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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Design and the Business of Innovation

Following on the heels of my last post - "There's no such thing as a science of innovation" - I've been giving more thought to the business of design and its relation to innovation. As noted in that post, the GBC Research Labs offers our industry partners Innovation Support Services that comprise the intentional application of design and expertise within our faculty and student community to support industry projects. Design is "a new and underestimated aspect of innovation," according to the Science, Technology and Innovation Council (p. vii), and is one way that Canada can differentiate itself in the innovation marketplace. While there are many facets to design, design in all of its permutations is certainly on the ascendancy in terms of its relative merit to the science, technology and innovation enterprise.

As I noted earlier, the GBC Research Labs focuses on human centred and participatory design in our approach to innovation support and problem solving. Our staff are trained in these methods and precepts, and are expert at engaging all of our stakeholders in the applied research projects we undertake. This underscores our mandate of complementarity in the R&D continuum. I read recently about a distinction between science and technology that has its antecedents in 19th century industrialism. Science in this context is about discovery,whereas technology is about applying discoveries to problem solving.

University of Toronto President David Naylor, in his recent column in the alumni magazine, draws on this distinction as he outlines his view on the role of "Universities and the Innovation Economy." Naylor acknowledges the BERD|HERD disparity that hampers innovation in Canada, and posits a basic and functional antimetabole about the role of research in general:

Think of it this way. When industry does or sponsors applied research, necessity is the mother of invention. That’s an excellent source of incremental innovation. But when basic research is taken to the marketplace, invention becomes the mother of necessity. And whole new industries can emerge on the backs of disruptive technologies.

Key here is the difference between incremental and disruptive innovation. Both are essential components of the innovation equation.

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.

Federal Government Launches new Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy

Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday launched the much anticipated new Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy. Seizing Canada's Moment: Moving Forward in Science, Technology and Innovation 2014 is a comprehensive and significant update to the 2007 Science and Technology Strategy. The new Strategy recognizes the idea to invoice continuum that is necessary for vibrant economies: world leading basic research linked to fruition in business innovation and social and economic benefit for all Canadians.

Receiving strong recognition in the new Strategy in the role of innovation intermediaries such as colleges and polytechnics. As the press release of Polytechnics Canada states:

The Strategy now includes an ecosystem approach to innovation which will lead to long-term economic benefit for Canada. It appropriately credits the diverse players in Canada's innovation ecosystem for their contributions: world-leading research universities, innovation intermediaries such as our polytechnics and colleges, and firms that are commercializing research and inventions.

This is a hugely significant approach.  Seizing Canada's Moment references the Jenkins Panel work in ensuring that there is a smoother path from invention through to innovation, both for our world leading universities and Canadian industry. The four priority areas of 2007's Strategy are reaffirmed, as reiterated in the Council of Canadian Academies report the State of Science and Technology 2012 (on which I had the pleasure of serving), with some expansion, detailed below. Fundamentally, our economy cannot prosper if we do not have both academic and industrial productivity. This means ensuring that we focus public R&D spending on national priorities, support the development of ideas to realize market success (academic productivity), while supporting business innovation (industrial productivity). With Canada spending more per capita on HERD than other countries, but with BERD lower, we cannot sustain this lop-sided approach to S&T. The new Strategy gets this balance right.

The 2007 Strategy set the stage for a strong focus on the country's strengths in research and development, or science and technology as it is often referred to. It paved the way for enhanced investment in basic research in our world leading laboratories. That Strategy also initiated the College and Community Innovation Program (CCIP), which saw college and polytechnic applied research recognized as a viable component of the innovation ecosystem.

There are a couple of key updates included in Seizing Canada's Moment. First is the creation of three new pillars: People, Knowledge, and Innovation. The second is a refreshed articulation of sector priorities.

