College applied research and the diffusion of innovation

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.

Applied Research: Innovation, Productivity and the R&D Continuum

The ACCC 2009 Applied Research Symposium: What does success look like? was held in Ottawa on 25-26 February, and featured interesting and informative presentations about the role of colleges in the R&D innovation chain. The conference focused mainly on some of the issues involved in establishing college applied research: building a research culture, intellectual property, metrics, and community-focused versus industry focused research. Walter Stewart, from the Toronto Region Research Alliance, gave the opening keynote, and challenged the audience to focus our efforts in applied research capacity development on how we can serve our mandate to students and industry. In so doing, we must not try to be all and do all, but rather focus our efforts according to our strengths. This fits well with the notion of complementarity.

My own talk - from which I took the title of this post - was intended to illustrate the role of Polytechnic applied research. My focus was on topics I have written about here, and the shared challenge we all have to work within our areas (geographic, specialization): complementarity.

Here are my speaking notes:

Innovation

• Canada’s Innovation Capacity
• 13th out of 17 countries (OECD)
• “D” for innovation: “it’s been a D for decades”
  Conference Board of Canada, How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada
  
  Canada seems very good at inventing things, but not so good at capitalizing on inventions.

Productivity

• Canada is second in OECD for HERD; 12th in BERD
  HERD: Higher Education Expenditures on R&D
  BERD: Business Expenditures on R&D
• Firms are not making effective use of postsecondary applied R&D capabilities
  “We’ve gone too far in subsidizing R&D, and not far enough in subsidizing diffusion of innovation.” (Sharpe 2009)
  
  Our goal is to help firms make better use of applied R&D capabilities.

Role of the applied research office

• We focus on Regional R&D Capacity and Innovation Transfer and
• Complementarity in the R&D Continuum
  
  We are not trying to replicate what any of the university, government or industry research labs do. Rather, we do what they cannot do: fabrication of prototypes, for example.

Startup.edu

• We are a startup, and we help startups
• We offer “Last Mile” R&D services
• The Stages of technology development provide a useful framework for how we fit into the R&D continuum

How we’re different

• We respond to industry needs
• We have industry governance through the GBC Research Innovation Advisory Board
• The IAB is a multi-sectoral SME and entrepreneurial stakeholder group whose primary role is to provide a current and effective link between the Research and Innovation office at George Brown College and the key sectors it serves

Innovation Support Services

• We offer innovation support services to sector partners, using a validate/simulate/adaption model to
• Validate practicality and usability of new technologies/products/processes
• Simulate impact of their use
• Adapt those technologies for deployment under diverse conditions
  
• Testing practicality and market/user/practice adoption and adaptation lets us focus on the implementation of innovation
  
  This is the Diffusion of Innovation

From discovery to design

• Our Multidisciplinary Collaborative Problem Solving model mobilizes college disciplines in support of industry needs
• 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 of innovation - how to test the practicality of new products or services (adoption and adaptation)
• Our model uses college verticals in a horizontal integration strategy
  This is a matrix for understanding our innovation intentionality:
  College disciplines are verticals of expertise. A project is a horizontal that accesses expertise as needed/required from each vertical.
• Move from idea to invoice

Innovation Literacy

• This is a cornerstone of what our students gain from participating in applied research projects: the ability to think creatively and apply problem-solving skills to diverse and intangible issues within industrial problems and contexts.
• Innovation literacy is a transferable skill that enables our students to be flexible innovators in the workforce.
• Our students are Highly Qualified and Skilled Personnel
  Innovation literacy is the creativity called for by Martin and Florida

Open Innovation

• “…the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively.” (Chesbrough)
• All colleges, working together, can foster an open source approach to innovation and capacity building for improved social and economic productivity in Canada

Open Innovation Network

• Polytechnics are a de facto Applied Research Cluster (PARC)
  A distributed research cluster or open innovation network.
• AutoPARC
• EcoPARC
• EnviroPARC
• HealthPARC
• Etc.
  
• Fostering what the EU calls “Regions of knowledge” means that colleges can collaborate to compete together. We form an open innovation network that is more than the sum of its parts.

College and Community Innovation Program

• The NSERC CCIP represents a significant investment and awareness of the importance of colleges in the innovation chain in Canada.
• Relating back to HERD and BERD (see Productivity, above), the CCIP is a P3RD
  A Public Private Partnership R&D investment
• This is a public R&D subsidy that is specifically designed to increase BERD commensurate with HERD

We must take this opportunity, and, in recognizing it as P3RD, deploy these funds strategically to foster social and economic productivity. We have an important role to play in the R&D continuum in Canada, and that role should also focus on how colleges can work together - like the Polytechnic Applied Research Cluster model - to ensure that this capacity can realize its potential and contribute meaningfully to improving Canada's innovation capabilities. Canada's college are key to improving community economic and social development.

My challenge to us all is to make this collaboration work, to find ways to work together in a complementary fashion. It is important to celebrate our successes, but it is even more important now to look ahead to the future and chart where we are going. This future-forward orientation will be the focus of a panel I will be convening for the ACCC Annual Conference.

