Ontario innovation summit to feature research of Roger Martin Task Force

Best practices and economic indicators

The first report the Roger Martin-led Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress will serve as the centerpiece for a provincially staged innovation summit to be held November 5 in Toronto. Conceived by Jim Flaherty, minister of Ontario's recently formed Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation (MEOI), the event was given the green light last spring. It had been scheduled to take place the day before the federal government’s much larger innovation summit, which has now been delayed (see page 1).

Tentatively entitled Ontario’s Innovation Challenge: Learning From the Best , the summit’s agenda has yet to be finalized. But the general thrust will have an international flavour, examining best practices from a variety of jurisdictions and how they can be adopted in Ontario. The midday speaker will be Martin, who will outline the trends and recommendations contained in the Task Force report. That will set up the afternoon’s group discussions on clusters, economic indicators and so-called attitudinal issues.

Those close to the planning process for the provincial event say it will most likely go ahead, despite the date change of the national innovation summit.

“The Ontario event was meant to upstage the federal event,” says a provincial government source.

The strong economic flavour of the event stems from the origin of the Task Force, which is the operating arm of The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity (ICP). The ICP was the creation of the former Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT), which was merged with the S&T component of the Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology (MEST) last spring (see article on this page). A planning committee struck to organize the summit is largely composed of staffers from the former MEDT and the day-to-day details are being handled of behalf of the minister by MEOI’s urban economic development branch.

“We'll be looking at international best practices from various jurisdictions that have made exceptional gains in productivity,” says Lisa Orchard, a MEOI consultant. “In the afternoon there will be facilitated panel discussions with Roger Martin and others.”

The summit will be a highly stage-managed affair with approximately 200 people attending representing business, industry, government, academia and youth. The guest list will include 50-60 from a list compiled by the minister and his staff, which will likely include Cabinet colleagues.

The most recent work of the Task Force is a working paper entitled Measuring Ontario’s Prosperity: Developing an Economic Indicator System. Following on from a paper released earlier this year (R$, May 22/02), the new working paper proposes the adoption of a new indicator system for priority setting and performance measurement.

The paper identifies eight drivers underlying GDP and examines how each contributes to the performance gap between Ontario and other North American jurisdictions. It then proposes three measures — attitudes, investments and motivations. The Task Force's base criteria for its indicator system is that it must provide a causal model, be actionable and focus on microeconomic factors by operating at the level of the individual, the firm and clusters. The Task Force's two working papers serve as the basis of the report to be presented at the Ontario summit.

While the motives for holding the Ontario summit are open to debate, the event is a welcome opportunity to examine the innovative and competitive strengths and weaknesses of the province. Martin's research shows that, while Ontario ranks favourably on a global basis, it ranks poorly when compared to other North American jurisdictions. The province trails all but two of 15 jurisdictions with populations over six million that were chosen for benchmarking in the study, ahead of Florida and Quebec.

Ontario’s GDP is 32.2% lower than that of Massachusetts, which is the North American leader. The province is 13.8% behind the median of these jurisdictions, translating into a performance gap of $4,800 in GDP per capita.

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