jamie McIntrye of the Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies, who is also the innovation lead for our Advanced Prototyping Lab. SOS Customer Service Inc. (SOS) is an Ontario SME that specializes in the design, development, sales and services of cranes, hoists, process automation and handling devices. SOS is collaborating with the George Brown College and Jamie McIntryre’s group to design, prototype and test a novel, lightweight and portable crane to lift windows into place for installation during construction of low-rise commercial and residential buildings. SOS has developed an innovative and simple design concept for the prototype. The new crane is expected to have significant advantages over technologies and approaches and has potential to significantly impact the return on investment (ROI) at building worksites. John-Allan is part of the team that is working with SOS to develop, prototype, test and commercialize their innovative design.

John-Allan spoke about the kinds of skills he is learning as a result of this applied research project, and how the project is giving him cumulative experience encompassing not just the engineering skills, but also design skills. This is an important point, as it relates to the need for both STEM and nonSTEM skills, and that innovation literacy and adoptation - the ability to adopt and adapt - demand a combined skillset. Chad Gaffield, President of SSHRC, put this well during another session on partnerships when he said that firms have the opportunity to partner with the whole campus when we engage all relevant fields, from the natural sciences and engineering to the social sciences and humanities. Not every faculty member in every department at universities or colleges wants to or is interested in engaging with firms on innovation challenges. But for those that do there is a lot of value: for the firms, the faculty members, and most of all, the students who, like John-Allan, demonstrate the kinds of innovation skills that will drive Canada's future productivity. Discussion on these important issues such as was enabled by the Business Innovation Summit gives me optimism about our future.

Mapping Innovation: Place Matters to Productivity

MaRS has put out a great resource showing the region's start-ups. Startup City features a visual of Toronto's start-ups and offers a glimpse of the innovation ecosystem cohering around the Greater Toronto Area. The map offers a good correlate to TRRA's Innovation Jobs report.

The relationship of place and innovation and innovation capacity is a good topic to delve into more deeply. The March issue of Wired (not yet online) has a great short article called "Cultivating Genius" by Jonah Lehrer that shows historical evidence of innovation emerging from distinct geographies. He makes the point that the pace of innovation can be taught and managed by bringing rigour to the processes that enable it (a point made by Roger Martin as well, including at this event). Lehrer's point is that the US currently does this, only with athletes. If we were to focus the kind of energy we do on creating world class athletes and apply this to science and engineering, we would create the conditions similar to other epochs in history noted for the emergence of both disruptive and incremental innovations. It's a great premise.

To paraphrase Roger Martin, innovation literacy can be taught. And the link to regional innovation should be pursued as one plank of an innovation policy closely linked to economic development. Bert van den Berg, NSERC's Director of Knowledge & Technology Transfer, recently sent me a link to the following article which provide for excellent reading on this topic. Innovation in Cities and Innovation by Cities by Robert Atkinson outlines the view that place matters when it comes to innovation.

By way of example, the GBC Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt) works with others across the Greater Toronto Area serving the food innovation needs of local industry. There are 25000 SMEs within 80KM of GBC FIRSt working in the food product development area. The sector contributes over $84B annually to the Ontario economy (half of this in the Toronto area), employs 30% more people than the auto industry, employs 1 in 13 people in Canada, and is 9% of Canadian GDP (to put that into perspective, oil, gas and mining combined are 4.5% of GDP). The point here is that innovation in the food industry is very much linked to locale, as evidenced by the amount of companies and money flowing in the GTA.We link the education and training of graduates in this area closely with all sectors of the industry. Ensuring these graduates possess innovation literacy acquired through applied research is one way we can ensure that the innovation capacity of the region will continue to develop. 

And this takes us back to mapping innovation. Connecting companies to each other and to innovation support services such as those offered by colleges, polytechnics and universities is one way to map the innovation ecosystem and orient the region to increased innovation capacity. Key here is the ecosystem approach: everything is interdependent, related, complementary. The Ontario Network of Excellence, CONII, OCE, MaRS Innovation are all ecosystem actors supporting and sustaining the emergence of an innovation ecosystem. It will only work to the extent that we know and are known to each other. I've often said all of us agents of the innovation system function like LavaLife, helping to understand industry innovation needs and putting them together with the right supports. The rise of concepts such as open and participatory and people-centred innovation, or research clusters (virtual and proximate) are part of the emergence of place as the way to understand how to enact innovation for greater social and economic productivity.All of this is predicated on industry adopting innovation as a business strategy and understanding the links between innovation skills and productivity. 

