Our national productivity and innovation challenges seem to have risen to the top of the agenda once again -- and for good reason. Despite all the talk and worry of the past couple of decades, all our key indicators are still pointing in the wrong direction; our productivity gains continue to be very anemic; our closest competitors are leaving us further in the dust in terms of per capita GDP; and our sources of true growth and innovation are narrowing more and more into just a few very specific sectors, particularly around resource extraction.
These are very worrying signs and many of the leading thinkers in our country understand the urgency of the problem. What's holding Canada back? How did a nation with such a great legacy of innovation, entrepreneurship and risk-taking become so much more cautious and comfortable in the span of just one generation? Can we fix our productivity gap just by rethinking and refreshing some of our antiquated protectionist policies and by training the next generation of technocrats to think less conventionally and more creatively -- or could there also be a bit of a "national psyche" issue lurking in the background?
I was speaking at a couple of national conferences this past week. My topics had little to do with productivity or innovation, but the way the audience responded to my presentations caused me to pause and reflect on our overall conversation style as a nation and our appetite for risk. At both of these events, most of the other speakers offered a classic Canadian blend of polite perspectives, accolades for past achievements and inspiring words of encouragement, with any bad news or concerns so gently packaged and tightly buried in their talk that most listeners would naturally smile, relax and maybe consider another snooze.
Ironically, these two conferences were on the topics of corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability -- where our global reputation as a nation is truly spiralling right now -- and yet the prevailing tone was so polite, future-positive and self-congratulatory. And then, when I took the podium and chose to speak much more directly about our collective failure as practitioners, the absence of any measurable results and our remarkable ability to placate ourselves with plenty of talk and very little action, the audience suddenly cheered! They actually seemed to enjoy the blunt tone, the honest examples of failure and the intense sense of urgency. Despite what we've been trained to fear as the world's most polite people, nobody seemed offended by the 'unplugged' tone.
As it turns out these smart industry leaders weren't really there to hear how good they are; they had come looking for a challenge, a stretch and a roadmap. If all we gave them were pats on the back, they would have likely gone home smiling but less inspired at the end of the day -- and perhaps with less of an appetite to think and innovate.
Could it be that our world-leading national politeness and gentleness is actually holding us back a bit from stretching our minds and our capabilities? How do we find a way to stay nice and play to win at the same time? Maybe we need to have a blunt national conversation on this one...
Mike Dixon: Citizens Advice - Solving Problems and Changing Lives
Jeff DeGraff: Creativizing Your Life
Soren Petersen: Creating Paradigm Shifting Insights Using Co-Creation And Crowd Sourcing
The question we need to ask is "do we need to grow anymore, or do we need to sustain ourselves where we are"?
It is a minority of us that have true inventive enterpreneurial spirit and are destined to come up with something important, useful and new. We should ensure that our society can nurture these people and let them go to where they are destined.
But for the rest of us, what's wrong with just being a decent, rich, satisfied country that has dropped out of the financial growth rat race? That whole system is based on gambling anyway and is destined to fall apart and be replaced by something else once the parts of the developing world destined to catch up do so.
Let us lead in that area. Have a beer. Put up your feet.
too much wasted energy being spent on pointing fingers at immigrants and new Canadians, whereas Canada is a country of immigrants
this unfortunately has let to conservative gov'ts with people who are children of immigrants now looking at other newer immigrants as whom to blame for their alleged lot in life
so the 2% GST tax cut bribed Canadians to vote for the CPC and the party that promised to NEVER allow Canada into deficit, after giving away 2% that practically did nothing for the avg Canadian, now has to borrow money to pay our debt
the coziness of the this gov't and it's lack of oversight over organizations like the CRTC to enable ALL Canadians access to high speed internet ( I know since I lived in Ontario near Toronto and could not get high speed internet) instead the CPC et al cow tie to the corporate entities like Bell and Rogers, while countries like South Korea are bringing 10x the speed to their citizens
prices for texting and cellular are also out of control in Canada, once again without a strong federal mandate doing the best for Canadians
We're not too 'nice' - we're getting testy and tired, like a bunch of old white men who prefer to yell; "get off my lawn!" instead of looking forward to the future and demanding change - change that would help Canada become more entrepreneurial
I would say it is more the fact that both countries seem to be picking leaders that cater to the voters by selling the illusion of still being at the top of the heap; and a population that has gotten soft on the dream of brand new cars and other toys when we want them, big houses, and the immediate gratification of the desire rather than making the decision to sacrifice and postpone. Neither country really encourages students to go into the hard sciences like we did in the 1960s and 1970s because we lack the national dream of a space program or something similar, having turned it all over to the private sector to choose the direction, so we have 9 cures for ED and Mars is still impossibly-far away. (and even if we did encourage our kids to go into the hard sciences, the jobs get shipped to the old 2nd and 3rd world countries where even if their educations are 1st world, the wages are lower.)