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.

GBC Applied Research Day a Success

The annual George Brown College Applied Research Day was held this past Monday and was a great success, convening 200 faculty, students and research partners for an afternoon of dialogue, discussion and a tour through the Galaxy of Research. A highlight this year was the student start-up pitch competition that saw five student entrepreneurs vie for a spot at the GBC Research OCE Discovery booth and $500 in applied research services to support their venture. Congratulations to mywinecanada.com - I encourage everyone to check out this exciting business that enables wineries in Canad to sell wines direct to consumers.

The annual Applied Research Day demonstrates the strength of applied research at the College. Our faculty, industry and community partners spoke about curricular innovation, social innovation and industrial innovation – three facets of innovation that give our students key innovation skills while creating social and economic value in our community.

One of the things that struck me was how applied research offers an "unstructured structure" to curricula at the College. That is, we have the structure of engaging with partners on applied research and giving these experiences to our students as part of the educational environment. But we do not know how these projects will turn out, Some will success, others will fail, some will get taken in new and unplanned directions. This is the beauty of why applied research works so well to instill innovation skills in our students. It requires extemporaneous thinking and perseverance. It promotes outside the box thinking and the acquisition of innovation literacy, skills that foster resilience, problem solving and entrepreneurial thinking. 

A highlight for me was speaking to the many students who attended, and who attested to how working with our partners on the many projects helped them gain innovation literacy. These students have the skills needed for the economy of today and tomorrow, proving our strategic imperative of Enabling the Innovation Economy.

GBC Applied Research Day 2016 Logo

SSHRC launches new Strategic Plan

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has recently launched an updated Strategic Plan: Advancing Knowledge for Canada’s Future. Three objectives are outlined:

• To enable excellence in a changing research landscape
• To create opportunities for research and training through collaborative initiatives
• To connect social sciences and humanities research with Canadians 

The document is well worth a read - the social and human sciences are increasingly important to realizing the value of innovation and the Strategic Plan shows why. I am a proud supporter of SSHRC and a member  of their Programs and Quality Committee.  This has given me a front row seat to the excellent work SSHRC sponsors across universities and colleges.

While the important of science, technology engineering and math (STEM) are well touted in the media, perhaps less understood is the role of design, business, and social innovation in the overall innovation discussion. SSHRC President Ted Hewitt, states in the document that "The humanities and social sciences have contributed much to our understanding and appreciation of Canada’s rich history, ethnic and cultural diversity and dynamic rural and urban economies." Here at GBC to prove this we need look no further than four recently awarded social innovation research awards from SSHRC - read about our four research teams here.

As the government works on a new Innovation Agenda, SSHRC's updated Strategic Plan offers a key road map for investment and increasing social and economic productivity and prosperity in Canada. A participatory, people-centred innovation agenda will maximize input from the humanities and social sciences and ensure that Canada continues to lead in research excellence and its application into areas of national importance.

Numeracy and Essential Employability Skills

GBC President Anne Sado was on TVO's the Agenda this past week, participating in a panel on the numeracy gap. It was a good discussion about the need for better math and numeracy, building on a recent study "Closing the Numeracy Gap." This report is worth reading, as it relates well to our ongoing discussion about skills for the innovation economy. George Brown College is focused on providing rounded skills to our students via work integrated learning in all of our programs. This enables a balanced approach to what are called hard and soft skills. College programs it is worth noting articulate clear outcomes and integrate Essential Employability Skills across curricula. This renders explicit the tacit assumptions around the what and the why of education. This is good for students and social and economic development and productivity.