The Pillars: Including Innovation as a key pillar is perhaps the most significant update. This pillar explicitly recognizes the benefit of linking ideas to invoice, or concepts to commercialization. This is not simple jingoism. Successive expert reports have articulated our excellence in basic research but our lack of business innovation. The Innovation pillar recognizes the value of the innovation ecosystem, of supporting world leading research and its fruition into social and economic value. It is worth quoting this in full:

[Seizing Canada's Moment] will also seek to close the persistent innovation gap that has hindered the transfer of ideas from the laboratory to the factory floor and the store shelf. The Strategy will also encourage businesses to work with partners in the innovation system, including by making Canada’s world-class research infrastructure, expertise and researchers available to them. It will encourage scaling up successful programs and consolidating program offerings to improve access and increase impact. The Strategy also emphasizes the need for Canadians to protect their intellectual property and enhances Canada’s access to global markets. (p 2)

The bottom line here is that where we spend more per capita on basic research than the rest of the world, we do not have the GDP to support unfettered research into anything and everything. We must set priorities. We also need to staunch the flow of Intellectual Property (IP) and realize this value to those that funded the R&D in the first place: the Canadian taxpayer (Canada has the largest negative IP balance of any other country).

Sector Priorities: The new Strategy recognizes the priorities from 2007's Strategy, while adding Advanced Manufacturing and a focus on things like additive manufacturing (3D printing) and disruptive technologies. Agriculture has also been added to the environment area. Both of these are overt recognition of the importance of the inputs to a resilient economy: the ability to make and/or produce what our society needs close to home. Also included in this area (as it was in 2007) is a focus area on food and food systems. George Brown College is very active in supporting this important sector through our Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt), which is supported by a College and Community Innovation Program Technology Access Centre grant. Demand from industry for our services is so great in the food area that we are working on expanding our capabilities in this important area of the economy.

In addition we have some sound principles: Focusing on Priorities; Encouraging Partnerships; and Enhancing Accountability. The Partnerships principle is particularly important, as it recognizes the very real need to link the "business, academic, and public sectors both at home and abroad are essential to assuring world-class Canadian successes and to accelerate the pace of discovery and commercialization in this country. The cost, complexity and pace of scientific achievement demand the creation of smart partnerships, through which the unique capabilities, interests and resources of various stakeholders can be brought together for greater success." This principle will lead to greater academic and business innovation and productivity.

Seizing Canada's Moment reaffirms the role of federal government support to the S&T value chain - there is a good graphic on page 15 that illustrates these supports. A good example of this is George Brown College's Green Building Centre, which received support from the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario (FedDev). The Green Building Centre was recently officially opened by the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) and Bernard Trottier, Member of Parliament for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. It is through support like this that Canada's colleges, polytechnics and universities can be oriented to fostering business innovation.

There is much to be celebrated in Seizing Canada's Moment: Moving Forward in Science, Technology and Innovation 2014. This is a strong statement on the value of Canadian S&T, and addresses very well the challenges to fostering greater business innovation for social and economic productivity. Good for the federal government for getting this right; the new Strategy was definitely worth the wait.

In the days and weeks ahead there may be those that will decry this new approach to science, technology and innovation. Don't listen to these voices, for they are purveyors of the past. Instead, look to the future for ways on which we can build on what makes Canada great, and how we can work together to make it greater. After all, it is much harder to build than it is to tear down.

Polytechnics Showcase: Students show their innovation and entrepreneurship skills

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

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

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

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

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

CONII Health Sciences Node Symposium a Success

The CONII Health Sciences Node Symposium was held today at Seneca College, attended by some two dozen representatives from the 10 member colleges of CONII. The purpose of the event was to establish the CONII Health Sciences Node community of practice and to begin the work of organizing and orchestrating collaboration among the 10 CONII members. The day was a very successful group think on the nature of innovation in this sector.

Brian Barber, Director of Technology Development and Commercialization at the UHN, gave a keynote address to initiate proceedings. Brian advocated building bridges between the academic and economic communities in order to proactively foster the necessary return on investment in research. He recognized the cultural divide that exists between the research and commercialization communities, and that those of us engaged in the innovation sector are involved in a culture shift writ large.

