Yesterday, I watched TVO’s episode on Ontario’s Innovation Economy (listen to it as an MP3 or watch it online in video) which was filmed in Waterloo, Ontario. Waterloo is a fairly small city in Ontario that has become famous as the home of the Research in Motion (RIM) company (which makes the BlackBerry communications device) and home to major scientific research institutions such as the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. It was interesting discussion to observe, but it could have pushed for greater depth. In the midst of so much bad economic news, it was a delight to see that RIM is actually hiring several thousand people and that people in that region are optimistic about the future.
I think innovation is great and such be encouraged more. I aim to be innovative in my own professional work but there are challenges. Public institutions are often less culturally supportive of risk-taking and other attitudes that support innovation. That is not meant to be a blanket statement by any means – there are still many exceptions and there are some signs that risk aversion is on the decline. What I wonder about in the context of the TVO episode (and other contexts) where innovation is always reduced to engineering, computing and the like. There are only so many engineering programs in the country after all. I’d like to see innovation understood more broadly.
Two final notes; it was interesting to see Richard Florida discussing a Canadian city and Canadian issues at length. I’ve read several of his books and find them to be optimistic and interesting, though they tend to focus on the United States almost exclusively. On a different level, one comment from Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM fascinated me. He stated that one of the major problems that companies need to address is the lack of attention to intellectual property, both in terms of corporate strategy and at the level of law. It stikes me that this need could be addressed well by a collaboration between a librarian and a lawyer. The role of the lawyer should be clear to most readers. The role of the librarian may be less clear however. While the lawyer can certainly help at the end of the process (e.g. filing a patent etc), the librarian helps everywhere else by providing support and knowledge management.
Related posts:
