Digital Strategies and Canada's Universities

Submission

July 8, 2010

A call for unprecedented collaboration

The release of Canada’s Digital Strategy Consultation document provides a vital opportunity, at a vital time, for Canadians to collaborate on the development of a competitive and forward–looking digital strategy.

Digital Strategies and Canada's Universities

The release of Canada's Digital Strategy Consultation document provides a vital opportunity, at a vital time, for Canadians to collaborate on the development of a competitive and forward–looking digital strategy. The digital economy continues to expand apace, with the established development of hardware and software now united with a rapidly expanding digital media/digital content sector. Global competition is accelerating and the bar for sectoral leadership continues to rise. The digital economy requires speed, agility, and constant innovation. The sector needs a high level of collaboration among business, government, the academy and the creative sector. Other contributors will speak to the broader issues facing Canada; this submission will emphasize the role that universities can and must play in the development of this country's digital sector.

The Competitive Environment

The digital economy continues to lead international economic growth. Twentieth–century forecasts of the digital future, tainted by the false expectations of the dot.com boom and bust, proved to be underestimations of the scope and nature of the digital economy. The rapid growth of social networking, mobile Internet, digitally enabled health care, and new devices such as the iPad, created research and business opportunities. New company formation offset the loss of business in established sectors, including Internet infrastructure and computer hardware. Globalization and the emergence of digital competitors in Taiwan, South Korea, and China undercut much of North America's competitive advantage. With manufacturing shifting to East Asia and with remarkable technological innovations emerging from Finland and Israel, Canada and the United States sought opportunities in new fields, particularly in software, digital design, business applications, and animation.

In contrast to Canada's traditional economic sectors — agriculture, minerals, oil and gas, and automobile manufacturing — the digital sector changes constantly, faces intense international competition, and copes with regular technological innovation. Few economic fields in history have presented such a combination of change, opportunity, flexibility and innovation. Countries that lagged behind other nations, such as Taiwan, used digital industry to improve their prosperity very rapidly. Large companies foundered, tiny firms exploded, small and medium–sized enterprise (SME) innovation flourished, and employment opportunities emerged on a global scale. The most impressive aspect of the digital economy is that the future holds ever–greater potential for growth and prosperity; the most worrying aspect of this sector is that the potential for displacement and dislocation is very real and ever–present.

Canada has done reasonably well in the digital economy, but long–term prosperity is not assured. Several technological firms, led by Research In Motion, are among the very best in the world. The country does better at start–ups than it does at converting small companies into sustainable and large firms. Canada produces top digital talent, patentable technological ideas, and impressive digital content, but it often loses the economic benefits of these achievements to other countries. The digital economy is mobile, difficult to lock in place, and subject to rapid and unpredictable change. The sector, importantly, is also the best opportunity for Canada and other nations to create sustainable high–wage jobs and internationally competitive firms to underpin national prosperity.

Academic Contributions

Canada's universities have made a formidable contribution to the success of Canada's digital industries. The country produces world–class research in digital technologies, particularly in the wireless sector. Research in Canadian universities has generated substantial commercial activities. University business incubators have produced dozens of start–ups and university graduates have emerged as both digital entrepreneurs and as the employees needed to sustain digital businesses in Canada.

Universities are also the country's primary connection to the global research environment. Scholars help Canadian companies stay in touch with developments occurring around the world and provide access to the vast amount of academic work and commercial activity being undertaken in the digital fields. There is considerable variation between institutions in terms of relations with digital businesses, but there is growing interest in more–extensive collaboration.

Digital content is the fastest–growing section of the digital economy and has strong potential for continued expansion. This field also draws in additional parts of the academy, including fine and performing arts, design, architecture, and human factors research — generally in collaboration with technological researchers and developers.