Colleges fit into the research continuum by offering services and environments suitable for testing prototypes and concepts. We can also offer unique capabilities in helping to change the way health care is practiced. There is a role here for "disruptive innovation" Brian reminded us - to play an active role in bringing about change. It's clear that our current health care system is presently unsustainable as is (it consumed 46% of the last Ontario budget, and it's growing each year). The role of researchers (applied or otherwise) is to take a proactive - rather than a reactive - role in making meaningful change a reality for health and human services. With the changing health care environment (think ubiquitous technology designed to monitor/aid health) we have a significant opportunity to participate in shaping the future of health care. It won't be easy - the group today spent some time reviewing challenges. But the opportunity is there. It's up to us to collaborate - to work together and make this happen.

Collaboration is difficult and messy, particularly so when stakeholders are all pursuing the same funding opportunities. CONII provides precedence here that we can build on. There is a delicate balance needed between protecting our own interests versus building capacity system-wide (a topic I wrote about some time ago). These are early days in the innovation marketplace, and we all have a place and role to play in ensuring Canada can achieve its prosperity goals.

Some time ago I wrote about ROI²: Return on Investment; Return on Innovation. This can be amended as ROI³: we need a return on investment and innovation, but also interest. If the return on innovation is the gravitational pull of ideas, then the return on interest is the ability to spark interest, to provoke thought, and to stimulate ideas. Contingent knowledge assumes we evolve these ideas. Let's make an environment conducive to this evolution.

Polytechnics Canada and Conspicuous Contribution to Public Policy

The Annual Polytechnics Canada conference convened at Humber College last week, once again offering excellent discussion and contributions to Canadian public policy. "Learning that works" was the theme that saw very good keynote presentations ranging from insight from the Swiss education model to the changes being undertaken in Ontario. On the latter, MTCU Deputy Minister Sheldon Levy provided insights on innovating education, drawing on his work leading the Digital Media Zone Ryerson University.

Michael Horn, Co-Founder and Distinguished Fellow from Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation provided excellent insights into the disruption of education, showing how personalization of education and micro-credentials are setting up a sea change in the way education is proffered and taken. The rise of micro-credentials is something I've been interested in for some time, something I've outlined in a Globe and Mail op-ed in 2012 called Education should take a lesson from the open-source movement.

Another keynote by Jeff Selingo, Columnist for the Washington Post gave the crowd some additional insights into the employer context, specifically around the skills needed to thrive in the innovation economy. Career navigation is important to the current and ensuing generations, and providing skills such as curiosity, grit, creativity and contextual thinking are hallmarks of innovation literacy. GBC Research supports skills development with validation in micro-credentials via our innovation skills badges.

Navigation requires skills, which become the sextant for the innovation economy, enabling students to measure the angles between where they are and where they wish to go. Once again, Polytechnics Canada convenes a conference that demonstrates thought leadership through conspicuous contribution to public policy. 

On Discovery, and Making Manufacturing

The Ontario Centres of Excellence hosted the annual OCE Discovery conference earlier this week, featuring those involved in the Ontario innovation ecosystem. GBC Research was there showcasing our own centres of excellence: the Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt), the Green Building Centre, and our Advanced Prototyping Labs. An opening keynote by Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, was instructive as much for his points on what he calls "exponential technology" and "crowd sourcing genius" as for the fact that the underlying message was that it is the private sector, not the public, that needs to lead innovation. Public-Private R&D partnerships matter (c.f. P3RD), but it is the private sector that must drive commercialization. This is the essential idea of customer focused innovation. Diamandis talked about how "humans are a linear thinking" but that "technology is exponential," and "The difference between these is either disruptive stress or disruptive opportunity." This differential between stress and opportunity is a pharmakon: a remedy for what ails us, or a further poison to our well of productivity.

Which brings me to making things.

