Can We Be Innovative?

“Alberta’s ‘new economy’ is in no position to take up the slack when the resource sector hits a slump.”

As technology industry veteran Bruce Alton notes in “Building the Economy of Ideas,” we’ve come a long way in 20 years. Our infrastructure for creating next-generation technologies and companies has exploded with the Alberta Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity, the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, TEC Edmonton, Calgary Technologies, AVAC Ltd., the Northern Alberta Business Incubator, the Banff Venture Forum, the National Institute for Nanotechnology, the iNovia II venture fund, a growing cadre of smaller venture capitalists and, most recently, the Alberta Enterprise Corporation and other elements of the provincial government’s Action Plan. This year a pure-play technology company, Smart Technologies, joined our Venture 100 list of Alberta’s largest companies for the first time by cracking the half-billion-dollar mark in revenues.

But in relation to where other provinces and whole countries are, we’re standing still, if not falling behind. The fact is Alberta’s “new economy” is, as Alton puts it, “a rounding error” in the provincial GDP. It is in no position to take up the slack when the resource sector hits a slump, let alone when it finally succumbs to its non-renewable nature.

I put this proposition to our cover subject, Advanced Education and Technology Minister Doug Horner. There’s more to creating an innovative economy than having the headquarters of big tech companies, he answered. Point taken. Some of the most dynamic economies (think South Korea) have got ahead not by developing new technology but by adopting and adapting new technology from other places and industries. Certainly the investment and research firepower that has and continues to be directed at the oil and gas sector, especially the oilsands, dwarfs all other R&D taking place in the province and is producing results, both from an efficiency and an environmental perspective.

Nonetheless a revolution in thinking is required before we follow in the footsteps of Finland or other technology tigers and create the kind of innovative, forward-looking economy that will sustain our prosperity into the distant future. It will take not just a long-term commitment by government but buy-in from people working in a range of industries. Right now it’s too easy for someone with a bright idea to license it or move to the United States or eastern Canada rather than build an innovative company right here. For the rest of us, it’s too easy to just keep on doing things the way we’ve always done them and expect to turn a profit. Well, maybe not in a recession. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said, “The economic downturn is an innovation upturn.”

Let’s hope that applies to Alberta in 2009.

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