George Brown College last year conducted a GTA Employer Survey in which local employers of college and university graduates were asked to state the skill or ability they find to be the most important. We found that the link between innovation skills & productivity may not be fully recognized yet, but this link is fundamental to an innovation economy. We continue to do more work in this area in order to map out the future for essential skills for the innovation economy.

Skills, Education and the Innovation Economy

The Conference Board of Canada is convening Skills and Post-Secondary Education Summit 2013: Developing the Talent We Need for a Competitive Nation yesterday and today. The agenda yesterday featured some excellent discussions, particularly international examples of education as linked explicitly to the needs of the economy. Finland, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Australia were featured, and some strong themes emerged. These include educational instrumentality - these countries have not been afraid to be explicit in directing the aims of education to the needs of the economy, nor in streaming students at a young age into particular programs. This includes the tactical acquisition of specific skills as well as strategic social skills for citizenship.

The approach by these countries is an approach that contrasts to the Canadian system - or rather systems - in which we have a strong college and polytechnic sector explicitly linked to the needs of the economy, and a university sector that is not so much (other than professional faculties). This is changing, and I am glad to see the universities start to pay attention to the need to define and articulate what skills students emerge with from any program. BUt our somewhat libertarian view in Canada is defined by a bias toward a degree as being the sole ticket to social and economic prosperity, and we seem disinclined to tell anyone that there are other, often better options, commensurate with skill and aptitude.

We err when we focus specifically on a university degree as the main driver of skills, a point made in some of the media at the summit. Of course a university degree is a good thing - as is a college or polytechnic degree, apprenticeship ticket, diploma, or graduate certificate. When we focus only on degrees we ignore the reality that these are not always connected to the economy - nor should they always be. But a focus on degrees, as evident in some of the program material, is at odds with the concomitant focus on the skilled trades, as well as the gamut of credentials that are directly plugged into the needs of the economy. In short, we have a supply side system, when what we need is a demand driven model. If this sounds familiar, it is: this is exactly the issue the Council of Canadian Academies report "Paradox Lost" states we have with our approach to R&D.

What we in Canada need is a more balanced approach to demand driven economy (for both education and research), as well as an explicit recognition (as in Australia among others) that socio-economic balance is lost when a country is weighted too far on supply.  For our part, we would do well to speak about the credentials needed for a given occupation, rather than simply focus on bland statements like a degree being the pathway to success. I've made this point before, and it bears repeating, for we do ourselves a disservice when we pander to simple ideology around the supply of credentials when this is dislocated from demand and the means of production in the economy.

Australia has a demand driven model including a national accreditation and quality framework that shows how credential work together. The Swiss model, like the German and the Finnish models, is highly prescriptive and instrumental, but is also defined by a "high degree of permeability," meaning that even when students are streamed at a young age into particular programs, there is the ability for mobility throughout credentials, occupations and life spans.

Of particular note is Finland, with its "human-centric, equal opportunity" model that is focused on practice-based and open innovation. The Finns seem to have figured out that practice-based innovation accounts for 96% of economic growth, with science and technology innovation the other 4%, according to the EU. They strive for a balance between knowing, acting and being - all of these EU countries focus on a balance between professional skills and citizenship and life skills. Education and research are closely coupled with industry, have well defined occupation specific skills sets, link well with industry sector councils, connect to international contexts, and are oriented toward strong citizenship and civic participation.

Last month the online journal Technology Innovation Management Review published an article I wrote on Measuring Innovation Skills Acquired by College and Polytechnic Students through Applied Research. The piece is based on the work many of us in the applied research sector are engaged in, and articulates a way to measure outcomes related to our support of business innovation through applied research. The focus here is on skills, and linking these explicitly to the activities of applied research, with potential downstream effects in firms that are supported by college and polytechnic applied research, but also those that employ graduates with innovation literacy. Our team is working on this as part of a larger project; watch this space for more in the months to come.

