Continuum of Innovation

To adequately support the growth of Canada's ICT Economy, I believe we have to take a holistic approach by:

• Getting our kids interested in science and technology in general, and more specifically in digital technology, making them realize that they can not only be consumers but also contributors in this sector.
• Generate new market and application ideas by having open forums involving the community, the industry and academia.
• Trained highly qualified personnel focusing not only with technical skills but also on innovation skills.
• Support interdisciplinary projects that cover more than just the telecommunication aspects, from nanotechnology to the application of the technology in the real world and its potential impacts once deployed. In relation to academic research, increasing the success rate of interdisciplinary grants would be something to improve.
• Maximize the exploitation of knowledge and facilities in universities by supporting shared usage of equipment infrastructure, space and dedicated human infrastructure for development of proof–of–concepts, testbeds and functional prototypes. This would be beneficial for startups and small businesses to large companies.
• Create stronger ties between industry and academia.

Because ICT is a fast evolving sector with many emerging applications that require fast positioning, Canada's support of ICT should encourage innovation across the economy. Supporting the continuum of innovation, from the generation of ideas to the design, validation, and commercialization, requires the active collaboration of many stakeholders (in engineering, computing, marketing, business, ethics, technological transfer, etc., and application experts, like clinicians for the health sector). Putting in place initiatives and infrastructure that allow such teams to be supported in a flexible, dynamic and active fashion is key.

Comment

brfisher — 2010–07–12 18:04:58 EDT wrote

Good points, ICT has the potential to support innovation across a broad section of the economy, but it can only achieve that potential if we address its integration with those areas. This requires innovation in knowledge translation as well as technology.