The innovative story of Canada is a split screen. He runs up well to input for innovation – institutions, talent, quality of research, and even access to
– According to the last global innovative index (GII). Unfortunately, the picture is very different for the results: chronic insufficient effectiveness of what really matters for prosperity: patents, high -tech export, products and services with added value and services and premium prices.
We train and attract exceptional people, produce respected research and enjoy deep reserves of trust and stability. But we fail when it comes to turning these strengths into the fight against world products, premium brands and durability
profit.
The gap is not to know what to do; It is about to believe that we must defeat the markets abroad and adhere to the standards that are required.
National culture is in the center of this. Canadian pleasantness is a virtue in civilian life; In business, this can be blurred in convenient mediocrity. We avoid tough conversations, rationalize soft goals and transfer normal results, because no one wants to be a bad guy or girl.
In European countries, we must compare against Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Germany – there is a belief that their companies belong to a global podium. This faith is not a bravado in the American style; This is a quiet confidence. He pulls up the deadlines, the choice of forces and considers superiority as expectation, not an emission.
The economic structure enhances culture. Our most concentrated home-telecommunication markets, finances, transport and parts of retail trade-reconciliation urgency in order to introduce and do not raise formidable barriers to applicants. If new participants cannot win enough customers in Canada, they go to another place to scale or sell too early. More stringent competition laws will help clean the runway.
But even without them, both current and rebel companies can change the tone: to establish global ambitions and coordinate rewards with great results, and not with activity.
The countries that we admire did not rise better; They rose, being better and clearer about the results, more stringent in standards, to learn faster and not to consider victories. Do not understand us wrong: we do not advocate rudeness. Respect and evaluation of others are a prerequisite for long -term success.
Here are good news: the wind is finally on the back of talents. Currently, Canada is the main place for global talent, overtaking the United States in preferences in a recent international survey.
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The administration handed the Canadian employers an even greater opening: a new fee of $ 100,000 for new applications for the H-1B visa increases the cost of hiring qualified foreign workers in the United States, which forced many companies to rethink where they build teams. If we act decisively, Canada will be able to transform this political shock into a revolution to work and retention.
Capture the moment means changing how we lead. Replace the reflex to be pleasant to the reflex to be excellent. Evaluate the fraction of the international market, premium prices and high values of shares as a real assessment, and not on internal optics. Professionals hire and expand the possibilities that have increased abroad and allowed them to drop the bar on how we value, sell and send. First of all, make the belief clear: insist – aloud – that Canadian companies can and will dominate our borders.
This is not a call to wait for state programs or another round of pilot projects or, for the sake of all the holy, new white documents. For enterprises, this is a call to increase their own standards. Install ambitions, rewards Excellency and switch from what does not correspond. Input data here. Talent is increasingly available here and more available if we move quickly.
Canada does not need a new person; It needs new posture. Maintain politeness. Lose complacency. Light the fire in the stomach. External results will follow, and the world will consider Canada and see not only a pleasant place to build life, but also a place to create value and long prosperity.
Alice de Koning is a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the business school Haskin, the University of Kalgary and the Academic Director of Hunter Hub for entrepreneurial thinking at the University of Kalgary. Yrjo Koskinen is a BMO professor for sustainable financing and financing for the transition at the Haskayne school at the Smith Smith School School, Queen University.