Canadian Chamber of Commerce convenes roundtable on Talent for Innovation

Yesterday the Honourable Perrin Beatty convened the Toronto roundtable in this series, examining the important topic of what talent Canada needs for the innovation economy. Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship the Honourable John McCallum opened the session with remarks on the importance of immigration to the supply-side of talent for Canada - this is particularly important for a country where we need people to fill the growing demographic gap due to retirements. I made the point that international students - important to the national economy - are prevented from participating in entrepreneurship programs - let's hope this can be changed.

I joined Cisco's Rick Huijbregts, VP Innovation and Digital Transformation Lead, Cisco, Americas, Wendy Cukier, Vice President, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University, and Alex Parizeau, Managing Director, Ubisoft Toronto in providing remarks for the roundtable discussion.

The Chamber set the stage thus:
Talent for Innovation is our topic. Through this project, our central question is: How can Canada cultivate talent for innovation? We are preoccupied with business innovation (i.e. innovation within companies) and innovation that comes to market (and not on pure “science and technology”). During our project, we will explore three key sub-questions:

• What are the skills that foster innovation?
• Where and how do we cultivate innovation skills and talent?
• What can the federal government do?

We discussed many important topics, from the importance of generational change, to digital literacy, and main street entrepreneurship - fostering growth companies in all sectors of the economy, not just new technology. Diversity was an important theme - building on the initial discussion about the importance of immigration, but also encouraging women in STEM and other fields.

My remarks used Technology Readiness Levels as an example of the need for diversity and complementarity in skills, competencies and credentials. That is, if you are going from TRL 1 - where I have an idea to build a rocket - to TRL 9 - where I am actually launching that rocket - you require a team of multidisciplinary people who are educated at different level - from PhDs, to engineers, to technicians, marketers and beyond. When people from varied competencies/credentials work together there is a multiplier effect. This is the principle of ensuring that everyone - from across the credential spectrum - has innovation literacy. 

We need to focus on the skills Canada needs, but also the skills Canada wants - both transactional and transformative skills for the economy and civil society. A focus on Work Integrated Learning is essential here - both as a component of all undergraduate programming, but also as a model for integrating and socializing youth into careers. This latter point fits well into the federal government's initiative to reboot a Katimavik 2.0 - a kind of youth internship for a gap year between secondary and tertiary education. The government could offer tax incentives to businesses who participate, pay a stipend to youth to participate in social and economic nation building while trying out a potential career. This could be a way to avoid the $500-600M in student loan defaults per year, by enabling students to find a career, and so educational path, that suits their interests and aptitudes well.

Above all an integrated approach to fostering education for innovation is required. The Chamber should be applauded for adding its voice to this Canadian imperative.

Education for the Innovation Economy

I've been to several events recently that have all focused broadly on the innovation economy. The ACCC Metropolitan Colleges Symposium held in Montreal at the beginning of October offered was billed as the first of future opportunities to surface issues common to metro colleges. Common themes emerged commensurate with the conference agenda: (in no particular order) immigration and workforce integration, student services, teaching and learning, relationships with industry/external partners, and consensus that collaboration is key to collective success.

Innovation: Ideas to Action, an "unconference" sponsored by Helix Commerce International, brought together people from various industries to talk about how we can spark and improve innovation in the GTA, Ontario and Canada. It offered an excellent opportunity to hear from key innovation instigators. The next Helix Innovation Hive event, themed “Applied Innovation for Value Realization”, is scheduled for April 20th, 2010 in Toronto. Visit Applied Innovation for Value Realization. Additional information will be posted as it becomes available.

The Technical Workshop on Estimates of Research and Development in the Higher Education Sector (HERD) sponsored by Statistics Canada was held in Ottawa on Friday October 16, 2009. This was a very unique opportunity to participate in the review of how HERD is calculated (the last time this was done was in 1999 or so). Colleges were not included in the last version, largely because our applied research efforts were likely limited at the time. Now, however, we are playing an increasing role - $110M per year according to the ACCC. This figure does not represent all of the hidden unsponsored applied R&D we do. Of particular note is that the Frascati Manual (the OECD's outline for how HERD is calculated) outlines three forms of research. These are basic research, applied research and experimental development:

Basic research is experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundation of phenomena and observable facts, without any particular application or use in view. Applied research is also original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge. It is, however, directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective. Experimental development is systematic work, drawing on existing knowledge gained from research and/or practical experience, which is directed to producing new materials, products or devices, to installing new processes, systems and services, or to improving substantially those already produced or installed. (2.1.64)

College applied research encompasses the last two of these, and is it worth noting that our focus on complementarity with other R&D organizations enables us to have a significant impact on the innovation economy.

