Innovation is the engine that lifts organizations out of the economic downturn. Konrad Yajkubuski, of the Globe and Mail Report on Business pointed out that “innovation is the only sure way for Canada to be more productive” and that “innovation is the only sure way to create wealth.” More recently, The Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity identified in their 9th Annual Productivity report :
Ontario’s prosperity gap is a productivity gap; the productivity gap is an innovation gap. We need more innovation today for our long-term prosperity.
As we recover from the economic downturn, the Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress urges all Ontarians to step up our innovation capabilities to achieve our long-term Prosperity Agenda.
As we look to determine opportunities to increase the innovation and productivity of Canadian businesses, it’s important to take a quick look at the businesses that make up the Canadian economic fabric. According to Industry Canada in their July 2010 Key Small Business Statistics, fully 98% of Canadian businesses are considered “small businesses” (less than 100 employees).
I know a few small business owners and have had the opportunity to chat with them about what they do, their challenges and how they use technology. All are passionate about the work that they do, be it carpentry, social services, retail sales, helping safeguard Canadians, etc. Ultimately, they chose the work that they do because of their love for it. Not surprisingly for most, technology was a frequently cited as a source of frustration for the Non-IT entrepreneurs. There was a general sense that they could do more with technology, but were a little intimidated by what seemed to be a complex endeavor.
One personal experience helped drive this point home. I was asked to help a friend resolve a problem with a slow computer that they used for their work. I took a quick look and found that this poor Internet connected computer had not been updated in well over a year, it had no anti-virus, it was infected with three pieces of hostile code and was plagued by Spam and spy ware to such an extent that it literally crawled along. After a little care and feeding I was able to get the computer back in shape and get my friend back to work. One of the things that came to mind is how can we keep small business, Canada’s economic engine, as productive as possible, doing what they do best and provide them technology in a way that helps them innovate in delivering their products and services.
The cloud offers a compelling opportunity to help Canadian businesses become more productive and support innovation in the marketplace. The provision on up to date business applications (email, office productivity, PC management, CRM, etc) allow businesses to focus on their core competencies and leave the operations to those with deep IT experience. The small business owner can take comfort in the availability of critical services wherever and whenever not only from the deep experience of cloud providers like Microsoft, but also through strong service level agreements.
Removing infrastructure costs, updates management, security failures and overall access to IT resources from the task list of small business owners has the potential not transform both the funding model (Opex vs Capex) and total spend. It also presents the opportunity to shift resources from the routine infrastructure monitoring to innovation at the application enablement and development activities. The recent Microsoft whitepaper “The Economics of the Cloud” suggests that since organizations spend roughly “80% of their time and budget on “keeping the lights on”” it goes further to state that “Cloud services will enable IT groups to focus more on innovation while leaving non-differentiating activities to reliable and cost-effective providers.”
So as we look to improve the productivity and innovation for Canadian business, let’s look to the cloud to explore how these utility services can act as a catalyst for businesses and the Digital Economy.