Federal government launches the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund

Centennial College was the host for today's announcement by the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, of the new Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund. This is a $2B investment in public infrastructure at colleges and universities across the country. Ann Buller, president of Centennial College, kicked off the event with a positive message about the nature of colleges and universities as preparing the country for future innovation and productivity, from PhDs inventing to entrepreneurs starting companies, and immigrants and refugees starting a new life. Denise Amyot, CEO of CICan and Paul Davidson, CEO of Universities Canada, both underscored the importance of this funding to the future of education and innovation capacity across the country. Everyone spoke of the necessity to have colleges and universities well funded to support education and innovation, of the complementary nature of the education system. CICan has made a strong case for infrastructure funding in their Budget 2016 submission. This is clearly reflected in today's announcement. Overall it was a good announcement for the PSE sector, who collectively will now set to work to apply for what promises to be a very competitive fund.

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.

The importance of labour market information

Polytechnics Canada CEO Nobina Robinson was quoted in a recent Globe and Mail article about the importance of labour market information (LMI) and nascent efforts by federal and provincial governments to produce these data for the Canadian economy. Polytechnics Canada has advocated for more effective LMI for the past year+, and the Institutional Research offices of the 11 members have compiled useful data on connecting supply and demand of education and skilled talent for the labour market. Many have been advocating for an independent, arms-length Labour Market Information Council, which is the name chosen for this group, though it is made up of provincial and federal government officials. It is likely that many will take a wait and see approach to this new LMIC and give it the benefit of the doubt - anything may be better than the current state, which is akin to driving a car without a dashboard. Having a coordinated approach to LMI will help guide investments in education - at the political and the personal level.

Last January George Brown College launched Career Coach, an online service that is designed to illuminate for potential students the gaps in the current labour market and which programs prepare graduates for these fields. It is a powerful application that draws on StatsCan data and links programs, pathways, and job openings with salary information. This follows on an excellent report the Toronto Board of Trade commissioned last last year, which GBC, along with our GTA college partners Centennial, Humber and Seneca, along with Colleges Ontario and the United Way, sponsored. This report - Closing the Property Gap - has the best LMI available to date; you can download the data cube and execute your own analyses on it. And while it is focused on the GTA, it offers a good start to what is needed to ensure that regions and regional economies can enable citizens to best respond to present and future labour market conditions.

Science, Technology, Students

In picking up the thread of research and development in Canada, there have been a few good articles of late that help frame the fall conversation. This will be particularly important as the federal government readies the release of its anticipated update to the S&T Strategy.

The Globe has a piece by economist Todd Hirsch on the lack of S&T investment by industry. This is not new news. Hirsch does do a good job of articulation what this may mean down the road for Canada's economy, especially when, as he notes, Canadian companies are "flush with cash." Partnering with a post-secondary institution such as a college, polytechnic or university can help industry to de-risk the R&D enterprise. This has been a staple of government support for R&D of late.

Of course there are those that decry this approach to R&D funding, saying that requiring industry partners will debase the pursuit of science. A recent Ottawa Citizen op-ed claims that governments are "starving" fundamental science research with the focus on industry engagement. Without wading too far into this, I wonder if a more nuanced approach is required? Certainly declining grant success rates is frustrating for anyone applying for funds. But fostering a greater national approach to partnering in research generally, and in this I include with industry, and among universities, colleges and polytechnics, both fosters greater academic and industry R&D productivity, while giving students better experience. I've made the point many times that engaging students in applied R&D with industry fosters innovation literacy. The point here is that, as CCA reports have outlined, we are excellent at many areas of basic research. I just think we don't have the GDP to support unfettered research into everything and so have to make choices. And health is likely a good one.

With the economic recovery perhaps not as good as we might hope, there is a couple of voices coalescing on the value of Canadian education. Both Mark Kingwell and Minister Jason Kenney have not dissimilar views. While the former lauds the value of Canadian universities such as the University of Toronto, Kenney goes a step further in seeking to leverage immigration specifically to attract and retain talent. Both underscore the value of our educational systems as being components of the larger productivity strategy that involves talent and R&D.

And this is a good segue into the Strategic Mandate Agreements that the Ontario government has recently required of all PSE institutions in the province. I've not yet had a chance to review these in detail and to compare and contrast them, but it will be interesting to see how our colleges, polytechnics and universities can work together to meet the needs of the labour market generally, for the economy of today and that of tomorrow.