An article in today's Report on Business features a lesson from Germany's manufacturing, and what Canada can learn from this is to re-imagine and rebuild our capacity to make things. Germany shows that making things still pays outlines key points in improving productivity, including partnerships between academic and industry and a sound manufacturing foundation. I've written before about the capacity for making and manufacturing, and the college and polytechnic capacity for building and making makers is a distinguishing feature of our approach to innovation literacy. We will be featuring our Advanced Prototyping Lab capacity at an upcoming industry networking event. Join us to Meet your Maker.

Meet your Maker industry networking event flyer

Budget 2013: A glass half full

Budget 2013 is an austerity budget, but one that contains some very positive news for colleges and polytechnics. Read our press release: George Brown College ready to deliver on federal budget initiatives aimed at bridging skills mismatch.

Several key recommendations from Polytechnics Canada were contained in the budget, including an increase to the College and Community Innovation Program funding, the inclusion of college undergraduate students in the NSERC Industrial Undergraduate Student Research Awards program, apprenticeship requirements for federal procurement, and the industry innovation vouchers pilot program as part of IRAP (“credit notes to help pay for research, technology and business development services at universities, colleges and other non-profit research institutions of their choice”). Funds for the Canada Foundation for Innovation for research infrastructure and a renewal of FEDDEV Ontario are good news items - George Brown College is building the Green Building Centre, a business accelerator and entrepreneurship centre for green construction and smart buildings, with support from FEDDEV. Part of the funding to FEDDEV will go to the new Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which represents strong potential for retooling the manufacturing industries, for example via the potential for disruptive change with new technologies like 3D printing.

A big part of the budget is the focus on skills and the new Canada Jobs Fund. A potentially contentious issue as it means renegotiating the Labour Market Agreements, the Canada Job Fund will require industry and the provinces to co-invest in skills training. It is well known that Canadian industry does not invest in skills training as much as it should. As reported in the Globe and Mail, Don Drummond and Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa are optimistic about the new program.

More analysis is needed, of course, and not everyone is happy with yesterday's budget, but the bottom line here for applied research and skills training is that we are seeing an emphasis on instrumentality and industry: directing education and research toward specific aims of increasing industry engagement and investment. These are essential to improving productivity and innovation in the country.

The focus on skills and innovation is a positive theme, and with the incremental increases to applied research funding we have strong potential for increasing the kinds of experiential learning and innovation skills acquisition that is a hallmark of George Brown College and polytechnic education. The federal government has given educational institutions, industry and individuals tools with which to increase innovation and productivity. It is up to us to pick up those tools and build a better future.

#skillsarewherethepuckisgoing

Canada needs to think about R&D ROI3

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

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

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

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

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

1. A Return on Interest from basic research that provokes thought and ideas, leading to disruptive innovations through long term research investment;
2. A Return on Innovation from applied research that increases industry R&D spending and our collective capacity to innovate, leading to improved productivity; and
3. 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.

Fail Fast, Learn Quickly

An interesting article by Daniel Muzyka <How you deal with failure is the secret to success> from today's Globe discusses the culture of research and innovation, and provides some useful context to our work in College applied research. At first glance it is perhaps more applicable to industrial applied research, but there are distinct parallels with academic research that focuses on teaching and learning as well.

Encouraging innovation and experimentation is inherently risky, but potentially profitable, in the sense that these can lead to the application of new knowledge in new ways. Contingent knowledge, the cornerstone of science, requires that we find ways to apply our knowledge, be this in industrial settings or the classroom. And here is the linkage that we can draw from Muzyka's piece: where he speaks of designing for the future generations of products and services (itself a worthy goal of applied research), we should also seek new ways of involving our students in the research endeavour, and of encouraging and experimenting with new ways of teaching and fostering inquiry in the classroom.

The last decade has seen of lot of this emerge with theories of distributed learning. We now hear a lot about M-Learning, used to discuss the application of ubiquitous technology within teaching and learning contexts. These forms of learning have in common with applied research "a very delicate balance between the operating imperative to maintain output and efficiency (favouring that which exists) and the innovation imperative to be more open, creative and willing to renew (favouring the new and disruptive)."