Vanguard Magazine

"By pulling in large firms, innovative small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) and industry- relevant research institutions, business leaders will come to- gether – with partners and in new ways – to build business-led innovation superclu- sters at scale," was the announcement by the Federal Govern- ment. T TECHNOLOGY WATCH www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2017 37 The long grind What Kevin Ashton proved is exactly what my personal innovation experience has been: the reality is one that would never fit into a Hollywood movie, as there is never really one hero or one moment. The ugly, unglamorous reality is that innovation is a long grind, a string of failures, a hundred supporters and a million moments, with progress only being made when there are huge amounts of collaboration between many parties attempting to innovate in generally the same areas. Another book I read when I was start- ing OMX and interested in innovation was "Start up Nation," which is about Israel's fast economic rise led by signifi- cant technological innovation concentrat- ing in a few, very specific areas. The two themes I pulled out of the book were the connection to the defence technology requirements in a country constantly on edge – which drove immense innovation, and also, almost most importantly – the culture of collaborating around similar strengths, such as cyber security. They fig- ured out the benefits of working together in a small, tight environment, essentially leveraging superclusters. Innovation collaboration There is a lot more out there about the benefits of collaboration on innovation, and I think we are all coming to the agree- ment that it is the critical component. The Canadian Federal Government stepped up this month and announced a $950 million initiative designed to jumpstart innovation in high-growth sectors. "By pulling in large firms, innovative small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) and industry-rel- evant research institutions, business lead- ers will come together – with partners and in new ways – to build business-led inno- vation superclusters at scale," was the an- nouncement by the Federal Government. The plans must build on shared private sector commitments, requiring industry to match funding. Since these are indeed matching funds that the Federal Government is commit- ting to, the industry will need to really step up and make bold commitments to WHAT¬COULD¬BE¬SIGNIlCANT¬2$¬SPENDING¬ in the near future. For instance, I believe one of the biggest hurdles will be the change in industry's mentality around col- LABORATION¬IN¬THEIR¬2$¬EFFORTS¬n¬WHERE¬ IP is shared, where it is not clearly owned by one party. OMX's Intellectual Property lawyer, Andrew Currier from PCKIP, be- lieves that superclusters would likely have complicated IP agreements to really think about. The second biggest question will be whether the superclusters will be able to stretch funding long enough to see through to commercialization and see real financial success. And then, of course, I think back to my IP lawyer's comment and really hope these partners think through shared IP when it comes to commercial- ization. But these are all good problems to have. At the time of writing this, the following

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