Design is the bricoleur of innovation

Last week I wrote about innovation policy and its coverage in the media and in particular Mariana Mazzucato's book The Entrepreneurial State. It's in the news again today and what interests me most about this discussion is the unstated role of design in taking ideas to market. That is, intentional design - or design with intent if you will - is about finding ways to shape technology into useful and usable products and services. Many are fond of talking about Apple products and the particular genius that company had in taking others' inventions and packaging them in a way to make them appealing. Have a look at this site for an interesting look at how Mac products moved "forward through the rearview mirror." The designer is the bricoleur, and this is at the heart of innovation. Not invention, though this is important. Rather, when we take ideas emerging from basic research and put these together to form products and services that people will find useful and usable, then we have innovation. This is the stated goal of Tandem Launch, for example, and is well worth looking into. GBC's Design Centre for the Smart Economy is how we scaffold ideas and inventions through to innovations and invoices.

Innovation policy the rhetoric of research

There has been some good coverage in the Globe and Mail recently on innovation policy in Canada, leveraging the current election to promote fruitful discussion on this important aspect of public policy. One of the better pieces was by Doug Saunders on Saturday, where he asks "The question of Election 2015: Can government create jobs and growth?". In a nutshell he lays bare the need for government intervention in the economy specifically as it relates to promoting innovation in extant and emergent industrial sectors. The government's role is not to pick winners and losers, but rather to create gravitational pull towards specific goals such that industries can develop. Most importantly he cites the work of Mariana Mazzucato and her book The Entrepreneurial State (a must read). We need to get away from the tax incentives as a spur to innovation - these are not working. Instead, direct supports - such as those recommended by Polytechnics Canada  recently - will go much further in supporting a holistic approach to both industrial and academic R&D productivity. This point, made by Saunders and repeated today by Kevin Lynch, is seemingly not well understood in Canada.

Saunders makes a significant error in his reporting; in paraphrasing Mazzucato, he talks about the Canadian predilection to invest in what he calls "pure research." In the quote from Mazzucato, she talks about the continuum of basic research, applied research, and commercialization. It is worth quoting this passage in its entirety:

“What doesn’t work,” Dr. Mazzucato says, “is when the direct investments are too focused on one part of the innovation chain. The kind of active government involvement that was characteristic of Silicon Valley and places like Denmark – that government involvement has been across the entire innovation chain. Basic research? Yes. Applied research and early-stage financing for companies? Yes. Those countries that think they can just spend a lot on science and a lot on basic research and assume business can take care of the rest, without also having a strong presence in public policy – they tend to fail.”

Saunders's error is a linguistic one that is common among Canada's R&D policy set: equating basic research with the term pure research automatically confers on applied research and commercialization the connotation that this is impure. You might think this does not matter. But language constitutes reality, and in the partisan world of research funding, where one is seen as preferable to the other in the scrum for scant dollars, we would be wise to heed Mazzucato's words to diversify our investments along the innovation chain.

Saunders should be aware of this linguistic issue, having written arguably one of the better histories of Canada's consistent failure to embrace innovation in a 2012 piece called "My ancestors and the worst thing that has ever happened to this country." In this, he outlines may aspects of the historical antecedents of our long standing failure to capitalize on anything other than raw resources, and how

the idea of an individualistic, entrepreneurial, industrially adventurous economy became alien and undesirable. The hewing of wood, the drawing of water and the selling of furs may been the origins of Canada, but the post-1812 rulers turned them into an unavoidable fate.

With the opportunity before us to engage in dialogue and debate, I believe we can turn around this "unavoidable fate."

On that note, a good read on the connections between all forms of research and the complementary aspects of various education outcomes can be found in Fragmented Systems: Connecting Players in Canada’s Skills Challenge, released this week by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. 

Job makers and job takers

Yesterday's news from the Conference Board that Canada still remains "an innovation laggard" is disheartening to say the least. There is some good news in that Canada has improved on some measures, and the report on the page linked above reminds us that a focus on incremental innovation is a valid path for companies to pursue. The Globe Report on Business story about this latest innovation scorecard contains reference to the new indicator of entrepreneurial ambition, on which Canada scores well. This is an important point that is well worth emphasizing.

George Brown College understands employment - this is core to our Strategy 2020. We rightfully focus on ensuring employment outcomes for our graduates - making sure that where the labour market is headed is where our graduates get jobs and excel in them. GBC was a partner on a recent labour market information report by the Toronto Region Board of Trade that offers the best LMI available for the region - find it here: Closing the Prosperity Gap.

The point here is that we focus on job takers - preparing people to take the jobs in the economy that need to be filled.

We also need to focus on the job makers - those people who have entrepreneurial ambition and who are creating companies and jobs in the economy. startGBC, GBC's gateway to entrepreneurship is our access point for the job makers in our programs. There are many programs and post-secondary institutions focusing on entrepreneurship, from MaRS to Ryerson University's DMZ. All have in common what the Conference Board is measuring as entrepreneurial ambition, which "helps shape the entrepreneurial and innovation performance of an economy." 

We should celebrate our A rating on this factor, and do more to encourage not just the jobs takers - who need innovation literacy to help companies and entrepreneurs to be more innovative and productive - but the job makers, who will create jobs, opportunities and new industries in the years to come.