2017 was an exciting year for Canada and for the Global Advantage Consulting Group.
Our annual review of the 2017 Federal Budget highlighted the new Innovation and Skills Strategy, which creates 17 new federal innovation initiatives and programs, including Innovation Canada, Innovative Solutions Canada, the Invest in Canada Hub, the new $1 Billion Superclusters initiative, the integrated Strategic Innovation Fund, and the Horizontal Review of over 90 federal innovation and clean tech support programs.
As Canada moves forward with its innovation policy, the Federal Government has also directed the formation of six Economic Strategy Tables. These industry-driven groups are meant to explore and determine what a national industrial strategy might look like for Canada in six key sectors: Agri-Food, Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Technology, Clean Resources, Digital Technologies, and Health and Bio-sciences.
Our work this year has overlapped well with these key sectors. For example, we have designed and developed Ecosystem Strategy Maps in Advanced Manufacturing (for ReMAP, Canada’s only advanced manufacturing NCE), the Oil and Gas Sector (for the Canadian Clean Resource Innovation Network, CRIN), Regenerative Medicine (for the newly formed Regenerative Medicine Alliance of Canada, RMAC), and Nanotechnology (for NanoCanada).
These Ecosystem Strategy Maps allow stakeholders to see the broad landscape of all the assets across the entire industry sector, identify the relationships between stakeholders and groups of stakeholders, and understand where system-wide “risks” might affect progress towards key objectives, as well as identify opportunities for sector growth. The Strategy Maps can also help diverse groups of stakeholders collaborate more effectively to support system-level objectives.
We also had the pleasure of working with Algonquin College’s Department of Applied Research and Innovation to help us develop some remarkable new software tools. These tools are leveraging our depth of knowledge in the innovation space to present data as moving displays over time, and our maps, as interactive digital tools that will take ecosystem strategy mapping to a higher level of performance. For example, we’re excited to be launching a “Dancing Data” application this year – keep checking back for updates or subscribe to our newsletter to find out more!
We were also able to work with five excellent coop students this year. Hanna, Heidi, Jay, Sarah, and Sherry joined us from both Carleton University and Ottawa University for the summer term, and Jay, Sarah, and Sherry stayed with us through December. Their expertise, new ideas, and effort were a huge part of our projects and our success this year.
Finally, I’d like to welcome Liisa Plitz and Edmer Buen, who have both joined our firm. Liisa will be helping us make our processes around finances, HR, and marketing more efficient and effective, while Edmer is a graphic and UX developer who will help make our branding and products more competitive and memorable.
Looking forward to an even more exciting and engaging 2018!
Adam Jarvis
VP Policy and Research
