Industry Canada is inviting businesses across the nation for input into their Innovation Strategy through an online webform questionaire (see How to Get Involved) that asks hard questions on how we can turn this ship around and get Canada back on the cluetrain as a technology leader. Recognizing that we have a surplus of innovators but a dire shortage of venues where they can play, Industry Canada asks, "What do you see as the top three challenges facing Canada in terms of creating knowledge and bringing it to market more quickly?" with followup questions on how the federal government could fashion policies and regulation to make it happen. Here's what I wrote ... What do you see as the top three challenges facing Canada in terms
of creating knowledge and bringing it to market more quickly?

KC1. Knowledge Challenge 1

Machiavellian Innovation Impedance: "Innovators meet intense opposition from those who profit most from the old way of doing things, and receive only luke-warm support from those who stand to profit from the new way of doing things" (or thereabouts, Ch4 of "The Prince" IIRC) -- This principle has intense importance in the Canadian industrial setting. For example, while the developing work can roll out innovative broadband technologies, Canada is stifled with the albatros of Rogers and Bell around our necks ;) For further example, consider the economics of license fees paid by all branches of the Canadian government to Microsoft for software that could be obtained under open and locally-motivating arrangements (one reason Germany is turning to open source)

KC2. Knowledge Challenge 2

Industrial Time-lag: Every new innovation will see a time-lag between the invention and the widespread adoption (partially due to, partially in spite of KC1) but in Canada the investiment infrastructure is such that a new idea is not given that chance; in building trades, the lag is 30 years, in information technology it is 4-5, yet for companies sticking their necks out on either, it might as well be a thousand years because they will be bankrupt before they see the world come round to their idea. So .. they go outside Canada to where investors can afford to wait.

KC3. Knowledge Challenge 3

When Canadian companies do bring knowledge to market, they seem to stand with their backs firmly to all borders, they look out over the frozen void and it's population the size of Sweden, and they wonder why they are not making any money. Canadian companies should rule in French-language products (all the advantages of US manuf/dist but into a market the US cannot reach) yet Quebec products seem to sell only within Quebec.

KA1. Knowledge Action 1

Government policy should favour the small innovator. True, large enterprise contribute greatly to the country and to the political parties, but we need to know when big is big enough: What advantage is there to Canada to make Microsoft bigger? What advantage is there even to make BCE or CanWest bigger? The big corporations, especially those with multinational interests can look after themselves; we need not penalize the big interests to promote the small, but looking at the trendlines on small-enterprise share of the GNP, Canada needs to wake up: The world is not a world of Hudson's Bay Companies anymore.

KA2. Knowledge Action 2

Partly KA1 and partly to address KC1 through KA1, the Government needs to be the leader in taking a chance on new knowledge. Like Ms Frizzle in Magic Schoolbus says, "Go ahead, make mistakes, get dirty" -- the Federal Government needs to be encouraged to make mistakes without fear of public embarrasement; we need to reframe having spent on a Canadian innovator into a positive thing in the House, even when that expense turns into failure; it is better to have said that we tried.

KA3. Knowledge Action 3

Most of the Canadian industries have the capabilities to compete, but lack the infrastructure to coallate their resources to behave like a single entity; this was the work we did with Industry Canada a few years ago on the EduTainment issue after BC Education bought their entire curriculum software from Disney. We failed because IC needed use to pay to set up the infrastructure, but because of our individual sizes, we were stuck in a catch-22: To build the infrastructure for our business webs, we needed to be a business-web.

SC1. Skills Challenge 1

Motivation. What motivation is there for someone to learn a high tech when the employer will just hire a new East European for 1/2 a decent wage? And what motivation is there if there is no stability to the startups, no contracts for them to fullfill, and oodles of inviting offers outside the borders.

SC2. Skills Challenge 2

Image: We keep trying to be what we are not. We have skills colleges that teach same-old-same-old because "that's what the employers want" ... only it's not what the employers need -- we need more pure-science sorts of education, teaching people to ask questions, try ideas, be bold, not to meekly sign the paper and do their job.

SC3. Skills Challenge 3

Expense: Who can afford education anymore?

SA1. Skills Action 1

Again, by having the government take the lead to take chances on innovative entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs will have that steady income they need to offer good people a decent wage for a reasonable guarantee of time.

SA2. Skills Action 2

By encouraging experimental (low-risk no-blame) innovation deployments, we say that it is not only OK to think outside of the box, it is actually more profitable. Who was it who said, "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas"?

SA3. Skills Action 3

Education should be a right, not a priviledge. We need to slash the cost of education by at least 90% -- I thought the whole point of weaving commercial interests into education (ie IBM-funding of UofT AI research) was to help cover costs, but instead we have public money being virtually handed into the pockets of the IBMs who now own full rights to the innovations we do produce. Thus the advantages of our research go outside the country, certainly out of the public bookkeeping, and pure-science education looks "unprofitable". You know what I think? I think the fact that bringing in all the corporate sponsorship made the hole in the hull even bigger.

BC1. Business / Regulatory Challenge 1

We have to beat the weight of the Machiavellian Innovation Impedance.