Recognizing innovation literacy with badges

Since the launch of our innovation literacy digital badges I've received numerous inquiries regarding the program, particularly since the story about our badging program appeared in Academica. I thought it would be useful to provide an overview the the program, and why we have launched it and what we hope it means to our students and graduates.

The premise of the program is that it is important to acknowledge the acquisition of skills students gain as a result of working on applied research projects conducted with industry and community partners.  These innovation literacy skills are ancillary to the technical and other skills students gain in our academic programs.

The foundational premise is that these innovation literacy skills are acquired through this applied research work. The second premise is that it is important to render these skills visible to students. That is, we must ensure that students can see and acknowledge that they have gained skills pertinent to innovation. We can tell students they have gained these skills, and most can articulate that they have gained these skills, but it is important to render explicit the tacit assumptions of skills acquisition in order to complete the learning and reinforce the value of innovation literacy. Third, it is important to make this skill acquisition visible. Enter the digital badge.

Badges are an increasingly popular way for students to show to potential employers how they have gained skills and experiences that do not normally appear on an official transcript. They can be displayed on an e-portfolio or co-curricular record, or on a social media profile such as LinkedIn or Facebook. The important thing is that badges are explicit recognition of skills that are gained through experiential learning.

For the past few years the team at George Brown College has been working to foster innovation literacy skills in our graduates that work on applied research. We have developed ways to measure this longitudinally, and this work is in progress. In the meantime we felt it important to take steps to ensure graduates understand what innovation means, and how their applied research experience enables them to take a proactive role in fostering innovation within the broader world of work they enter upon graduation.  It is important to demystify innovation, as in so doing we derisk it for the economy broadly. By ensuring that all graduates can achieve some understanding of innovation and how they can participate in it, we foster a better chance of future productivity. Key here is recognition of informal learning and its relationship to formal learning.

I've written earlier about the need for a more national approach to outcomes based learning that can account for both formal and informal learning. Such a "learning passport" system would enhance the linkages between learning and life (work), something colleges and polytechnics assume as part of our mandate. This explicit connection need not solely be focused on the transactional acquisition of skills of immediate use. For when we teach skills we also teach how to learn, and learning how to learn is a skill that fosters resilience and the transformational effects of education.

George Brown College Excellence in Research and Innovation digital badge

Polytechnics Canada promotes entrepreneurship of, in education

The annual Polytechnics Canada policy conference was convened this week at Algonquin College in Ottawa. The theme of this year's conference was "Polytechnic Education: The future we want, the difference we make, the change we need".

The agenda included an opening keynote by Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. It was a great opening to the conference as Crawford focused on the necessary balance between manual and intellectual labour, itself a false dichotomy.  The main idea here is that the kinds of work that colleges and polytechnics prepare people for has been traditionally delegated to second tier status. The time has come to realize we need a complementary approach to education.

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada and Minister for Multiculturalism gave a keynote speech at the conference dinner preceding the event, focusing on the kinds of changes we need in ensuring we have better labour market information, credit transfer and mobility, and on the new reforms to apprenticeships. It kicked off very good discussion at the conference on the value of work (as per Mathew Crawford), as well as skills that employers need and how we can instil these in our graduates.

A panel discussion featuring representatives from all three political parties reviewed the role of the federal government in education, and there was a strong focus on innovation and the needed connection between applied education, the labour force, and the larger R&D capacity of the Canadian industrial ecosystem.

An ensuing speech by by Nathan Cullen, Member of Parliament for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C. and Finance Critic for the Official Opposition, New Democratic Party of Canada, was a good review of the consonance that exists across political lines on issues pertaining to education and policy. Cullen also made strong points about the need to reinforce the value of college and polytechnic education - a point picked up by many - where this value has had historically diminishing returns in terms of its perceived value. In simple terms, this means a historical bias favouring universities as the ticket to the future has led to the skills issues we now face (for which we need better data, of course).

