Community-Based Accelerators

 

CLA investments, a key component of the Government's Youth Jobs Strategy, will help Ontario accelerate the commercialization of ideas and inventions out of its world-class research institutions, develop the business leaders of tomorrow, and harness the power of its support networks to build competitive regional innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

 

I like it.  I believe in it.  In fact, I chat regularly with folk at the Centre for Social Innovation, MaRS, and various public servants/social innovators about how we can support and expand this model.

 

One thing that I think is missing, though - with a strict focus on supporting the best and commercializing world-class ideas and innovations, we're creating an exclusionary field that's neglecting some broader opportunities.

 

While yes, we want to support the next Google, the reality is that most entrepreneurs are never going to hit that scale.  There's nothing wrong with this; SMEs (small to medium enterprises) contribute massively to our economy and provide valuable services.  They can even be creative; it's not uncommon for great innovations like left-handed scissors or hush-ups get developed this way. 

 

I'm going to reiterate that point for a second so that it really sinks in - entrepreneurs with purpose can often innovate solutions that policy changes can't. 

Here's another example - a hip-hop artist from Lawrence Heights has an idea for a youth entrepreneurship centre that would offer safe space, resource access, admin assistance, business forms, a library and some training/mentorship for local folk who want to start a business. 

 

This could be a bicycle shop or a cleaning service or an App for a smartphone - there are various ways to make the model work.

 

Jaydahmann came up with this idea out of conversations he's had with youth in the community - they don't need another basketball camp or barbeque and are disenfranchised with one-off summer jobs that don't provide the experience that supports career growth.

 

It's not "world class" stuff, perhaps, but ideas like this can make a big difference on the ground, when properly supported.

 

So why don't we do that?  If we can have Campus-Linked-Accelerators, why can't we have Community-Based Accelerators as well?

In fact, that's not far off ideas being discussed by Toronto City Council candidates like Andray Domise and Terri Chu.  It's an idea that's been raised by Toronto Youth Council as well.

The obvious first question is, "how will this thing make money?"

 

Accelerators tend to have rigorous processes designed to weed out those who aren't properly prepared.  I have never been comfortable with this idea; it's a bit like telling kids who's grades aren't perfect that they're not allowed to attend school.

 

If we can provide additional support for youth in school so that they too might succeed, we can do the same for business or community organization ideas.  In fact, that's a bit of what My SoJo aims to do and what RaiseAnAim is working on as well - helping people get their ducks in a row, line up funding and support the necessary admin stuff through government to result in successes.

 

Will all of them succeed?  No - but that's no different than where we are now.  Particularly in marginalized communities (or Neighbourhood Improvement Areas) people are being left behind - they're less employed, at greater risk for poverty, crime and illness and ultimately, cost the social system more.  Whoever participates would at the very least walk away with skills, contacts and practical experience they wouldn't have otherwise.

We need to change the view of entrepreneurship as just being a way to generate big revenue, but also being a tool for raising the social floor.  There are existing funding streams at all levels of government that could get behind this; there are existing champions at the community and political level; heck, there are even private-sector partners who would probably jump at the chance to support initatives like this with either dollars or in-kind service donation (speakers, mentors, etc).

 

It's Corporate Social Responsibility for them, brand-building, employee engagement and can even be R&D.  If a local kid comes up with a good idea on a small scale, it's kind of what big businesses do to figure out how to make that idea explode.

I for one would love to see Community-Based Accelerators happen; the potential benefits are enormous while the costs aren't really anything we're not pay for already in one form or another.

 

If only there was an accelerator I could bring this idea to, eh?

 

Please help me set my #OGT14 table! (UPDATED)

I am going to be an "Official Speaker" at the September 16 close of #OGT14: Open Government on the Open Road at City Hall in Ottawa. 

Events take place starting at 6:30PM in Jean Pigott Hall at Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa. The doors will be open at 6PM.

I have to fill a maximum of 8 minutes of speaking time saying something poignant about why you can't have Open Government without a Responsible Society.

What I wasn't counting on was this - I've been assigned a 2 x 6 table that I need to populate with something.  Here are my directions:

Remaining décor is up to your imagination. Bring your own displays, banners, posters, props, pamphlets, swag ... Etc, but be aware that they will need to be free standing or on the table.