BC2. Business / Regulatory Challenge 2

We have to face the fact that the Small Business Revolution will define the 21st century.

BC3. Business / Reglatory Challenge 3

we need a process for turning feedback (like this survey) into a positive reinforcement mechanism.

BA1. Business / Regulatory Action 1

I'm not at all sure how to beat the considerable pressue that powerful lobbies apply to keeping the old profit engines running. You tell me how we get BCE and CanWest to let up on the artificial scarcity of bandwidth, and I think we will be on our way.

BA2. Business / Regulatory Action 2

Many innovators might do better with their limited resources if they have better choices for location. My personal view is that the rural towns and villages are excellent places for innovative industries to locate and grow, but without the INFRASTRUCTURE (as was promised by Brian Toben, then sucked down the 9-11 drain) ...

BA3. Business / Regulatory Action 3

I don't advocate any Canadian Alliance "Recall your MP" nonesense, but we need to have some means where I can talk to Ovid, Ovid can talk to people in the House, and things can happen. I've seen it happen, both with Ovid Jackson and with my MPP Bill Murdoch, but it's not a process, it's more like a sideline. It would be nice if it was like tracking your package on Purolator.com :)

CC1. Communities Challenge 1

"In the global knowledge-based economy, key assets are less geographically dependent." is BS only because of KC1 and the failure of Government to roll out the infrastructure. I've been hard at work on this issue for 20 years, and we are no closer, I am still a second class business because teledyn.com is based in sauble beach. Best I can hope for is 2GB/month at 1Mb/sec, and that is not even enough to be a software vendor or to work collaboratively on any sizeable software project. So forget about having your industrial CAD office up here. STEP ONE: WE MUST HAVE INFRASTRUCTURE! 9-11 fearmongering was a con to suck government money into fingerprint machines that can be fooled by white-glue: Let's put that money back into the engines of the economy.

CC2. Communities Challenge 2

Ok, here's one really close to my heart: I met with the CFIB last week -- 51% of Ontario small business use email daily, yet the combined prognosis for Canadian business to grab the global eBusiness pie is optimistically set at 3%. Why? Because our people don't know HOW to use the technology. For example, look at this survey form-from-hell; four-line windows into detailed thoughts, one long session -- how much better if this was something I could do in the word-processor of my choice and submit via HTTP POST, but most businesses around here (even my local CFIB member) would not be able to handle that. Now go to Canada.com and take a wander through the online shops there; notice how many cannot sell to you through a secure and easy interface, notice how many of the sites are "dancing bears" (amazing not for the elegance of their dance, but because they can dance at all). Yesterday I had someone call me to ask about banner-ad strategies; only about 5 years too late for that cluetrain, eh?

There is a digital divide in CC1 between those who can get sufficient bandwidth to be "geographically liberated" and there is a SECOND digital divide between those who can effectively use the pipe and those who cannot. Quick quiz: Name two world-class online services based in Canada.

Why is that?

CC3. Communities Challenge 3

what good is it to strengthen Cornerbrook NFLD or Wiarton ON if all the young people have already moved away? We need to keep the youth engaged in their communities, not resigned to go seek other less-challenged geography.

CA1. Communities Action 1

Immediate action: Make good on Brian Toben's promise of a MINIMUM 5MB/sec to every square inch of Canada by 2004. It can be done by fostering independent mesh networks of wireless, each small and shouldering only a small part of the total risk and expense. It has to be open architecture, not a sales vehicle for Microsoft or Apple, and it has to be fueled by Canadian innovation. It should be a National Effort like the CNR, or like the villages of expert research/engineering sponsored in ancient egypt to build pyramids (ie, a showcase of the small innovators from across the land) I fear instead we will give the keys to this to BCE or CanWest or IBM or Microsoft, who will have us by the digital balls once more.

CA2. Communities Action 2

Maybe spending government money to take chances on out of the box thinking would encourage more people to take their blinders off. Maybe by providing the means for people to collaborate tightly as ad-hoc virtual response-team business webs would let them see that, working together, there is less work to get more returns.

CA3. Communities Action 3

How do we drop education costs 90%? Distributed colleges, connected by CANet3 fibre. I went to U of T, and sat in stuffy stone rooms learning off blackboards and overheads, using 10 year old apparatus; why could I not get my undergraduate degree in even Physics at Georgian College in Owen Sound? They have blackboards. What they don't have is access to the university libraries or access to the professors, but there is nothing else that I did in 4 years of 1970's UofT Cognitive Science that could not physically be done there.

The vision is to make Canada a world leader in innovation and to increase our economic performance for the benefit of all Canadians. Are there any additional suggestions or comments that you would like to offer in this regard?

Because it is cold half the year, because our neighbours are miles away, we sit and think. Thus Canada will always be leaders in innovations. The key is only to harness that power within the country, rather than have it shipped outside and sold back to us like Flanders Flax. As with most social issues, the solutions are all small things, easy things, local things, but as Machiavelli noted, to the old-model interests these may be seen as dire threats; maybe it is only through small gains that we can escape their distain and wrath.

Interesting times indeed.