It was Cullen who stated that "Polytechnics are the entrepreneurs of post secondary education." This is a very good point - the members of Polytechnics Canada are innovating in our approach to integrating applied research as a core facet of experiential learning while helping firms to innovate. We are advancing the apprenticeship discussion to update and modernize the system for better social and economic productivity. And we are working to connect supply and demand for the innovation economy.

Addressing this topic specifically was a panel on "Connecting Demand and Supply for a 21st Century Talent Agenda". Speaking from the employer perspective was Ross Laver, Vice President, Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and making the link to post-secondary change was Professor Ross Finnie, Director of the Education Policy Research Initiative (EPRI), University of Ottawa. It was an excellent overview of the needs of employers, and how education institutions can work to meet these needs. The crown learned about the nature of skills shortages and the lag of the PSE system to deliver the skills we need now, which runs the risk of ignoring the realities of the skills needs down the road. This is complicated by the fact that the jobs we will need to fill in 10 years may not exist right now. Todd Hirsch, writing in today's Globe, makes a similar point. (warning: paywall in effect).

A closing panel on healthcare shows how polytechnics from across the country are helping entrepreneurs innovate in the health space, while providing needed culture change impetus with the teaching of innovation literacy to a wide variety of students. GBC Research partner Infonaut was featured.

We need better labour market information (LMI): "The plural of anecdote is not data" enjoined Polytechnics Canada CEO Nobina Robinson. This was echoed by many - starting with Minister Kenney right through to Ross Finnie, the latter who also focused on the relatively new field of behavioural economics. This means understanding the context in which the students (now and in the future) are making decisions about the kinds of education in which they will engage includes some of the prejudices against college mentioned above. This is not to say that university education is not useful, but rather that it is not for everyone, nor preparation for all of the jobs we have and need to fill now and in the future. It is worth repeating: we need a complementary, non-binary view of education - and research for that matter - that starts from what the market needs.

Once again it was an excellent discussion, with participation from many across the education, government and policy spectrum. The focus on the future with a practical attention paid on how we will get there - and what changes we need to work on together - was very fruitful, and significantly advanced the discourse on education, skills and innovation.  Nobina Robinson summed up the day succinctly: "When events like these ask the right questions we can get to the right solutions."

Polytechnics Canada next convenes at BCIT in November for the annual Student Applied Research Showcase. With BCIT celebrating 25 years of applied research, it promises to be a good event.

Innovation is a behaviour

The eighth annual Polytechnics Canada Student Applied Research Showcase was convened this week at SAIT Polytechnic, and featured some really outstanding presentations from students from each of the 11 members. GBC mechanical engineering design student John-Allan Ellingson took second place in the competition - congratulations John-Allan! John-Allan presented his work with SOS Customer Service on an innovative crane for lifting curtain walls into place. See a video of the project here.

The event was presented by Cisco, and SAIT did a truly outstanding job of hosting, with many innovative features in the program, including an RFID real time location system for the gala dinner seating.

The event was opened with keynote speeches by The Honourable Greg Rickford, Minister of State for Science and Technology, and The Honourable Michelle Rempel, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification. Ministers Rickford and Rempel both spoke about the importance of college and polytechnic applied research as linked to skills, a theme picked up by the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism, in his keynote address.

This connection - between focused applied research and innovation skills acquisition and demonstration by our students - is the hallmark of polytechnic applied research. My recent article in the online journal Technology Innovation Management Review - Measuring Innovation Skills Acquired by College and Polytechnic Students through Applied Research - makes these connections, as part of work we are doing to measure outcomes and innovation literacy. Research Money also published a short opinion piece on this topic. Supply and demand in the innovation economy is available on the R$ website.

One of the speakers from the gala - there were five in a series of short speeches on the value of innovation in  variety of contexts - spoke about how innovation is not an end in and of itself, but that innovation is a behaviour. This is a really strong point - the demonstration of innovation literacy - the skills of innovation and entrepreneurship - models the kind of behaviour needed for a strong, resilient and productive economy. Seeing the students from the 11 polytechnics showed all that the future is a more innovative place when these are the kinds of graduates who enter the workforce running.

