Archive for November, 2011

The almost daily news reports about the tough worldwide economic situation provide stark stories about the challenges being faced by the worldwide community.  While Canada has not faced the same extreme challenges, the complex nature of the global economy is increasingly influencing us locally.  Over and above the studies confirming why Canada has weathered the storm compared to other nations, there are a fair number of studies looking more broadly at how Canada compares to other nations.  The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity compared 16 most prosperous regions in North America and found that Ontario finished 15^th and Quebec 16^th.  The 10^th annual report from the Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress further determined that the prosperity gap is a productivity gap and the productivity gap is an innovation gap.

                Innovation is top of mind for CEOs, with Forrester reporting that 93% of businesses executives surveyed citing innovation as a top strategic priority.  Unfortunately, not everyone has the same understanding of this priority.  As one of the top 10 overused terms of 2010, there are many different interpretations and perhaps misperceptions of the word “innovation.”  I like the way the Boston Consulting Group characterizes the outcomes of innovation:

• New to the world products or services that create entirely new markets
• New offerings that allow expansion into new customer groups
• New offerings for existing customers
• Incremental changes to existing offerings
• Lower production costs for existing offerings

At times it might seem that innovation speaks only to commercial enterprise, but innovation applies across communities including government.   You can easily restate the outcomes listed above for government as:

• New to the world services or entirely new programs
• New services that broaden engagement to a wider community who don’t normally interact with government
• New services for individuals and businesses who regularly interact with government
• Incremental changes to existing programs and services
• Increasing efficiency in who programs and services are delivered

 Innovation is critical for government for a number of reasons:

1. Talent – Governments are competing with industry for top talent.  Increasingly, new graduates are seeking employers that provide opportunities for innovation. 
2. Efficiency – These tough economic times impact governments as they also look to make every dollar go further.  Innovative approaches allow governments to deliver the same high quality services at a lower resource cost.
3. Competition – Governments are indeed in competition with each other.  Municipalities, provinces and federal governments compete with each other to attract business to their region and create local opportunities.  In delivering their information programs, governments are also in competition with others to capture their audience.  You can easily imagine situations where individuals might seek health, recall, travel advice from foreign nations creating risk not only for the individual but the local government programs as well.
4. Foundation for prosperity – At the Canada Innovation Nation seminar in Waterloo, Tom Jenkins proposed that “Poor productivity in an enabling sector may be leading to poor productivity in other sectors.”  Now Tom was referring to the telecom sector, but I believe that the example remains valid for the other sectors that enable Canadian business.  So sub-optimal productivity in the government sector has the potential to lead to poor productivity in all other sectors.  Fundamentally, our prosperity as a nation depends on Government innovation.

Innovation is the key catalyst to build value as we emerge from these tough economic times.  Government should work to enhance their innovation efforts alongside those occurring in industry.  The nation is depending on it!