if we are to be more innovative as a nation, one step forward is to recognize that we have fallen prey to “branch plant mentality.”

Many businesses in Canada are multinationals. They are owned abroad–the U.S., France, Germany, Switzerland, Israel–and are operated as a part of a larger system. This can lead to dependance on the parent company to do the innovative work. The Canadian branch is directed to execute global strategy in the domestic market.

In many cases, the domestic organization is a marketing and sales force. Where there is domestic manufacturing usually the operations group reports to a regional or international supply chain organization and deals with it’s own national headquarters as a client.

This can lead to a tactical focus only. Strategy, the home of innovation, becomes more about tweaking global initiatives to local markets. Productivity and profitability becomes the goal. Nothing wrong with a goal like that, except that after a period time, strategic thinking is no longer a competency.

It is muted and thwarted by complex organizational structures and bureaucracy that is difficult to navigate at the best of times. Innovative ideas, new products, services or processes often die within a bureacratic maze.

Eventually, people give up thinking outside the box because they can’t get out of out of it to begin with. Frustrated, and with little incentive to keep going, many Canadian managers “stick to their knitting.

Those who cannot stand it eventually leave for smaller organizations that provide a more creative environment or they become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses. Good solutions but not without their difficulties. Approximately 70-80% of new businesses in Canada fail.

What to do?

Innovation needs to be a value that is encouraged by domestic and global companies. Smaller countries, like Canada, can be excellent test markets because of a diverse population and international awareness.

Many companies use Canada to season it’s most promising executives for global leadership assignments. It can also be used to season it’s most promising thinkers and ideas and become an innovation hub.

As well, Canadian entrepreneurs need support from financial institutions, angel investors and the government. Currently, our risk averse business culture keeps innovation muted. When creative people cannot gain the support they need dometsically, they leave the country for more hospitable jurisdictions.

Finally, the brain drain needs to be seen for what it is– a competitive threat.

© Patrick O’Neill 2012. All rights reserved.

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The news is full of stories about Canada’s innovation gap. The Public Policy Forum has published a report that blames Canada’s weak innovation and productivity growth on our relative inability to “connect the dots.”

An editorial in the Globe and Mail citing the PPF’s report, states “…(this) is not so much a matter of any supposed lack of inventiveness, or of deficient economic policies, as of a characteristically Canadian difficulty in making contacts and establishing practical collaborations among innovators and investors.”

Last night on The National, CBC’s flagship news program, host Amanda Lang called innovation “a missing component in Canada’s economic recovery.”

A panelist on the program, Professor Roger Martin described innovation as “something missing that the customer would love to have.”

Another panelist, Kunal Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Polar Mobile, defined innovation as “taking a solution to market and having customers adopt it.”

I think both definitions– probably limited by the sound-bite timing of tv talk show– miss the basic driving force of innovation which is not relationship-oriented: the adventure of creating something from nothing!

But wait a minute! Aren’t we the people that invented:

• canola
• the walkie-talkie
• the television camera
• java programming language
• the BlackBerry
• the telephone
• the hydrofoil
• the electric streetcar
• the Canadarm
• the snowmobile
• bixi
• sonar
• basketball
• hockey
• lacrosse
• the goalie mask
• insulin
• the elctron microscope
• the garbage bag
• the alkaline battery
• the electric oven
• kerosene
• poutine
• butter tarts
• nanaimo bars
• peanut butter
• Marquis wheat
• Canada Dry

And that’s just a few.

Okay. That’s a hell of a lot of innovation.

If there’s something wrong, as the pundits and media suggest, maybe the answer is less about lacking creativity and more to do with the culture that we have created as a branch plant economy?

More thoughts on this coming up.

© Patrick O’Neill 2012. All rights reserved.

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Wisdom keeper–
our long history
we entrust to you.

Now that we are gone
you must protect
this legacy.

Take the bundle.
Learn
its secrets.

Bead, bone, stone.
Seed, feather, quill.
A lock of hair.

Hear our stories.
They were lived
the hard way.

Carry this bundle.
It’s your time to lead
the millennial journey.

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