Canada must change its innovation ecosystem

William Polushin is founding director of the Program for International Competitiveness at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, and President of AMAXIS, an international business and operational development services firm. The Competing to Win blog series can be found here.

In my last entry, I cited value as one of those words in business that stands out among the rest in the minds and hearts of owners, entrepreneurs and managers. In our increasingly competitive and integrated global economy, innovation is another word that carries significant weight and meaning - but not just for the for-profit element of our society.

Policy makers, academic and research institutions, industry and trade associations, and think tanks -- across Canada and around the world -- are also investing considerable time and resources to better understand, develop, employ, or manage innovation in order to facilitate competitive advantage, productivity growth, and/or economic expansion either for themselves or their respective communities.

This past week, I had the privilege of hosting a seminar at McGill - in collaboration with Industry Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME), and Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) - to share the results of the Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (SIBS). SIBS is a joint project of Industry Canada, DFAIT, and Statistics Canada that was launched in 2007-08 to better understand the market and policy factors that encourage or discourage the adoption of growth and innovation-oriented business strategies.

Over the period 2007-2009, 6,233 enterprises across Canada, with at least 20 employees and $250,000 in annual revenues were surveyed, representing 67 unique industries. While the sample excluded micro and smaller enterprises - which are the majority of businesses in Canada - the survey provided useful insights into business strategies and practices in Canada that determine business innovation.

Read full article: The Globe and Mail, November 16, 2011