It is events like these that really showcase the value of innovation skills to our industry partners. Kudos to SAIT for putting on an excellent show, and for raising the bar on the ability of our members to show the world what innovation looks like.

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.

The polytechnic moment

It's fitting on the day after Canada Day that we turn to a discussion of Ken Coates' excellent article This is Canada’s polytechnic moment. Coates gave a spirited presentation at the recent Polytechnics Canada annual conference, and he picks up many of the ideas in the Globe article.Of interest to me is the focus not only on the needs of Canadian industry (in order to be more innovative and productive) but also the needs of today's learners. In addition, the call for greater cooperation among all actors in the post-secondary education space is important. The applied nature of our programs, our focus on working with industry on education and applied research, and in ensuring our graduates have the necessary technical and innovation skills for today and tomorrow are hallmarks of the polytechnic advantage.

The article is timely, given the recent release of the OECD's Education at a Glance 2013. Canada once again is at the top of the world in terms of post-secondary education attainment. The Globe's James Bradshaw outlines the reason for this is because High number of college graduates lowers Canada's youth unemployment, OECD report says. The OECD report contains a lot of information and variables, but the overall statistics are good in terms of attainment, not so good in terms of cost and funding. But a key take away, and relative top the Coates piece, is that there is a real need for the kind of education that Canadian polytechnics provide. This is complementary to that which is provided by colleges and universities across the country.

And so at a time when Canadians tend to reflect on the value of working together, it is timely to think of education in this way, with all parts contributing to a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

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

Polytechnics Canada promotes education, innovation for the specialist economy

The annual Polytechnics Canada conference was convened this week at the waterfront campus of George Brown College, and featured some excellent and provoking ideas and discussion around the polytechnic model of education.The Honourable Brad Duguid, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Government of Ontario opened the day by welcoming the delegates and emphasizing the importance of how the applied education we specialize in delivering is highly valued by employers and the province.

Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates then convened a panel of international experts to kick off the discussion about trends in polytechnic education and applied research. The panel featured Dr. Thomas Deissinger, Business & Economics Education Chair at University of Konstanz, Germany, Dr. Vuokko Kohtamaki, Senior Researcher at Tampere University of Technology, Finland, and Dr. James Jacobs, President of Macomb Community College, U.S.A. We learned much about the European system that fosters greater mobility of highly qualified and skilled personnel (as enabled through pan-EU Bologna education approach), and how Macomb Community College is approaching education in an era of declining state support, raising questions about how education can enable transformation and transfer: of credits, skills and knowledge. The EU approach to fostering better linkages and credit transfer among institutions is coupled with a more advanced approach to credentials, including and especially apprenticeships, that are linked to industry and labour market needs. This is an important point. In Germany for example, industry invests to a very large degree in skills training, both formal and informal. And applied research in Finland and Germany is linked explicitly to local and regional economic development. These are seen as highly positive outcomes. Our own focus on education and applied research as linked to regional social and economic development is on very solid footing here. Our capacity as a country to engage in credit transfer and mobility however, are not so solid. There is work to be done to make of Canada a truly systemized system.

This point was picked up by keynote speaker Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr Coates spoke about the "specialist economy" wherein skills and knowledge needed for specific occupations are increasingly the norm as an outcome of education. (Coincidentally, today's Globe and Mail features a story on specialization in nursing.) Education in the specialist economy is more episodic, linked to labour market needs, meaning that education providers will need to adapt to providing more timely and modular approaches to credentials. This approach to education is very thoughtfully presented by former BCIT president Don Wright, in a discussion paper on the future of the institution. Of particular note in this paper is Wright's point that the role of polytechnic education is to build human capital, not filter it. This notion of broadly building society's capacity to ensure a broadly based educated population by increasing credential laddering, transfer and outcomes linked to social and economic need is a hallmark of polytechnics. Indeed, Coates said that many who go to university do so as a default or reflex. We would do well to emulate European models where polytechnic education is not seen as second to a university education. The reality is that we need a range of education and credential offerings that reflect, promote and provide for a range of occupations coupled with citizen engagement. 