Here's where I need your help.

My firm Wakata Inc. is dedicated to public affairs with a social purpose; I like to frame my partner Jen Li and I as the stone in the soup, bringing people and organizations together and facilitating shared solutions.  While I'm going to #OGT14 as me, not as Wakata, I want to hold true to what I believe in.

So - what should I display on my table?  Who can I promote, what shared solutions can I hint at in my space?

M first thoughts were that I'd like to promote the following:

Samara - democracy renewal

Why Should I Care - civic engagement

Exhibit Change - improving communication and comprehension

SoJo - a cool web platform that will create community and help individuals turn ideas into action.

MaRS Solutions Lab - anyone planning policy past the four-year cycle deserves some space!

I would have included Make Web Not War, but I imagine they have their own table, being the patrons of #OGT14 and all.

Those are my first thoughts, though I would need some resources from them to put on my table around the stone I just asked Richard Pietro to pick up for me somewhere between Vancouver and here.

What do you think?  All cool suggestions are welcome - and feel free to share them on Twitter using #OGT14!

UPDATED Sept 2 2014:

And the gold star for first carrot goes to Samara!  Samara has offered materials about their Everyday Political Citizen project for my #OGT14 table.

Samara is a perfect compliment for what OpenGov and Responsible Society are all about - our politics can do better, but not without an informed, engaged public.  Their Everyday Political Citizen project is designed to recognize and celebrate the democratic catalysts in our midst; the people who ask questions, who encourage you to get informed, who believe that it's through direct engagement that we can make a difference.

My #EPCitizen nominee for this year, as it happens, is Richard Pietro.

Richard has picked up a stone out west for me to use as the centrepiece of my table, the thing that brings groups like Samara (and hopefully, SoJo, WSIC, Exhibit Change, MaRS) together.  This is appropriate, because his #OGT14 tour has served the same role this summer - bringing together an incredibly diverse community from across the country around one shared theme:

Open Government.

Richard's brought the stone, Samara the first ingredient - but there's lots of space left!  Who's up next?

We're Going to MaRS

Query - what is the ROI of going to Mars?  

What was the Return On Investment of going to the moon?  There were no new markets to be found nestled in the craters, nor viable resources to extract, nor even disease-beating drugs that could be brought home and patented.

There was really no point in going to the moon itself; what mattered was the journey.

Here's what JFK had to say:

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and return it safely to the earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out - then we must be bold.

MaRS is in the news right now - the centre, not the planet - because of how much gets spent on it and what Return we're getting On that Investment.

I don't know how many businesses owe their success to MaRS, in whatever measure.  I've rarely dealt with people there in that capacity.  What I know more of MaRS is how it brings people together, pushes boundaries, takes the long view on structural problems like education access and healthcare.

While most of government is trapped by the four year political cycle and most private-sector players, financiers especially, are focused on the low-hanging fruit/quick return, MaRS is a place of people that look to the horizon and ask: how might we get there together?

No doubt MaRS could be better organized and better positioned.  I for one think it's a shame that they feel the need to trump big start-up wins instead of working away at structural solutions, with some entrepreneurial wins as part of the mix.

When even the folk who are supposed to take the long view start focusing on short-term ROI, we aren't going anywhere.  

And we need to move.  The world is shifting around us and we are, frankly, not prepared for what's coming. Canada is like the Shire, inwards-focused and oblivious to how what's happening beyond our boarders can't but change our world forever.

That's the point of MaRS - that's the point of any grand vision or venture.  We didn't go to the moon because of what it could provide us any more than we're aiming for MaRS to get something in return.  

The journey, the challenge is what matters.  It brings us together, empowers us to collaborate and pushes us to be bold.  

That's how problems are solved; that's how winning is done.

If you can't see the ROI on that, then quite frankly - you're not a leader.  

Does Canada want to lead again?  I think we do.

Let's aim high, people - let's go to MaRS.

Life on MaRS 1 - Cheap-Seat Politics

The proposal would see the Ministry of Infastructure purchase the building and land for $317 million, effectively erasing a $234-million loan the government provided to MaRS in 2011.