The innovation economy is both a driver and an outgrowth of a knowledge- based society that requires us to ensure our graduates are not only content experts in their fields of choice, but also expert learners, able to adapt to our changing world. By directly involving our students in applied research we promote innovation literacy, producing graduates who have research, problem solving, leadership and entrepreneurial skills, along with the ability to recognize innovation in their work contexts. This is in addition to the job-ready skills our graduates already possess.

College graduates are vital to the national economy. Canada ranks first in the OECD attainment of tertiary education only when College education is factored in. GBC has an important role in addressing both the skills shortage and the skills gap within Ontario and across Canada. Our role in promoting innovation literacy makes us ideal participants in an "ecology of innovation" that promotes partnership, entrepreneurship, and educational pathways for students, industry and community partners alike.

All of us involved in the innovation economy are oriented toward the same goal of increasing social and economic productivity in Canada. The college applied research system will play a lead role in strengthening national and regional capacity to innovate, working with research centres, industry and community partners to enhance competitiveness in the sectors we serve.

On this note, it was somewhat interesting to see that Willard Boyle, recent Nobel Laureate, lamented government's intrusion into research by requiring business plans. While curiosity based research is a necessity, Boyle gets it wrong by reinforcing a false dichotomy between basic and applied research. After all, someone at Bell - where Boyle did his Nobel-winning work - wrote a business plan to pay his salary, a fact conveniently ignored by those who have been writing in the press about the state of research funding in Canada. As I've noted previously, Canada spends more than most countries on HERD; where we do poorly is on Business Expenditures on R&D (BERD), and the relation of HERD and BERD to Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD).

An article in Saturday's globe picked up this duality. Unfortunately there is too much polarizing discussion about the relative merits of basic versus applied research. Suffice to say we need both, but we also need to turn our brightest minds to work on the problems of the day: sustainability and the green economy, climate change and productivity, for example. Steve Balmer's recent article on R&D and innovation underscores the need to foster more of this directed R&D in the IT field, one area in which Canada can compete internationally.

Funding for both basic and applied research that leads to innovation, advancement of knowledge, and commercialization is critical to improving community economic and social development. Call it a return on innovation.

Innovation, Partnerships, Productivity

The ACCT Canada conference Innovation Partnerships 2012 was held this week in Ottawa, and featured  excellent discussion on fixing Canada's lagging innovation and R&D productivity record and how innovation intermediaries can do more to foster and enhance Canadian R&D competitiveness.

I convened a panel on P3RD, on which the panelists provided some excellent discussion not only on what works in linking industry and academic R&D partnerships, but how best to measure performance over time. More on this in a minute. The P3RD panel members were as follows:

• Drew de Kergommeaux, Director, Industrial Research Assistance Program, National Research Council Canada 
• John Fielding, Regional Director, Business Development, Ontario Centres of Excellence 
• Marc Nantel, Associate Vice-President - Research & Innovation, Niagara College 
• Bert van den Berg, Director, Knowledge & Technology Transfer, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

The issues the panelists discussed focused on how R&D funding programs encourage public-private partnerships, wherein academic and industry work together toward innovation outcomes. The packed audience heard about NRC IRAP's planned concierge service, OCE's funding programs, examples from Niagara College's leading work on college applied research, and some notes on how best to manage performance from Bert van den Berg. The presentation file is online here.

Measuring performance is important for the community in order to adequately and effectively assess what works and what does not. Since we are stewards of public investments in increasing industry innovation capacity, we need to make sure that these investments have a return on innovation, so to speak. As such, it is important to measure the effectiveness of the many actors in the system: the funders, the innovation intermediaries, the faculty and students  and the firms we are serving with industry academic partnership program support. Key here is a logic model approach to understanding all of these actors, the inputs and outputs, and importantly the outcomes of these investments. Bert van den Berg articulated these as impacts:

• Ultimate: economic & social benefits for citizens 
• Intermediate: increased sales, profit, employment at firms 
• Immediate: increased R&D, commercialization, innovation focus by firms, training of HQSP 

These are interesting to note as they are proxies in a way for the work that academic innovation intermediaries do. Our value proposition is that we give industry access to talent, facilities, markets and funding. There are two primary benefits here: students gain crucial innovation literacy skills, and firms get assistance with innovation and market entry for new products and services. Thus a good way to measure the success of George Brown College's support of industry innovation (and by extension any intermediary providing this innovation support) is through the downstream effects we have on the companies we help. This is not to say that we do not measure our own performance, but rather to see our performance and its effect through the main proxy we are here to help: students and industry. To put another way, if we do our job well, we are in the background of greater industry innovation and productivity.