The afternoon featured a panel discussion on Green Building Panel|Building Green: Applied Research & Skills Training for the Green Building Sector. Nancy Sherman, Dean of Construction & Engineering Technologies, George Brown College, Ted Maulucci, CIO, Tridel, David Silburn, Research Associate, SAIT Polytechnic, Jennie Moore, Director of Sustainable Development & Environment Stewardship, BCIT, and Mark Hoddenbagh, Director of Applied Research, Algonquin discussed the specifics around "How members of Polytechnics Canada produce talent and innovation for the green construction sector, a key industrial strength of our membership." Nancy Sherman focused on the education and applied research approach of our Green Building Centre, funded by FedDev Ontario, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, NSERC, and our industry partners.

Rick Huijbregts, Vice President for Industry and Business Transformation, Smart + Connected Communities, Cisco Canada, concluded the speakers at the evening reception with an excellent overview of Cisco's approach to fostering skills and knowledge through the Cisco Academy (including at George Brown College). The linking of industry need to skills and educational outcomes is necessary, and as we see from the international experience, a good way to orient the education system to ensure we have a well-aligned supply and demand in the labour market. Of course we want to ensure that our citizens are broadly educated; there are non-industry specific outcomes that we want to encourage, such as innovation and entrepreneurship, critical thinking and democratic engagement.

Board of Trade cluster strategy launched

Last week I had the good fortune to attend the launch of the Toronto Region Board of Trade (TRBOT) cluster strategy. Over two days, two clusters were launched - one on the food and beverage industry and the other on life sciences.

The TRBOT's cluster strategy was kicked off last year when Michael Porter came to speak about the value of clusters. The focus of clusters is to collaborate to compete as a region  and the two events brought together leaders from business, academia and government to really put some shape around what actions and next steps are necessary in order to move the region's cluster development forward.

Both the food and beverage and the life sciences clusters are large economic development engines in the region, and we have the elements to make these even more successful in terms of industry, academic/skills training, and support from a range of state and nonstate actors. The Toronto Region Board of Trade's leadership in formulating cluster strategies and action plans to move the region forward is significant, and well timed. A more proactive linking of business R&D, skills training and education and new technology adoption in industry are the key drivers of productivity and innovation  By getting all the players together to work together, the TRBOT has opened up a conversation that dovetails with the focus on the recent federal budget - to encourage more public-private R&D partnerships, a better linkage of skills training with industry, and the value of new technology to drive innovation and productivity.  I am looking forward to learning more - and participating - in growing the region's clusters, and I encourage all to contact the TRBOT to learn how you can get involved in this exciting and worthwhile initiative.

On skills, mismatched or otherwise

Speculation about Budget 2013 is rife with the premise of skills taking a front and centre approach in the federal government's agenda. Reports such as Flaherty to make skills training a budget focus, How to solve problem of jobs without people and people without jobs?, and Federal budget 2013: Skills training a top priority, businesses tell Flaherty show that the government is headed in the right direction in terms of ensuring that the economy has the right people with the right skills in the right places. While some may say that the skills shortage/mismatch is a misnomer, there can be no denying that Canada needs to do more to get the skills mix right. Of course the argument is complex, and it is not as easy as saying we need this type of education over that type of education. Outgoing University of Toronto president David Naylor makes these points in a recent Empire Club address, reinforcing as he does the need for basic research over applied. This is a laudable point, and one to be expected from Canada's largest research university (full disclosure: I am a proud alumni of UofT). He underscores this by emphasizing the need for the private sector to step up its R&D investment. But the most important message he imparts is the need "to promote shared programming between universities and colleges," including the good point that colleges are the finishing school for those with undergraduate degrees who want to get vocational skills relevant to the economy. The take away message here is that we need to play to our strengths, in education and research, in order to work together to solve our shared productivity and innovation problems. Putting skills front and centre, and to this I would relate the need for more outcomes based education in all post secondary education programs, is exactly the right thing to do in promoting effective wayfinding for the "K-to-work journey."