"It shouldn't happen in secret.  It shouldn't happen with a lack of transparency," said Hudak.  "A $300-million bailout just before an election campaign?  All they care about is Liberals and Liberals insiders and Liberal seats."

A couple easy questions for Tim Hudak, which he'll be no-doubt happy to answer:

1) Which seat would this save?  I'm pretty sure Glen Murray's riding won't be saved (or lost) by whatever happens with MaRS

2) Is the implication that any cabinet-level transaction should either not happen or happen in real-time transparency in the lead-in to an election (that was triggered by the NDP?) - or is Hudak suggesting that the business of Cabinet should always be real-time transparent?

We haven't heard about #OpenGov yet this campaign - Hudak's opened the door to that.

While both the gas plants and MaRS involve real estate, none of the other details match up.  Hudak is counting on people ignoring this fact and only paying attention to his argument.  It's kinda like how he's still solidly behind his discredited Million Jobs Plan.

Nuance doesn't matter where he's concerned - only messaging does.  Messaging he thinks will help him win.

Whoever he tars and feathers along the way is simply collateral damage.

We can break this down into two sections - one, real estate and two, the "bailout."

BAILOUT

I myself am not opposed to an entity with more resources helping one that's falling through the cracks, be it a school and a student or a province and a community.

When I was working for MPP Jim Brownell, the major city in his riding of Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry, Cornwall, had lost much of its manufacturing base to emerging economies.  The City itself was suddenly lost significant tax revenue and was in a bit of an identity crisis.  They came to Jim Brownell for help.

Jim arranged for a loan the City had received from the province to be forgiven - but to do that, he had to ensure that the same loan package (for downtown revitalization, issued in 1976) was forgiven for every municipality still owing.

It was a big deal - the Premier came down to announce it himself.  Cornwall breathed a sigh of relief - they had a bit of wiggle-room to help them get back on their feet.  That and the Eastern Ontario Development Fund (EODF, also one of Jim's good deeds) have helped bring some measure of stability and even vitality back to Eastern Ontario.

I'm sure Tim Hudak would call that a seat-saving bailout.  He could even hint at the manipulative back-room dealings of people like Jim and I, working our asses off to advocate on behalf of his constituents.

At the same time, if we take a look at the consulting firms that got contracts - or, should he somehow eke out a win, get contracts while he's in office, it would be unfathomable to suggest that he's favouring partisan stooges with massive contracts.

REAL ESTATE

It's casually hilarious what a big deal the Political Right makes about government owning land.  They seem to feel government should go back to its original size - as in, existing solely in the Legislative Building itself.

That's how it started off - Members didn't have offices, they had closets.  Ministries had minute staffs that filled the elegant but small rooms that are now Member offices at Queen's Park.  The reason for this is that Ontario has grown, as have public expectations.  

Could you imagine the Ministry of Health consisting of ten people squished into a small room with poor heating doing analysis on the potential of new drugs or coordinating service delivery across the province?

As it stands right now, a lot of Ministry offices are located in buildings away from the downtown core of Toronto - primarily because of the effort to find cheaper real estate.  Of course, this means that for meetings, presentations and the like, public servants spend oodles of time in transit on Toronto's clogged roads - using taxi chits, by the way, because it's their job to commute back and forth.  The chits are a necessary tool for them to perform their function.

MaRS is walking distance from Maconald Block, where most Ministries are located, and Queen's Park proper.  If you take the subway, you can even get there underground.

If you can consolidate government offices in one, accessible space, reducing the need to pay rent elsewhere and get rid of all the chit-problems, there could very well be value in this.  I don't know one way or the other what the fine print of the deal or the cost offsets are, because I haven't looked at it.

Neither has Hudak, but that's not stopping him.  He has proven, time and again, that the facts don't matter - only his argument does.

This isn't the first time - not even in this election - that Hudak has jumped on a talking point he feels serves his partisan interests without stopping to check the facts.  When he's proven to be wrong, as happens a lot, he doesn't stop, consider, apologize and adapt - he bristles and attacks.

With so many contentious, even volatile issues emerging in Ontario right now, it doesn't take much to guess what kind of public response his my-way-or-the-highway leadership would have. 

