Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/304887
e eXeCUtIVe InteRVIeW 34 APRIL/MAY 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com align with the objectives of a defence organization. So it can be a very different equation that you want to consider but you can take those exact same principles and apply them to any aspect of any organization and benefi t from them. Maybe how you balance them has to be a little different. Q Public sector organizations like DND face the added chal- lenge of trying to establish relationships without risking pre- cluding companies from participating in a future procurement. That is a big issue. To be candid, it is often a barrier to joint re- search with government because, at the end of the day, R&D is an investment decision and we decide based on our perceived return. If you do fi ve or 10 years of research that then goes to an RFP, that's a risky venture. It can be a barrier to innovative collabora- tion between government and industry. Q Are there ways to address that, like strengthening the IP protection regime? I think the fact that that conversation is happening is a great step in the right direction. We have regular dialogue with government and others on how to improve our innovation process, how to foster collaboration. Because it involves investment, it's about certainty. The more certainty anybody can bring to the discus- sion is a good thing. It makes it an easier decision to say, yes, this is an effort worth making. When I talk about intellectual prop- erty with people, that is probably the biggest barrier within any creative-collaboration discussion: Who owns intellectual proper- ty? How do you manage it? How do you decide where the ideas came from? Who is responsible for them? And, ultimately, who should benefi t from them at the end of the day? It's always a very complex conversation. It is one reason, frankly, why collaboration among industry consortia often breaks down. Q Does a focus on key industrial capabilities help or limit how you operate? It certainly doesn't restrict or limit what we can do. What it does maybe do is redirect some of the incentives to SMEs versus a big multinational. The same investments we make in Canada on a small scale we make on a global scale; an OEM has to not only compete in the Canadian landscape but also the global landscape. Incentive from government is one of the levers I use to justify investment in Canada. As those things face attrition, it becomes a more challenging discussion. If we want to tackle a problem that is important to the people of Canada or the Canadian government or the military, then I have to compete for resources with the other parts of the world – that can prove challenging. Q Is something like the Build in Canada Innovation Program approach too narrow, then? It is a little bit narrow since the focus is very much on entrepreneurs and it's not clear how it applies to multinational companies with in- novation capacity in Canada. Like in any company or organization, you have to have some overlying strategy behind what you are do- ing. What objectives do we hope to achieve? Create jobs and drive innovation? I think those kinds of programs are intended to drive that. The danger is to slip between the strategic level and the op- erational level, and that happens a lot, where you have an overlying strategy but you end up applying too many operational guidelines that stifl e creativity and innovation. Lay out the strategy, know what you want your outputs to be, and then let the people do the work. Q Are there steps you would like to see government take? Many of the current government initiatives are focused on SMEs and although this is an important piece of the puzzle, it leaves a large and innovative group of companies out of the equation. Frankly, from the perspective of a large multinational like 3M, I think government should explore other ways to work with big companies as well as those small and medium sized enterprises. Q Finally, do you see areas for innovation that perhaps military organizations are not yet capitalizing on? We are primarily a material science company and there have been lots of advances in material science over the years – things like composites, nanotechnology, alloys and so on – that I'm not sure military organizations have kept up with or had enough time to think through what the best application spaces are. I often talk about problem defi nition versus solution defi nition; some more dialogue around the problems military organizations face that is not overly prescriptive about defi ning what the solution should be would be an interesting approach to take. When we work with our customers, we are really trying to understand our customer's problem. We're not trying to get our customer to tell us what to do to solve their problem. I think the same approach could be taken in this context, to talk about the root cause of a problem and then let the creative people fi gure out the solution. Q Is this discussion happening early enough? Recognition that something has to change is really what it is about. And certainly that recognition is there today. What the so- lution looks like is not clear, but everybody recognizes that there is a problem and the problem needs to get solved. How we are going to do it is still a bit of a question mark. I o en talk about problem defi nition versus solution defi nition; some more dialogue around the problems military organizations face that is not overly prescriptive about defi ning what the solution should be would be an interesting approach to take. t h a l e s g r o u p . c o m / c a n a d a Thales Canada Everywhere it matters, we deliver Thales Canada has 1,300 engineers and staff in 5 cities dedicated to Defense, Security, Aerospace and Transportation. We have been the Electronic System Integrator of choice for all Canadian Armed and Constabulary Forces platforms for more than 15 years. We design, develop and deliver complex mission systems solutions, of which our latest Integrated Mast 500 is a prime example. Our proven 'off-the-shelf' Command, Control, Surveillance, and Integrated Communications systems meet all customer requirements, cost effectively. INTEROPERABILITY BETWEEN ALLIED NAVIES The premier Naval System Integrator of both US Missiles and European C2 systems FLEXIBLE OPEN ARCHITECTURE Tailored to customer requirements and equipments at an affordable cost NETWORK BASED SYSTEMS World-leading for C4ISR solutions for all forces CanadaNaval14_English_C32992.044_277x207_Mar14_Vanguard_v1.indd 1 07/02/2014 15:50