Jury is out on whether recommendations emerging from regional innovation summits capture consensus in sufficient detail

Vancouver and Ottawa-Gatineau Summits

The last batch of Industry Canada’s regional innovation summits have been going off like fireworks across the country as the last rush of 35 planned events unfold. But whether the gatherings have provided an opportunity for genuine input and dialogue or were merely held to dazzle participants with florid government rhetoric is a matter of serious conjecture and debate.

RE$EARCH MONEY recently attended regional summits in Vancouver and Ottawa. While the events reflected the unique characteristics of their respective regions, both were the focus of concerns and complaints about the process of engaging Canadians for their views on what was required to make the country more innovative. At each regional summit, delegates were asked to discuss three main points: current examples of successful innovation, obstacles to innovation and recommendations for change.

Participants expressed concern about the extreme distillation process of producing bite-sized statements from in-depth discussions and recommendations. The result was a series of motherhood statements that one Vancouver delegate contended robbed the discussions of meaningful detail.

“There are already too many motherhood statements around,” said the delegate. “If that’s all we’re doing here, we will be wasting our time.”

Clearly the summits are about far more than generating simplistic slide decks. Both offered an opportunity for community leaders to gather and discuss the state of Canada’s innovative capacity and share ideas of what is required to make Canada globally competitive.

In Vancouver, Ben Hume, national chair of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association, advocated the creation of a leadership forum to carry forward the initiatives stemming from the summit. Jake Kerr, the summit’s co-chair, lamented the loss of corporate head offices in BC and expressed concern that research initiatives may be caught in the BC government’s elimination of business subsidy programs.

“I hope and pray the provincial government does not confuse business subsidies with research assistance,” he said.

Indeed, some participants agreed that BC lacks strategic funds geared to innovation and called for increased dialogue between Victoria and Ottawa. In addition to BC’s lack of head offices (which control research direction and spending), other obstacles to innovation were identified:

* younger generation has a fatalistic attitude towards BC’s economic prospects;

* BC’s can-do attitude has deteriorated over the past 10 years;

* over reliance on natural resources

* lack of consensus, collaboration and coordination between levels of government, academia and business

Delegates argued that BC innovation would benefit if the climate for venture capital investment was improved. They also called for the federal government to “stay the course” with initiatives such as the Canada Research Chairs program and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Also recommended was more effective exploitation of the province’s cultural diversity. That entailed taking a more global approach to financing and capitalizing on strong Pacific Rim ties.

Summit co-chair Dr Martha Piper, president of the Univ of British Columbia, said there is a sense of urgency surrounding the government’s innovation agenda and a level of commitment that was missing when Ottawa consulted the nation in the mid 1990s for its ill-fated S&T Strategy.

“People in Canada and around the world are in a different place than they were a few years ago. There’s been an enormous change in the environment and people recognize that innovation, creativity, ingenuity and know-ledge are key,” said Piper. “For me (indirect costs of university research) is the number one priority, with the understanding that universities would use some of that and clearly have a commitment to seeing that commercialization takes place from (university generated) technologies.”

The tone of the Ottawa-Gatineau regional summit was far different from that of Vancouver, reflecting the larger concentration of research and technology in the region. But Ottawa’s position of technology strength didn’t hinder delegates from making a wide range of observations and recommendations to improve the innovation climate.

Dr Arthur Carty, president of the National Research Council, opened the summit with an address which outlined the challenges facing the region, summed up its strengths and called on delegates to develop a list of short-term actions that can be quickly implemented.

In the discussion group attended by RE$EARCH MONEY, Ottawa’s extensive networking capability was cited as a valuable asset, as were the extensive partnerships between the various stakeholders in research and innovation.

Areas in which prompt action should be taken include the development of global marketing excellence, and the transfer of lessons learned from the technology sector to other sectors of society and the economy.

Factors hindering increased innovation are the absence of federal-provincial coordination, a tax credit program that’s quickly becoming non-competitive on the global stage, under investment in basic research and high levels of income tax.

As in Vancouver, Ottawa delegates expressed frustration with the level of detail that emerged from the sessions. A facilitator for one of the groups said the limit of one statement for each of the three areas of discussion was imposed by Industry Canada.

Michael Fine, executive director of Industry Canada’s Innovation Secretariat, says he doesn’t think the lack of detail presented at the summits is problematic.

“The proof will be in the pudding,” he says. “Five themes will be presented at the National Summit and we’ll digest them down to eight or ten recommendations for each theme. Then we’ll identify priorities for each recommendation and this will form the basis for an innovation action plan.”

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