Hudak can keep on tilting at windmills and raging against MaRS - when he comes to his sense, we'll be waiting for him back here on planet earth where real problems still require real solutions and leaders with the common sense to think solutions through.

Open Data Solutions for Toronto's Transit Mess

John Tory blasted the "lack of thought or planning" by city officials and said the situation on major roads is a "world-class mess" while Karen Stinz called it proof that transportation planning is in a "state of disarray."  Olivia Chow wrote on Twitter: "My traffic plan says you can't shut a street (Lakeshore) if used to avoid one (Gardiner) under construction."

Toronto transit is a bit of a mess, but it's a problem that stretches beyond infrastructure.  When everyone is traveling the same arteries at the same time of day, each impatient to get where they're going and intolerant of delays, problems happen.

We can blame Public Works and Infrastructure for shoddy repair plans; we can blame aggressive drivers for clogging up intersections by racing lights; we can blame pedestrians, politicians or whoever else we want for the general congestion of our roads, but that doesn't help matters.

Instead of focusing on blame, let's look for solutions - which, in turn, present opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Players involved in our transit nightmare include:

- commuters

- planners

- business owners (who set work hours and, as such, standardized commute times)

- politicians

- business owners and residents (who dislike construction that impedes traffic to their venues/homes)

- construction firms (eager to make coin doing the work)

- police and Emergency Services (direct traffic, deal with accidents, etc)

- Metrolinx and the TTC - planning side, comms side, front-line workers, etc.

- Taxi drivers.  Oh, those taxi drivers.

- Bicyclists and the organizations that represent them

- Tourist/conference authorities in town

- the airports

- Municipal governments of bedroom communities

- anyone else?

There are lots more than this.  If you want a thorough assessment of who's impacted and who needs to be part of the solution conversation, go talk to Bianca Wylie at Swerhun - she's a world leader at this stuff. (She's on twitter - @biancawylie)

The two main, unavoidable factors here are 1) people need to get where they're going and 2) the roads have to be up to par for transit to happen.

Do the people need to get where they're going at the same time?  Do they need to get where they're going all the time?  What role can staggered working hours, work-from-home schedules, etc. play in reducing gridlock and related lost productivity?

There are big, structural challenges in here that, if politicians were to bring to stakeholders in different sectors, creative, shared solutions could be developed for.  

But let's get real - that's not going to happen any time soon.  People are way too focused on their own, micro problems to pay attention to how their behaviours play into the macro problems we all share.

Which brings us to Transit and Open Data.

If you're not familiar with RocketMan, it's worth checking out - an App for your phone that tracks public transit via Open Data provided by the city.  Instead of waiting for a bus that may or may not be on time, you can check your App and see where it's at in relatively real time, saving you from standing around needlessly.

Think about this for a second - free, public data made available resulted in an innovative solution that helps the public but also made an entrepreneur money.

How cool is that?

Back to transit construction.

It's a given that construction is going to happen - there's now way around it.  It's also a given that this construction is going to impede transit flows.  

But what if you had an App that mapped out construction zones for you and helped navigate around it? 

If we had real-time congestion metrics (recorded by cameras at busy intersections, for instance) you could feed that data into the App too.  Someone commuting from Etobicoke to downtown Toronto would be able to check their App, see where construction was happening that day and determine a couple of alternative routes to get where they're going and figure out (roughly) the time required.

In an ideal world, you'd get scenarios where an employee could tell their boss the commute time looks to be a dismal 3 hours of lost productivity; the boss would then say "work from home today so you don't lose productive hours" and then any direct communication could be done virtually.  And, you'd have one less body on the road.

It's all doable.  With the App side, if there was an entrepreneurial App designer out there they could get started on this immediately.  Talk to Keith McDonald at the City of Toronto's Open Data team (@COTkeith on Twitter) or check out Make Web Not War (@WebNotWar on Twitter) to find open data sets that could help you with planning.  They may even be able to offer you advice.

The key point to all this is that we don't need to be so reliant on politicians to come up with one-size-fits-all plans on our behalf; we have the tools we need to make positive change happen ourselves.  We just need the will and support to get moving.

And we all want to keep moving, don't we?