At the P3RD panel we also launched the P3RD site and the mapping innovation application we have developed to assist firms in finding an academic innovation provider. Under the tagline of Putting the S&T in Start Up, the P3RD site lets firms  indicate where they are located, what kind of innovation service they are looking for, and what industry they are from. They are then taken to a map which displays providers, partners and past projects. These past projects are an online resume of past work a provider has done, giving firms an idea of the kind of projects the college, polytechnics or university has done before. We are working with Tenet Computer Group on the technology, specifically their GreenRack cloud service, with plans to further leverage their Augmundo augmented reality technology. Read more about Tenet's leading innovative technology here.

We built this as a marketing vehicle for George Brown College, but have included the ability to add any innovation provider as a way to promote the idea of a concierge service. Think of it as LavaLife for creating public-private R&D partnerships. As I mentioned earlier this year, place matters to productivity. We need to encourage innovation in firms and enable these firms to find a provider of choice, be this down the street or across the country. The P3RD application enables this. 

At the conference we demonstrated the map, including an easy to use tablet interface for adding people. Minister of State for Science and Technology the Honourable Gary Goodyear stopped by to review the P3RD Mapping Innovation application, and to learn how this can aid industry in finding an innovation service provider.

Minister of State for Science and Technology the Honourable Gary Goodyear reviews P3RD Mapping Innovation

We will continue to work on refining the P3RD application with our partners. Check back as we continue to develop the site in partnership with others.

The P3RD panelists discussed how enabling technology innovation is relatively straight forward. What is needed most by firms is business expertise. This was reflected in an excellent panel I attended on social innovation convened by SSHRC president Chad Gaffield.  The social sciences and humanities are key to fostering what Dr Gaffield calls people centred innovation. Specialists in human thought and behaviour are key to enabling the innovation economy. The panel discussed concepts related to public-private partnerships, including not for profits, that are working together to bridge academic and industry sectors. Gaffield spoke about promoting "cultures of innovation" and panelists talked about how building partnerships involves having difficult conversations to link academics with firms when the latter needs to understand how these will help them earn money. Pam Laughland of the Network for Business Sustainability (a SSHRC funded organization that and has since raised $2M in investment) works to connect research and practice to convene and shape and transform ideas to make them usable by both audiences: businesses and academics. She spoke about the need to make partners part of the problem so that there is upstream affective investment in the issues under development, particularly regarding embedding sustainability in corporate culture. This involves converting outcomes into economic language as way to translate value so that industry sees themselves as part of the picture. This is a necessary instrumentality that translates to students, who learn about how their skills translate into innovation no matter the sector they work in (private, public or not for profit). As panelist Susanne Lajoie of McGill University put it, we need to teach the skills for 21st century education. Innovation requires ability to learn in new contexts, problem solving, communication, and ability to self regulate and be self directed. These are the skills of innovation literacy.

I attended many great sessions at the Innovation Partnerships 2012 conference, and I encourage all to check out the files online, and to attend next year's event.

Innovation 2012: Tipping Point or Tilting at Windmills?

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.

Education and the economy

Todd Hirsch has a good piece in today's Globe and Mail about the relationship between the cost and value of education. This is an increasingly important topic with education budget cuts now hitting five provinces and student groups protesting about the cost of education, even while sector councils decry the lack of highly qualified and skilled personnel throughout the economy.

I've made the comment before that skills are where the puck is going, and by this I mean that colleges are well positioned to lead a seismic shift in education. Universities are now starting to speak about outcomes based education - this has been the purview of colleges all along. This is a very positive shift in thinking that will enable Canada to place the value of education on what it can do for social and economic outcomes, to make "people privately happy, and publicly useful." And while there will always be those programs that eschew labour market realities, the very simple fact of colleges' historical bias toward outcomes and a focus on skills lends considerable weight to the value of education.