Canadian academic performance and infrastructure in digital media fall short of global competitors in several key areas:

1. Specialized digital research centres
   Canadian operations, as effective as they are, pale in comparison to the substantial and well–resourced units in many other countries. Canadian centres assemble a dozen or more dedicated researchers in a single centre. International competitors, particularly in East Asia, support hundreds if not thousands of digital researchers.
2. The scale of Canada's academic–business collaborations
   Canada's partnership arrangements are much smaller and often more short term than the substantial and successive establishments in South Korea, Japan, China, and Israel. Indeed, there is generally more distance between digital businesses and universities in Canada than in competitive nations.
3. Digital content research and development investments
   Canada's industrial and innovation strategies are weighted heavily in favour of manufacturing and the production of physical products. Content support is seen as a cultural and nationalist sector, not as a commercial opportunity. Universities in other countries have much more support for efforts to commercialize digital content.
4. Connections between universities and the creative sector
   Continued growth in the digital economy rests, in substantial measure, on the commercialization of creative activity. At present, universities do not have extensive contact with the creative industries and, as such, are missing opportunities to advance business and employment activity.
5. Commercialization support and development
   Canadian universities have followed very standard models of the commercialization of research results. These include industry incubators, tech transfer offices, and the like. In Canada, as elsewhere, these arrangements have had uneven results. Global competitors are shifting toward more interventionist approaches, including co–location of business and academic research, long–term shared research projects, and jointly employed researchers. In Canada, formidable firewalls typically exist between the academy and business.
6. Commercially–oriented undergraduate and graduate training
   Canadian universities have long maintained substantial separation between academic instruction and commercial engagement. The most common forms of integration are internships and co–operative education placements. The country needs new programs — building off the strength and reputation of existing academic and professional offerings — that provide more market–sensitive and commercially oriented undergraduate and graduate degrees. To be successful, these programs require intense and sustained financial support and professional engagement from the business sector.

The Digital Challenge: Identifying the New Role for Universities

Canada's universities have a major role to play in Canada's digital future. Canada has to be more aggressive, more creative, and more integrated if the country is to succeed in the digital economy. The country needs bolder actions, more substantial investments and great co–ordination among business, government, and universities. The country's impressive strengths in the digital sector need to be mobilized. Universities will have to change to meet the challenge of the digital age, if only to catch up to developments underway in other countries.

To be successful, Canada's universities must:

• Maintain and enhance the level of accomplishment in basic research in engineering and science;
• Expand the contributions of the social sciences and humanities, emphasizing commercially related activities;
• Be open to stronger and more sustained research and development collaboration with business and industry;
• Develop more career–ready undergraduate and graduate programming, with extensive business involvement;
• Collaborate between institutions on a globally competitive scale (ie. through co–location) in the interest of national and regional economic and employment development;
• Establish a national digital education project designed to research, implement, and support international best practices in elementary and high schools, colleges, universities, and professional development.

Equally, for the university system to make a maximum contribution to Canadian competitiveness in the digital economy, business and government must:

• Expand investments in social science, humanities, and human factors research;
• Ensure that Canada's digital scientific and technological research capacity remains globally competitive;
• Establish a world–leading, regionally distributed development agency focusing on the digital commercialization of Canadian creative content, with universities playing a significant role in this initiative;
• Undertake a major national research project on the nature of and barriers to digital innovation and digital commercialization in Canada (drawing on global developments for insight and innovation);
• Make a sustained commitment to putting Canadian content online and available to Canadians and the world and develop specific programs to capitalize on the project for commercial, cultural, and educational purposes;
• Ensure major business investment directly in a sustained manner in commercially oriented research and training programs;
• Make a major investment in a small number of substantial dedicated research and development centres, all with a commitment to commercialization, supported by private sector and government (federal and provincial) funding.

Canada has a substantial digital presence on a global scale. Sustaining and expanding that base will not be easy. Canada's policy, financial and institutional environments are not globally competitive. The country's digital sector is one of the most mobile in the world, meaning that many talented people, new companies, and commercial ideas leave the country. There is no assurance of success in a sector that is intensely competitive, fast–moving, technologically innovative , and increasingly Asia–centric. Canada's medium– to long–term prosperity rests, substantially, on building a national digital economy.

If Canada is serious about its digital future — and its leaders declare themselves to be — unprecedented levels of co–operation and investment are required. Federal and provincial governments, universities and colleges, the private sector, and public institutions will have to collaborate on a level never before seen in this country. This is not an option. Canada's competitors in the digital space have put aside institutional and sectoral interests in order to do what is best for their countries. The same must happen if Canada hopes to become a truly digital nation.