Home to hundreds of tech firms ranging from telecommunications giants like Nokia to fledgling software startups, Kanata North contributes billions of dollars annually to the Canadian economy. As the Kanata North Business Association embarks on its next phase of strategic planning, Dan Breznitz, one of the country’s foremost innovation experts, was invited to the Brookstreet […]
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Home to hundreds of tech firms ranging from telecommunications giants like Nokia to fledgling software startups, Kanata North contributes billions of dollars annually to the Canadian economy.Â
As the Kanata North Business Association embarks on its next phase of strategic planning, Dan Breznitz, one of the country’s foremost innovation experts, was invited to the Brookstreet Hotel on Thursday afternoon by Kanata-based investment firm Wesley Clover International to offer his perspective on global tech and innovation centres and discuss ways Kanata North can maximize its potential as a tech hub.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Breznitz is a professor at the University of Toronto. He is Munk Chair of Innovation Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and also serves as co-chair of the University of Toronto’s Innovation Policy Lab.
Breznitz also spent a year and a half as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at the federal Department of Finance. While there, he was an architect of the Canada Innovation Corp., a new Crown corporation aimed at helping scale up innovative Canadian companies.
OBJ’s David Sali spoke with Breznitz in advance of Thursday’s discussion to get a sneak preview of his thoughts on Kanata North, where it might have a competitive advantage, and the role of the federal government in helping fuel its continued growth.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is the main focus of your talk on Thursday afternoon?Â
What I’m hoping to achieve is to open a conversation about thinking about what innovation really is and why we should care about it … and then asking very hard-nosed questions about what kind of models cities and communities want to have about innovation-based growth that creates widespread prosperity for people with different kinds of skill levels and not just for R&D teams, and also how you create a sustainable model of innovation-based growth.
The first thing that the community needs to do is figure out where it wants to be in 50 years. What kinds of companies do you want to have in Kanata North? What are they selling the global system? What do they need from the global system? What kind of finance do they really need, not what kind of finance would look cool because they can get themselves a headline in your (publication). I’m trying to remind all of us why we care about innovation and the fact that there is more than just one option. We have to figure out what we want to be instead of looking south of the border and saying we want to be like them.
Q: Do you think Kanata North sometimes gets overshadowed by the media glare from tech hubs like Toronto and Waterloo?
I think Ottawa needs to be slightly more proud of itself. There are only so many Shopifys, not just in Ottawa but in the whole of Canada. And lo and behold, look where Shopify is (headquartered). How many great companies came from (Waterloo’s) Communitech or Toronto that grew to be global leaders in the last 10 years and how many came from Ottawa?
Q: Where do you think Kanata North has the best opportunities to capitalize on its strengths?
I don’t think I’m the person who’s the expert in Kanata North. But if you look at the history of Ottawa and where Ottawa has a lot of skills, if you think about not just creating startups around (information and communications technology), but creating companies that do what I call stage two and stage three innovation in the global ICT industry … try to think about ways in which we can have more companies where we might be leading not in the latest (semiconductor) chips, but in the latest technologies of how to produce those chips and then actually creating fabrication technologies and the fabrication facilities, instead of trying to look like yet one more company from the U.S. trying to get a financial exit by being bought out or (doing an) IPO as quickly as possible.
If Ottawa was in the U.S. and it had Nortel and Nortel went down, instead of one company, you would have four or five global companies based on the technology and the people who work at Nortel. We have not managed to do that. I think that Kanata North has a very good chance of looking at the skills and technology it still has around telecommunications, understanding that the global system has changed and then instead of copycatting business models from Silicon Valley, it can look into different kinds of business models.Â
There is a need for Kanata North and Ottawa – I’m not talking Ottawa as a federal capital, but Ottawa as a community – to figure out what policy-makers need to do in order for this to be successful. If this is the model that you are going for, what you need is a very different kind of investment than just regular venture capital. You actually need to be able to build production facilities. This is something Kanata North should start thinking about now – not wait for another five years, because that window of opportunity will be lost.Â
The Americans already have their plan put together. We in Canada are barely waking up to the fact that the world has changed. I’m not sure Ottawa, the political Ottawa, is up to spec with being able to do that in time. Ottawa the city and Kanata North specifically should just assume they have to do it. I left (the federal) government over a year ago, and I have not seen any movement on those files. We elect politicians to do things, not just talk about things. So I think it’s time that the politicians actually start to do things.
