McGill principal and vice-chancellor Suzanne Fortier calls for better collaborations between universities and industry. She also says students produce game-changing ideas, giving the example of the McGill team that won the Hult Prize, pictured below with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Canada has excellent universities: for example, our share of highly cited publications is nearly 10 times our share of the world population. We also have great companies, and according to a 2014 Bloomberg ranking, Canada is the second-best country in the world in which to do business. Over the last 15 years, our governments have put in place many new investments in research and development, as well as innovation-friendly policies.
That is not the problem. Our performance in innovation is. Canada placed number 11 in the 2014 Bloomberg Rankings of the world's most innovative countries, and our R&D intensity was number 24. Our productivity growth, which stems largely from innovation, is not keeping up with other countries. And that threatens our quality of life and prosperity.
One big opportunity in Canadian innovation? Fostering better collaborations between our universities and industry, as well as social organizations. The potential benefits of these relationships are huge, and some wins are clear. It is obvious that universities and organizations can partner to help students get valuable experience for their future careers. And students at McGill are already producing game-changing ideas.
This year, McGill students won the $1-million Hult Prize for a plan to create a sustainable food supply for hunger-stricken countries – from insects. Another team that includes a McGill student won the Shell Ideas360 contest for a brilliant and economical design to collect water from the air using large sails. That is the quality of talent any organization would want.
McGill principal and vice-chancellor Suzanne Fortier (top, main pic) calls for better collaborations between universities and industry. She also says students produce game-changing ideas, giving the example of the McGill team that won the Hult Prize, pictured above with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
PHOTO: AP IMAGES FOR THE HULT PRIZE
Research partnerships between universities and companies, however, can be more challenging. There is a large cultural gap to span. Companies need to focus on getting the Next Great Thing to market before their competitors do. University researchers take the long view: they will follow an idea down a rabbit hole if they think the journey will lead to groundbreaking discoveries. Bringing these two worlds together is not easy, but it is worth it.
Innovation is a team sport. We need to commit to the team and take a fresh look at our role on it. Put in the time and the commitment from our organization's senior leaders up front, so that we can be agile in the years that follow. Too often, we try to dive directly into negotiating complicated intellectual property agreements, without building trust or an understanding of what we really want. It is akin to arguing over the prenuptial agreement on the first date. And, ironically, the push to get the contract signed can lead to endless delays.
We need to build dynamic zones of interactions where we can deal with issues arising from our different expectations, talk through the problems as they arise and, more importantly, see the concrete benefits for both sides of sharing knowledge and expertise.
Henry Mintzberg, McGill's great management guru, calls culture "the soul that holds the thing together and gives it life force." Canada has all of the fundamentals in place to be a leader in innovation: to give our partnerships a real chance, we just need to fully commit to a culture of collaboration.