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.

Soft Landings and International Applied Research

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.

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.

Innovation is the solution: Showcasing Polytechnic Applied Research

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.

Looking back, Looking ahead: Investing in Applied Research

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

"There's no such thing as a science of innovation"

Shlomo Maital, noted economist and innovation guru, gave a talk to the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto the other day, in which he reminded the audience that "There's no such thing as a science of innovation." Science is based on the premise of contingent knowledge, whereby current understandings of the world are testable and evolve as we observe, review, and learn about phenomena. Maital's premise is that innovation is about breaking rules: there is no science inherent to innovation. Innovation is likened to the state of creativity a child has before going to school. Those who survive school with creativity intact are more likely to succeed in entrepreneurial activity, Maital posits. His talk - "Stumbling on the Star Trek Principle: Innovation Secrets of da Vinci, Edison, Einstein and Picasso" - outlined his view that, in order to succeed at disruptive innovation, we must "boldly go where no one has gone before". This is particularly important now, in the midst of a global depression, as history teaches us that depressions are the fulcrum for great innovation. Loathe to deploy business school jargon, Maital invoked the "paradigm shift," whereby the rules by which we do business will be fundamentally rewritten. Every single industry, he says, will rewrite its rules. Those who do the writing will emerge as the new leaders.

Many pundits have weighed in on similar issues, and there is evidence to support Maital's claims that innovation emerges from depressions. His trenchant question--what will the new rules of the game be?--can be resolved only through a creativity that leads to thinking differently. We must also be amenable to failure. "A reason to fail is a powerful lever for innovation," as it is the freedom to learn from failure that is the hallmark of innovators. "Innovation is breaking the rules" he says, and our ability to imagine the future (via a "future photograph"), combined with an ability to learn from mistakes, lets us enable a future state.

Maital ended with a call to action, to use the principles of design to design our lives. This is the basic principle of the Innovation Support Services that we use in our applied research services. That is, we focus on the intentional application of design and expertise within our faculty and student community to support innovative activity within the College and within industry partnerships. Design for us is the fulcrum for solving industry problems. A triad of programs at George Brown College--the Institute without Boundaries, the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Community Innovation, and the Research Commercialization and Innovation programs--all have design as a component of their educational programming. The GBC Research Labs has expertise in human centred and participatory design, and this informs our approach to collaborative problem solving with our partners.

While there may be no science of innovation, there is definitely a need for science in 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 innovation - how to test the practicality of new products or services (adoption and adaptation). This application requires disciplined approaches to problem solving, to induce innovation and encourage its incipient growth.

ACCC Research Symposium helps chart the evolution of college and polytechnic applied research

Lat week the ACCC convened the annual Applied Research Symposium, which provides an excellent view into the evolution of the country's applied research capacity being built in Canada's polytechnics and colleges.

The event was opened by the Honourable Greg Rickford, Minister of State for Science and Technology, who lauded the work being done across the country to support industry innovation. Minister Rickford outlined the important role of colleges and polytechnics in advancing Canada's new Innovation, Science and Technology policy, due out later this year. The Minister also spoke about the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) and the new Canada Social Innovation Fund (CSIF) as representing key advances in the country's ability to leverage all aspects of the post secondary system to the advantage of Canadian firms, community organizations, and importantly, mobilizing our world leading basic research capacity to its fullest innovation potential.

The CSIF, announced as was the CFREF in Budget 2014, represents a key advance in college applied research. Both new funds will be administered by SSHRC and will advance the new IST Strategy by leveraging all innovation intermediaries from across the basic to applied research spectrum for greater social and economic prosperity. There is a lot of work to be done, and Minister Rickford advised the crowd that the college system must now step up and realize this potential commensurate with the new funding, in particular for the CSIF. The CSIF will roll out over the coming months, with the first tranche of funds to be  awarded in the coming fiscal year. While the program design needs to be completed, the College and Community Innovation Program offers a foundation. The team at NSERC, who administers the CCIP on behalf of the Tri-Council, has provided an excellent model for working with the polytechnic and college system to iteratively develop a program that is responsive to the college system while enabling the colleges to respond to their constituents. This means ensuring there is funding for faculty release time within the scope of block awards given to colleges, with mandatory student engagement, community response (a pull, not push, model of research), and with social not economic returns on investment and interest.

As a member of the SSHRC Programs and Quality Committee I am looking forward to advancing the CSIF in conjunction with our college and polytechnic colleagues across the country.  As Minister Rickford stated, it is up to the system to step up and realize the potential of this fund. First up is for colleges to obtain SSHRC eligibility. This should be done immediately for those not already eligible. For colleges that are NSERC eligible for the CCIP, this should be relatively straight forward. Nonetheless, I encourage all who are interested in the CSIF to start this process now in preparation for the launch of the program.

