The innovation reaction
Canadian companies that are feeling the pressure to innovate due to the strong loonie are missing the big picture. Feeling the need to innovate should not be a reaction to difficult financial times nor a last-ditch effort to survive; it needs to become part of our Canadian corporate culture and fostered continuously in good times and in bad. For many companies, recognizing the need for innovation when margins are as tight as they are is a lesson learned too late. Had these companies invested in innovation during the prosperous 65-cent-dollar, they may not be in the predicament they find themselves in today. We need to become more proactive and aggressive and break the “follow-the-leader” mindset and the belief that innovation needs to be purchased from other countries rather than developed internally.
We have the talent, skills, and education to develop our own intellectual property and control our own destiny in the global knowledge-based economy. Let’s not use innovation as a last-ditch effort to survive financial hardship; let’s choose to continuously innovate and foster an innovative society to guarantee our country’s success and prosperity independent of our loonie’s value.
Tim Burke, President, M. Eng., P. Eng., co-founded Quark Engineering and Development Inc. in Halifax, Nova Scotia, motivated by his passion for R&D and his enjoyment working collaboratively with companies to improve their margins and customer satisfaction through innovation. He is also a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia.
You are 100% correct, Tim!
We face this issue all the time with clients who wait until they are at risk of “missing their numbers” before they decide they need to find out more about what their customers want from them. The time to invest in customer understanding and innovation research is when things are going well. Find out why you’re succeeding. It’s not always because you have the most brilliant CEO or the finest leading edge product. It could be that you were at the right place, at the right time, with the right price. In otherwards, you could just be lucky, not great!
The time to find out is before the situation changes in your competitor’s favour; whether it is the CDN$ or Regulatory changes, etc. The time to start is now!
Posted by: Steve Willson, P.Eng. on August 14th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Tim, as always the problem is in the last step; we’re good at R&D, dismal at commercializing the R&D; we’re too focused on licensing/selling out early instead of looking to build scalable businesses with larger economic impact. This requires education in IP commercialization (as opposed to just getting a patent) and sales/marketing. Of course, venture money would help too…
Posted by: Arshia Tabrizi on August 14th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
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Posted by: The Innovation Reaction! — iKev on August 17th, 2007 at 9:19 pm