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.

ACCC Applied Research Symposium highlights growth, skills for innovation

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

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

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

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

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

Education for the Innovation Economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Innovation 2012: Tipping Point or Tilting at Windmills?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Polytechnics and skills for the innovation economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skills, Education and the Innovation Economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Canadian Chamber of Commerce convenes roundtable on Talent for Innovation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

ORION Summit 2011 a Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global cities, productivity, and innovation

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development launched their Territorial Review of Toronto at the Toronto Forum For Global Cities, held over the past two days. Among the many findings is the widely reported loss of productivity that traffic jams cause the city, in which home to "a fifth of national GDP, and 45% of Ontario’s GDP [and] 40% of the nation’s business headquarters."

The conference offered many good insights on the role of cities in the world economy, set against the backdrop of increasing urbanization and the estimate that, by 2050, 70% of the world's population will be living in cities. Thus the theme of the conference was how to improve the cities in which we live and work "in the post-bailout era" that will see governments of all levels struggling with increasing large debt loads.

Bill Hutchison of Waterfront Toronto was among the many presenters. Hutchison presented the vision for the revitalization of the Toronto Waterfront, where GBC is building our new campus. Called the “The Intelligent Community Open Architecture” (see image), the idea is that space and place are the foundations around which coalesce the social, economic and cultural development of the innovation economy.

Other panels that stand out include on on "Smarter Economic Development," which featured Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade and New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham. While the focus was on varying levels of government, there was also good discussion on the role of post-secondary education and the development of a highly skilled and talented workforce. As noted in earlier posts, colleges are key to Canadian educational attainment figures ,and our graduates - 70% of the work force - are key innovation instigators.

Robert Reich, Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, gave a keynote talk on Competing in an Innovation-Intensive Economy, in which he spoke about the role of innovation in the economy of the future. Reich spoke of the need to avoid decisions that could compromise our long term ability to invest in citizens, education and health. Early childhood education was singled out as a key investment/enabler, echoing Martin and Florida's Creativity report. Governments must invest in research, human capital and infrastructure, Reich intoned, warning that "the biggest enemy of innovation is past success." That is, we must not be complacent as we orient ourselves toward public private partnerships in support of the innovation economy.