There were many good ideas and presentations at the Symposium, including a panel discussion on the value of the college and polytechnic system to enhance and foster private sector engagement in innovation. Bogdan Ciobanu of the NRC spoke about IRAP programs, and noted the imminent launch of the NRC's Business Innovation Assistance Program - this is the industry innovation voucher program launched in Budget 2013. The voucher program, and the CFREF among others, raises the issue of applied research capacity, and just what will constitute a preferred service provider for innovation intermediaries. Equally important is the need to ensure that government agencies such as IRAP are cognizant of the business development and applied research practices of colleges and polytechnics. This mutual understanding has been evolving over the past several years such that we are at a point now where there is the start (at least) of the diffusion of innovation support and the understanding of this in the wider business community.

There is still much work to be done in fostering a greater sense of how colleges, polytechnics and universities can work together to realize the innovation potential of our basic science capacity while enabling industry innovation. This latter is the biggest lag to the country's innovation and productivity potential, followed closely by our historical inability to commercialize homegrown IP.

In keeping with this point the best part of the conference was a pre-conference workshop and discussion convened by the country's Technology Access Centres (TACs), as funded by the CCIP. George Brown College has one of the first TACs in the Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt). This group has advanced the thinking on college and polytechnic applied research significantly in reviewing concepts related to college research brand identity, standards, and franchising along the lines of the capacity and contribution model of applied research that Bert van den Berg and I introduced to the ACCC Research Symposium last year.

There is an important precedent for this thinking in the three decade history of the Quebec CCTTs. The CCTTs have built a brand identity in industry as a place where firms can access applied research, technology development, technical assistance and information & training. Within the CCTTs is an inherent common capacity to undertake this work in ways that are known and expected by industry. This model has grown over the last 30 years such that it has created an awareness and expectation of contribution along common standards. Learning from and building on this model, the TACs are well positioned to create a similar brand across the country, advancing the innovation potential latent in our firms and basic science labs alike. This is the most significant aspect of the evolution of applied research as represented in the country's colleges and polytechnics. The ACCC has supported this growth and evolution, alongside Polytechnics Canada and the Réseau Trans-tech.

Launched at this year's Symposium was the ACCC's updated environmental scan, which offers a good view into the world of college applied research. This is a good accompaniment to the research fact sheet of Polytechnics Canada and Réseau Trans-tech's evaluation report. And while there is still much work to be done in terms of orienting the college and polytechnic applied research system to outcomes and impacts, we are starting to get a clear picture of the activities and objectives of college and polytechnic applied research as it relates to student engagement and skills acquisition and firm level innovation. There is much to celebrate here, and the Symposium offered a good avenue to pause and reflect on what works well and how we can work together to continuously improve our approach.

The community is evolving and continuing to learn from each other while benchmarking itself against the criterion of excellence in support of greater innovation and productivity. When we are able to critically examine our practices and measure these against international counterparts such as the likes of the Fraunhofer and Tekes institutes, then we are showing ourselves to be world class in our approach to applied research. The ACCC Applied Research Symposium has shown the community has a willingness to engage in this way - particularly in the TACs - which marks an important step in the ongoing evolution of the college and polytechnic applied research capacity.

Three themes for Innovation in 2011

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:

1. 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. 
2. 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. 
3. 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.

Speed to market and user-centred innovation

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.

Productivity through Innovation: More on workforce skills and innovation

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.

Innovation, entrepreneurship and future-proofing Canadian productivity

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.

Reverse Innovation

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.

College applied research and work force skills: our value proposition

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.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Skills for the innovation economy

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.

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

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.

Polytechnics Canada Pre-Budget 2013 Recommendations

Polytechnics Canada has put forward their Pre-Budget 2013 Recommendations, available on their website. Notable is the continued support of college applied research and the further development of apprenticeship. As I've noted before, the skilled trades are the knowledge workers of the innovation economy, providing a much needed link between our capacity to think up new ideas and to put them into practice - the connection between thinking, making and innovation is a cornerstone of a healthy economy.

The Polytechnics Canada submission has three key recommendations for improving the public-private partnership model of R&D (what we call P3RD):

Through re-allocating funds to industrial applied research, the federal government can help more companies overcome the “death valley” of commercialization and become competitive. Three specific actions are to:

• Implement a national commercialization voucher program that allows Canadian firms to choose the late-stage commercialization support they need, as recommended by the OECD study;
• Increase funds for the College Community Innovation Program to $50 million per year to address unmet demand from firms for innovation solutions;
• Expand the eligibility of NSERC’s Industrial Undergraduate Student Research Awards program to include college undergraduate students.

Fostering improved industry-academic collaborations through a P3RD model is an essential component of helping Canada improve its innovation and productivity. Reforming our approach to education along the way by providing a more modern approach to credential laddering and articulation will in turn foster greater education and training capacity throughout the economy. This can be understood as a productivity issue on the education system, and while Canada regulates education provincially, we have a unique opportunity to leverage federalism to enable greater mobility of highly qualified and skilled personnel across the life span. Life-long and life-wide learning will thus enable greater diffusion of innovation.

People-centred innovation

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.

More on the Multiplier Effect

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.