#skillsarewherethepuckisgoing

Education and the economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#skillsarewherethepuckisgoing

Education n+1

Today's Globe and Mail has an informative piece by Kevin Lynch, who, in Education 2.0, outlines views that education needs a focus on outcomes, and should include experiential learning. He offers a helpful insight that "The public education system is still organized around separate K-to-12 systems, community college systems and university systems, but the student is really engaged in a 'K-to-work' journey." Lynch quotes Rick Miner's work on "people without jobs and jobs without people" as indicative of the looming skills gap and skills shortage, something Nobina Robinson pointed out last week in her Globe op-ed. This is the kind of reasoned approach we need in Canada: orienting our education system to outcomes relevant to the needs of the economy (social, economic), and acknowledging the span of education  that serves this purpose. Colleges and polytechnics have been promoting the value of outcomes-based and experiential learning as important drivers of the economy. When innovation is linked to learning outcomes and industry needs (for education and applied research), we have a better chance of future proofing our productivity.

Innovation literacy, skilled trades, and the economy

Happy new year!

The Ontario Jobs and Prosperity Council last month released "Advantage Ontario," a comprehensive report outlining how Ontario can "become more competitive and seize opportunities in the new global economy or our prosperity will decline, " according to the press release, which goes on to say that "The report identifies five key areas for action: going global; driving productivity growth; unleashing innovation and entrepreneurship; capitalizing on strength in talent and delivering smart, efficient government."

Today's Academica outlines the report's focus on the skilled trades and experiential learning. Both of these are important facets of our economy. Canada currently faces a real need for more skilled trades, and ensuring we can produce the trades we need, along with other knowledge workers, is key to our future prosperity. The Ontario Jobs and Prosperity Council report contains some good recommendations, key among these are "Introducing a business-led commercialization voucher to better link research to business needs." The SME voucher system has been proposed by Polytechnics Canada in their Statement to the House of Commons Industry, Science and Technology Committee and Statement to the Standing Committee on Finance's 2012 Pre-Budget Consultation. Such vouchers work well in other provinces, and implementing these here in Ontario will go a long way to encouraging firms to innovate. The vouchers let the market decide where to get help with applied research needs. polytechnics, colleges, universities  even private R&D labs, can all collaborate to compete together to serve the needs of innovative firms looking to get new products and services to market. Letting firms decide who can best serve their needs is a good way to ensure that the needs of firms are put first in the applied research endeavour.

At George Brown College, we are focused on preparing students for employment success. When we engage students in applied research, they gain innovation literacy skills while helping firms innovate. Our focus is on firm success, who can then hire our graduates to further their innovation goals. A key area of applied research for us is the Green Building Centre, funding for which was announced last year. FEDDEV Ontario has provided funding for the Green Building Centre which will enable us to link the training of the skilled trades to applied research in the green building area. Linking innovation  innovation literacy, and applied research with the skilled trades is a signal advantage of George Brown College and the Green Building Centre. We will be posting more information on this innovative and unique approach to education and applied research throughout the year as we continue to build the physical infrastructure we are using to support our partner firms.

On this note, it is important to point out the Polytechnics Canada Statement to the House of Commons Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, in which Polytechnics Canada Director of Policy Ken Doyle outlines key ideas for addressing Canada's skilled trades and apprenticeship needs. This is required reading for anyone interested in Canada's future prosperity. As he points out, the skilled trades have literally built the knowledge economy. It's time we focused on building on our foundation of basic science excellence, and capitalizing on the trend emergent of making stuff. I've written here before about this trend - and the latest issue of Wired Magazine has an excellent article (about robots) on how the future of manufacturing will be focused on proximity; this is the re-shoring of manufacturing. It's coming, and our graduates are at the forefront of this change.