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Fueling the Fires of Canadian Innovation
By Norm Kirkpatrick
President and CEO
Canadian Information Productivity Awards
Canada has one of the most prosperous economies in the world, but its continued success depends on maintaining competitive advantages in a tough global market. That means embracing innovative ideas and capitalizing on the potential offered by new and emerging technologies.
Managements need to ensure that the spark of innovation continues to burn at the heart of their organizations. Often, the kindling for that competitive fire lies within their IT, communication or knowledge-management departments.
As a strategic focus, senior management needs to encourage those creative technical minds to continue to generate productive, efficient environments and solutions. In other words, managements should celebrate their employees as champions, as a way to foster a culture of innovation.
The forces of innovation have crossed traditional corporate lines of responsibility. An IT department’s role may shift from that of a cost centre to a revenue generator. Taking the time to recognize employees for their positive impact on the enterprise will foster greater initiative throughout the work force and lead to additional productivity benefits.
There is a larger point, too. Competitive success today depends not only on innovation, but on collaboration. We all know that productivity suffers because of information silos. Research in the United States has shown that the average Fortune 500 company loses $64 million a year because of ineffective knowledge sharing.
In Canada, slow productivity growth has been the one blemish on an otherwise excellent economic record. We need not only more innovation, but more knowledge of innovation – both within individual organizations and across sectors and regions.
Governments at all levels are among the leaders in recognizing this. For example, the winner of the Diamond Award of Excellence from the Canadian Information Productivity Awards (CIPA) in 2004 was the Canadian Armed Forces, which instituted an Army Lessons Learned Knowledge Warehouse to help the army to respond faster to dangerous situations. Information gathered from previous army experience can be available to soldiers in the field within minutes, compared with the six months to a year it used to require.
The City of Fredericton is another government organization worthy of emulation. It has built a Wi-Fi network to create a city-wide free “hotzone” called Fred-eZone. This has helped Fredericton to differentiate itself from other cities and towns, and is one reason why more than 70 per cent of knowledge industries in New Brunswick such as IT, engineering and research institutions are located in Fredericton.
By no means are governments alone in recognizing the benefits of innovation and collaboration. The private sector in Canada also has many impressive stories to tell. The point of telling them, though, is not just to recognize and celebrate achievement, important as that is. The larger point is to fulfill one of Canada’s most important economic advantages.
Canada is an open, free country. Almost uniquely among nations, we have a combination of good will among our regions and peoples, an excellent communications infrastructure and a recognition of the importance of the free flow of goods and services – and ideas.
In an era when organizations and economies can no longer afford to reinvent the wheel, encouraging the sharing of knowledge about innovation among industries, sectors and regions is an important strategy for Canadian competitiveness.
Celebrating innovative champions within Canadian organizations will help demonstrate best practices throughout the country and effectively raise all boats competing in this global sea.
Norm Kirkpatrick is the President & CEO of CIPA (www.cipa.com). Throughout his distinguished career, he has served in senior management positions both leading and advising Canadian-based high tech enterprises. He has long been an advocate for Canadian investment in IT and in the early application of innovative technologies to solve business problems and gain competitive advantage.
The CIPA mission is to celebrate visionary organizations that have developed innovative results-based technology solutions. Awards categories are: efficiency and operational improvements; customer care; organizational transformation; environment-focused solutions. Winners of the 2005 competition will be celebrated at the CIPA Gala Banquet on November 1 in Toronto.
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