George Brown College is an enabler of the innovation economy because we focus on skills - hard and soft - and our graduates gain employment because we are focused on offering instrumental education. Our focus on a combination of vocational education and academic excellence ensures that we help the economy have the right people with the right skills for the right jobs in the right place and time. The academic versus vocational debate is a false dichotomy that is detrimental to our economic (and social) future, insofar as it means that we then turn away from the practical in favour of the theoretical. The well worn path of Canadian low productivity and innovation - and here I would include the fact that we do not realize the benefits of our basic research - is part of this conundrum. We seem to prefer the thinking over doing, privileging the prima facie over application, perhaps because we are conscious of our history as "hewers of wood, drawers of water." 

College education and  research is applied - and unabashedly so - and our celebration of this puts us at the forefront on an ascending curve that is driving change in the way the country thinks about addressing long standing economic ills. We are focused on what the economy needs, and what employers want: people with the skills to do the jobs of today and tomorrow. This includes a range of skills from apprenticeships in the skilled trades to innovation literacy throughout the continuum of academic programs.

The explicit mandate for colleges in Ontario is to ensure that graduates are prepared for the workforce. According to the Framework for Programs of Instruction in the Minister’s Binding Policy Directive:

The Act identifies the colleges’ objects or mandate to offer a comprehensive program of career-oriented, postsecondary education and training that:

• assists individuals in finding and keeping employment; 
• meets the needs of employers and the changing work environment: and,
• supports the economic and social development of their local and diverse communities.

This is an explicitly instrumental mandate. The OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training Learning for Jobs report offers some useful instruction here relevant to some of the policy prescriptions that Polytechnics Canada for example has recently put out. We need to celebrate this instrumentality, in education and research, and applaud any movement toward more outcomes-based education, as this will let us articulate the value of education to the needs of the economy.

#skillsarewherethepuckisgoing

Budget 2015 support Business Innovation

Yesterday's federal budget contains some significant advances for the R&D capacity of the country. More specifically, Budget 2015 is one that promotes business innovation, something that has long been lacking in Canada. By business innovation we can include a host of measures, from promoting industry-academic partnerships for R&D right through to skills development and labour market information.

Budget 2015 R&D funding will further support research in our universities, colleges and polytechnics. The granting councils have been given modest increases focused on enhancing R&D from basic to applied research right through to experimental development. This includes $1.33B over six years for the CFI, $15M to NSERC - $5M of which will increase the College and Community Innovation Program (CCIP) starting in 2016-17, and $7M to SSHRC to increase partnerships between the public and private sector. As the budget notes Canada is at the top of the G7 in Higher Education R&D (HERD) spending (see page 93). Promoting greater capacity to engage in public-private R&D partnerships (P3RD) will help Canada leverage our world-leading basic research capacity and our polytechnic and college applied research strengths in support of experimental development and business innovation.

Most significant is the introduction of a key recommendation of the Jenkins Panel - a consolidation of industry facing R&D programs. This is a very positive move that will enable the full exercising of the public R&D system (universities, colleges and polytechnics) and orient these to industry partnerships when and where applicable. As I noted in my last post this was raised by industry participants in the NSERC Strategy Town Hall George Brown College hosted last week. The effort by NSERC is to align with the NRC's Concierge service, a nascent effort by the NRC to provide a portal into the secondary R&D supports. The Concierge service is right-headed, but adding NSERC to the mix will enable it to better serve the needs of industry by matching need to specific innovation support offered by universities, polytechnics and colleges. NSERC is well positioned to access the public R&D system.

The real value here is in the sector-agnostic approach to linking industry to innovation ecosystem supports:"While maintaining existing support for research activities at colleges and universities, this integration of similar programming will offer companies a single window through which they can undertake research collaborations with a university, a college, or both depending on project needs" (111). I would submit that this is one of the more forward-thinking initiatives to come to the R&D sector, in that we are finally moving forward on providing a seamless bridge for public-private R&D support, free of the angst of funding direction (as in: who gets the money - universities or colleges). This is positive evolution.

There are other elements of the budget that are of significance - new labour market information (much needed in Canada) through to programs that will focus on "'soft' skills, such as the ability to communicate clearly, think strategically and work in teams" (149). This is the essence of innovation literacy, and promoting Blue Seal certification for example (a key recommendation from Polytechnics Canada), as well as youth employment, aboriginal employment and entrepreneurship and support for persons with disabilities will help ensure Canada has the right skills - including STEM skills - that a modern innovation economy requires. We can add to this experiential learning - a core facet of George Brown College's Strategy 2020 - as key to ensuring graduates of post secondary education have the skills employers need. Here we have another very positive development that acknowledges the specific strengths of the college and polytechnic sector.

