The Mother of Invention: Skills for Innovation in the Post-Pandemic World

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many workplaces to innovate rapidly in order to simply survive. But innovation is a critical component of our economic prosperity even during normal times. To be successful, Canada’s skills strategies must address skills for innovation across sectors — from solo entrepreneurs, to small and medium-sized businesses, to large corporations and even within government itself. While Canada has made significant efforts to foster a strong innovation economy, the pandemic has helped to reveal where these efforts have created strong foundations for success as well as areas where much remains to be done.

Key Takeaways

Research suggests 50 percent of the workforce will need to reskill within the next five years due to the double disruption of the pandemic and the increasing technological automation that had already been transforming work even before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19.
In spite of massive public investments in research and development, and one of the best-educated workforces in the world, Canada’s innovation performance has been a cause for concern for some time. Clear gaps exist at the macro, meso and micro levels of the innovation ecosystem that need to be filled for Canada’s innovation record to improve.
Studies show that while impressive initiatives with promising outcomes abound within Canada’s innovation ecosystem, competition for scarce resources and a lack of co-ordination among organizations creates fragmentation and duplication of effort, and limits opportunities for sharing across institutions, jurisdictions and sectors.

The Mother of Invention: Skills for Innovation in the Post-Pandemic World

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Much has been made of the negative effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the economy, and the disruption, upheaval and chaos created among the workforce when the world was forced to shut down en masse. But the pandemic has also fueled a surge in innovation, as necessity forced businesses, governments and individuals to find ways to adapt. Not only has it driven the creation of new technologies, it has driven the development of new products and services, changes in processes, the development of new business models, and even shifts in the approach to work itself.

Yet much still needs to be done to ensure that Canada can keep pace with the accelerating rates of change that characterize today’s economy and society, to say nothing of building sufficient resilience to overcome the current pandemic and prepare for similar future shocks. Canada has among the highest rates of investment in education and research and development (R&D), but these investments are not translating into the desired improvements to productivity, successful technological commercialization, or increases in GDP.

If innovation is the key to our economic prosperity, Canada’s skills strategy must address the skills needed for innovation across sectors – from small and medium-sized businesses to large corporations and even within government itself.In this context, this report explores:

The definition of innovation and its connection to entrepreneurship and skills;
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on innovation, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises; and
The implications for the definition, assessment, development and utilization of skills.

Prior to the pandemic, the innovation discourse was defined by fairly narrow understandings of innovation and a disproportionate focus on the technology sector. This preoccupation with the tech sector, tech innovation and highly skilled tech job creation has had the unintended consequence of excluding large segments of the economy and society from the innovation conversation.

The arrival of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of new business models, new ways of working, new ways of marketing and distributing, the critical importance of supporting technology adoption – and the skills needed to support this adoption – as well as the creation of new technologies. In other words, we need to think more broadly about both what constitutes innovation and about the skills required to enable it.The arrival of COVID-19 has not only highlighted the critical importance of specific skills for specific roles that have changed or expanded, but also the skills needed to anticipate and respond to shocks to the system. Among these skills are those needed to continue to transform both the public and private sectors, to create and scale entrepreneurial ventures and to create and implement new strategies and new business models.

At the same time, there is a need to support strategic initiatives that aim to improve access to training and decent work opportunities for all Canadians to capture their innovative potential. In this context, assessing and consciously addressing skills gaps has become more important than ever, particularly the skills needed to continue to promote and consolidate gains from innovation in digital workplaces. New working arrangements have created massive challenges for some and new skills are needed among both employers and employees to navigate these new arrangements, as it is clear that a return to normal may not mean a return to the office as it existed before the pandemic.

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Thank you to our partners

Skills for the Post-Pandemic World series is funded by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Program

With support from

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About the Authors

Wendy Cukier, Karen E. McCallum, Patrick Egbunonu and Kim Bates

Dr. Wendy Cukier is the Diversity Institute Founder, Academic Director of the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub and Research Lead of the Future Skills Centre. She is the co-author of the bestseller, Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Java to Jurassic and former VP of Research and Innovation. The Diversity Institute has 100 research staff, 100 research associates world-wide, 200 industry partners and focuses on dimensions of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, future skills, and entrepreneurship and innovation. For more than a decade she has been challenging conventional wisdom about technology adoption and the “skills gap”, and examining how we can leverage inclusive innovation to address it. She serves on a host of non-profit boards and many advisory committees. She has also received numerous awards, most recently the International Women’s Forum 2020 Women Who Make a Difference. She holds two honorary doctorates as well as the Meritorious Service Cross, one of Canada’s highest civilian honours.

Karen E. McCallum has a social sciences background with degrees from the University of Waterloo and McMaster University, and a PhD in Human Rights from the University of London (U.K.). After six years studying abroad, she returned to Canada in 2019 and re-engaged with Canadian policy and research, focusing on equity for members of marginalized groups. Previously, she worked as a Senior Research Associate at Ryerson’s Diversity Institute-Future Skills where she published widely on equity and diversity.

Patrick Egbunonu is currently the Associate Dean of the School of Business, at St Lawrence College (SLC), Kingston, Ontario. He is a serial entrepreneur, with experience working in different industries – Engineering, Financial, Technology, Analytics, Education. Patrick has a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering, and a Master of Arts Degree in Economics both from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He also completed an Executive MBA from Queen’s University and Cornell University. Patrick is currently enrolled in a PhD program in Management at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. His research area is Digital Technology, with focus on Digital Innovation, Digital Entrepreneurship, and Digital Start-Ups.

Dr. Kim Bates is an associate professor in Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. She conducts research on innovation, corporate governance and a variety of topics at the intersection of business and society, including the impact of an aging population on organizations and society, diversity and inclusion, and social innovation, and is a respected scholars whose work has influenced many other researchers. Prior to joining Ryerson, she held academic appointments at the Stern School of Business, New York University, the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and Trent University.