Our innovation system needs innovating – The Daily Courier

November 2, 2014

The Conference Board of Canada says “despite a decade or so of innovation agendas and prosperity reports, Canada remains near the bottom of its peer group on innovation, ranking 13th among the 16 peer countries.”

Canadian business leaders say in surveys that they don’t know how to innovate, and rate their innovation skills as average.

What happens if we don’t innovate? It’s a slow economic death spiral that will result in Canada’s famed quality of life going backward.

Innovation can be defined as the ability to create unique products, services and processes that have measurable value in the marketplace. There are many ways to measure innovation, but conventional wisdom believes innovation is best measured by dollars of new revenue as an output.