Economic Action Plan 2015 proposes to provide a one-time investment of $65 million over four years, starting in 2016–17, to business and industry associations to support partnerships between employers and willing educational institutions. Through these partnerships, groups of employers and industry organizations will work with willing post-secondary institutions to develop curricula and programs that are aligned with the specific skills needs of the labour market.

It is worth noting that the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Act, 2002, compels Colleges in Ontario "to offer a comprehensive program of career-oriented, post-secondary education and training to assist individuals in finding and keeping employment, to meet the needs of employers and the changing work environment and to support the economic and social development of their local and diverse communities." Colleges are specifically set up to serve the labour market needs with our educational programming, and this applies to our focus on applied research. Budget 2015 supports the further refinement and development of how best our educational systems can respond to labour market needs for skills development and the orientation of R&D capacity - for technology transfer out of our leading basic research institutions and firm-friendly conduits into the applied research capacity. Canada is on the cusp of becoming world class in our orientation to the innovation economy.

One highlight is the funding of the Canadian Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CC-ABHI), which is led by Baycrest Hospital, and includes a host of private and public sector partners working together to create "a national hub and network dedicated to the development, validation, commercialization, dissemination and adoption of brain health and seniors care products and services." George Brown College is very pleased to be a founding academic partner in CC-ABHI. Our Advanced Prototyping Lab will be supporting product development, in addition to clinical simulation and testing.

Read the Colleges and Institutes Canada press release and the Polytechnics Canada press release on Budget 2015.

Scorecard 2013 from the Board of Trade: Focus on skills for the innovation economy

The Toronto Region Board of Trade has launched their Scorecard 2013, reporting on the region's capacity for productivity and innovation. The focus this year is on human capital performance. There is good news in this year's report, including Toronto ranking fourth in North America for having the labour pool needed to increase our productivity, and sixth for overall performance.

"Beyond capital investment and investment in R&D, productivity performance and economic success of a region is also dependent upon the quality of its human capital" (p 60), the report notes. This is the three-legged stool of innovation, and the skills and talent part of this equation is arguably the most important as it is a driver of and result of improved R&D and technology investment.

The timing if the report coincides with the release of the Board of Trade's cluster strategy and Budget 2013's focus on these three essential elements for improving economic health. The report picks up on recent discussion trends on education, in particular the inference that an undergraduate degree is the key to economic success. There is a strong focus on the role that colleges and polytechnics play, both in offering undergraduate degrees and other credentials relevant to the labour market. This underscores an inherent problem with reporting on educational statistics, in that there is little room for nuance in understanding the effect of those who take a university degree followed by a college program to obtain job-relevant skills. Statistics Canada reports on the highest level of educational attainment only, and so will lose this point entirely. This came up in a recent panel discussion I participated in on The Agenda, which airs this evening. The Future of Higher Education is grappling with issues pertinent to skills and the innovation economy, and the need for a greater focus on outcomes at all levels of education coupled with a linking of education to labour market outcomes. Of course not all education need be instrumental  but we should nonetheless provide students (and so graduates) with the keys to future success via an articulation of what skills a particular program teaches.

James Bradshaw, writing in Saturday's Globe and Mail, makes this point well in Toronto’s recipe for prosperity: More graduates – and more paths to good jobs. There is a good example of how GBC graduate Noe Galeana is now working with Clear Blue Technologies, a company GBC Research is supporting. The point here is that when education - and in this case applied research - is linked directly to the needs of industry  everyone wins: the company who is innovating and who accesses skilled talent, the graduate who deploys these talents, and the economy generally. It is companies that commercialize products and services, and the people inside them who innovate.

Scorecard 2013 offers many good points for industry to heed, and presents a positive picture overall of the region's capacity to innovate. It notes areas for improvement, including getting more females in management occupations, increasing female labour market participation overall, and doing a better job of linking highly skilled immigrants to industry.

The Board of Trade is providing the kind of leadership we need in Canada: non-partisan analysis on how our world leading education system can work together to provide the required inputs for the labour market.


#skillsarewherethepuckisgoing