Setting a New Innovation Agenda
Both cliché and true, Canadians’ future standard of living will depend upon our capacity to innovate. Unfortunately, our innovation agenda dramatically under-performs. There is a clear reason for this: Canada is locked into a traditional business-only approach to innovation, which limits the number of participants in the process and, therefore, the possibility of developing solutions to systemic problems.
Canada’s bounty of natural resources has allowed us to coast along, overly reliant on its export. Today, the rising value of the Canadian dollar is partially a result of the fact that it is seen as a petro-currency, since Canada is the single largest exporter of energy to the United States. Reliance on commodity exports has led to complacency, rather than urgency, when it comes to the innovation imperative.
Innovating isn't as easy as it sounds. That's why we asked author and innovation expert Matthew May to give us a place to start.
Our innovation agenda has barely evolved in the past 20 years. It is still firmly rooted in a narrow vision of innovation as equivalent to investments in science and technology research and development (R&D). We have yet to recognize that “social innovation” is an essential component of successful innovation.
Social innovation is what we call the exploration, testing, and implementation of solutions to societal and ecological challenges. A common definition of social innovation is innovation meeting unmet social needs. Successful social innovations have durability, impact, and scale.
This type of innovation is essential. Developing new business products and processes will be important for creating high-value jobs, but it will only address part of the challenge of this century.
Business innovation alone, without parallel testing of new ideas and approaches to address societal challenges, cannot assure Canadians a high quality of life. Our big and complex challenges – climate change, aging, pandemic disease, water resource management, social inclusion, etc. – cannot be “fixed” by technology alone, because, ultimately, they all involve influencing people’s attitudes, perceptions, behaviours, and understandings.
Unlike private-sector R&D, relatively little attention is paid to innovation in the public sector. Schooling is based on a model that has evolved very little in the last few decades. Health care’s technological breakthroughs have not been matched by comparable progress in how the system is managed and, given recent research into the social determinants of health, how individual behaviour can be modified to achieve goals like reducing escalating obesity or Type 2 diabetes.
Social media can empower people, as demonstrated by the Arab Spring, but new technologies have a more profound potential to assist us in redefining the role of government and strengthening the fabric of communities in an intentional fashion, and these powers have scarcely been tapped.
Rob McEwen explains how innovation can flourish when people with different backgrounds come together. Check out The Mark's video interview with him here.
Canada is no stranger to social innovation. The advent of the Women’s Institute, a national park system, and universal health care are all examples of initiatives put in place to address social needs. Interestingly, they often demonstrate government’s leadership in social-innovation implementation and the development of public goods.
Despite innovative capacity within the public sector, government, like business, has largely ignored its power to enable and unleash the vital innovation-generating role of the community sector – charities, non-profits, and community associations – by reducing innovation barriers like outdated regulations or aligning financial incentives with sought-after social outcomes in order to tackle root causes of challenges.
Now, faced with increasing fiscal and social challenges, governments must act. But they needn’t – and shouldn’t – do it alone. Social innovation, with new approaches like “co-creation” and “co-production,” is critical to successfully addressing the complex challenges of our time while providing opportunities for Canada’s science, technology, and health innovations to bridge the implementation gap towards commercialization, service delivery, and social impact.
The ultimate test of innovation’s ability to create value will be by intentionally linking and unlocking economic and social value. In fact, combining social and economic value through innovation is becoming a mainstream preoccupation. Looking beyond Canada’s backyard, we can see how other western democracies have redefined value creation with this new understanding. For instance, the European Business Panel on Future EU Innovation Policy, established by the Directorate General Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission, concluded, in 2009, that “Public policy should not only stimulate business innovation, but also social innovation.”
For further insight into this critical issue, check out The Mark's Innovation Series .
Core elements of social innovation’s approach are also permeating leading business thinking, most recently in Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s January article in Harvard Business Review, “The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value.”
Porter and Kramer explain,
Shared value creation will involve new and heightened forms of collaboration. While some shared value opportunities are possible for a company to seize on its own, others will benefit from insights, skills, and resources that cut across profit/non-profit and private/public boundaries.
Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District was one of the first innovation centres worldwide to embed social innovation in its mission. In a report entitled “Mobilizing Private Capital for Public Good,” MaRS CEO and Chair of the Canadian Task Force on Social Finance Dr. Ilse Treurnicht sets the scene for Canada:
Canadians have long relied on governments and community organizations to meet evolving social needs, while leaving markets, private capital, and the business sector to seek and deliver financial returns. However, this binary system is breaking down as profound societal challenges require us to find new ways to fully mobilize our ingenuity and resources in the search for effective, long-term solutions.
Broadening the definition of innovation within the national agenda will allow for the design of a national innovation strategy whose aim is to solve large-scale, complex 21st-century challenges facing Canadians. It will also ensure innovation policy supports collaborative tri-sector participation among industry, public, and community sectors. This first step – the call for redefinition – is critical for producing an environment in which innovation can occur.
Social innovation assumes a world where ultimate good in society can not only be imagined, but also created. Solving complex challenges requires us to express the will, and exercise the capacity, for all sectors to work on solutions together. This decade will increasingly see each sector articulate the value proposition for addressing social needs. Succeeding requires that we put our collective ingenuity to work.
