As mentioned in the first post of this series the idea and content has been percolating on the back burner for over two years. This particular post is proof of that. I suspect it was written just after the summer Olympics in 2008 based on the content … when you read on you will see what I mean. Anyway thought it would be fun to leave the post pretty much as is and then provide an updated version next week.

Here is the Summer 2008 post:

Donning flame proof vest and backing away from this blog post. The opinions expressed are mine and intended to spark critical thinking of how Canadians at all levels of government incent innovation. I am a big fan of facilitating existing ecosystems, rather than creating “government programs” to help entrepreneurs.
I am continually disappointed at how often Canada’s success (or lack thereof) in innovation is measured by how much we spend. First of all spend is an input based metric and should never be the sole measure of success; however, it often is because it is EASY to track and measure. So … on to my athlete analogy.

This is particularly timely considering Canada’s recent Summer Olympic results, while sporting an improved performance, in my opinion, the results still fall far short of our potential. The bench mark for us to beat as a nation should be Australia (46 medals 14 Gold) and Canada (18medals 3 Gold). Canada has roughly twice the population of Australia, similar geography and standard of living. We can and should be able to outperform Australia at the Olympics but continually post inferior results and then pat ourselves on the back because we are getting better. Canada’s performance in the innovation arena is almost identical in terms of rating and ranking for athletes at the Olympics versus Canadian innovation in OECD.

In Canada we often measure our innovation success by how much we spend then that equates to a huge success because we are spending lots of money. This is equivalent to measuring an athlete’s success by how much they eat. Unchecked spending equates to Innovation obesity, much like how over feed athletes may become gluttons, spending on large bureaucratic government programs doesn’t necessarily equate to innovation success, quite the contrary. Canada is in the first quartile per capita spending on Innovation (according to Conference Board of Canada) and fourth quartile in terms of results. Government run entrepreneurship programs tend to result in Innovation dollars being vacuumed up by bureaucracies looking to add to their success metrics of increased headcount and budget. (Ask me about the Swedish Paradox)

I believe we can change … back to the Olympic analogy. Canada in preparation for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics has raised the bar significantly. The former goal of athlete’s personal best performance has been replaced by a quest for Gold. This will be the third time Canada hosts the Olympics (Montreal – 1976, Calgary – 1988 and Vancouver 2010) and we have yet to have a Canadian athlete win a gold medal in Canada. Canada is the only country to have hosted the Olympics that has not won a gold medal in their own country, something of a dubious distinction. However, the paradigm shift from personal best to quest for gold will in my opinion make all the difference in the world. Focusing on results will produce results and I expect we will see Canada’s best ever performance at an Olympic games in Vancouver 2010. Looking forward to it.

A similar paradigm shift is necessary in our innovation agenda. The key to innovation success in Canada is to strengthen existing ecosystems and facilitate a results orientation rather than a pro-spend bias on bureaucracies.

Ian Graham

PS, our performance at VAN2010 exceeded expectations.

Filed under: Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, Featured, Innovation by Ian
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