Canada's Youth - Unemployed Today, Leading Tomorrow

The number of young people without work in the world has grown by four million since 2007. What's more troubling? Millions more “disconnected youth” have given up the job search altogether.

This is a troubling article, to be sure.  More broadly; not only are youth giving up on the job search, but they are turning against social insitutions they feel are repressing them.

For anyone who's looking, though, there's also an incredible opportunity waiting to be seized.

“The youth unemployment crisis can be beaten but only if job creation for young people becomes a key priority in policy making and private sector investment picks up significantly,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, executive director of the ILO employment sector.

Governments don't have the money to do this.  Many small businesses are cash-strapped as it is.  More to the point, a lot of young people are disenfranchised with work and employment in its current model.

It's not that they don't want to work - it's that they want to be respected and have ownership of their work.  They want to build something for themselves, not for a generation from whom they feel increasingly disconnected.  The thought that settled baby-boomers are going to tell them to pick up and move across the country to drive a cab, because that's what's available, is deeply offensive to them.

The solution to this?  Entrepreneurship. 

Those at the top with the financial resources need to start connecting their funding with start-up capital and mentorship opportunities.  Governments starved for new policy directions and ideas would do well to foster these connections.

Places like the MaRS discovery District and the Centre for Social Innovation are leading the way on this front.  In terms of social participation, civic engagement projects like Samara and Why Should I Care are helping to connect young people with those in power and provide them with a voice that gets heard.

And there are ideas out there - practical, sustainable, affordable ones that, with the right nurturing, can change the world for the better.

If you want to know more, drop me a line - ccarteredwards@gmail.com.

Dutch Disease, Canadian Cure: Mental Health and the Knowledge Economy

Even if it were true that one sector were gaining at another sector’s expense, that is not evidence of a “disease.”  It is evidence of the economy.  That’s how it works.

Andrew Coyne, National Post

In the global knowledge economy, a country’s greatest strategic advantage is its capacity to discover and innovate.

Stephen Toope, National Post

Diagnosing the Illness

Canada’s manufacturing sector has taken a beating over the past several years.  The former mill town where I was born and raised (Cornwall, Ontario) is one of many communities across the nation that saw the majority of its jobs, tax base and community life blood pick up and move to greener pastures.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair blames this manufactured migration on Dutch Disease – the focus of the Canadian government on supporting our natural resource exports (ie. Alberta Oil) over other sectors of the economy.  To me, that’s like placing the blame for not having a job solely on the back of an unemployed person.  It’s a simplified interpretation of a far more complex picture.

Canada’s manufacturing loss has been to emerging economies, places like India, China and Brazil.  In these countries, employers have less obligations to their employees around payment, vacation, health and safety.  A rise in Canada’s dollar might be a stick discouraging manufacturers from continuing here, but lower responsibility costs elsewhere is just as much a carrot. 

What Canadians – and these manufacturers themselves – seem to forget is that these responsibility costs in Canada have resulted in a healthier, better educated populace with better access to services, opportunities and each other.  By empowering individuals and creating a more level playing field, Canada has increased the quality-of-life of its citizens.  It isn’t by chance that so many leaders and innovators, people ranging from Don Tapscott to Mike Lazaridis and Jim Basillie are Canadian (not always by birth, but definitely by experience).

Meanwhile, in other countries, the rights that Canadians fought for generations ago are in increasing demand in these surging economies.  Governments are being pressured to support their citizens, a responsibility that will inevitably fall back on the shoulders of industry.  Far from escaping responsibility costs in the Western World, these tumbleweed businesses have actually served to foster labour movements elsewhere.  It’s elegant, really, when you think about it.

Finding the Cure

Despite the positioning of Canada’s Finance Minister, Canadians are past the point of being willing to move to wherever to find work and take any job to make a buck.  Amiable lot though we are, we won’t stand for a return to the labour migrations of the Dirty 30s.  To Canadians, home and dignity will forever have a higher value than our dollar. 

That’s fine, because there is a growing industry out there that is less reliant on location for success.  In the Knowledge Economy, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, only that you have access to the tools and training that foster innovation.  Empowered Canadians – people, again, like the author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital or the founders of RIM – are at the forefront of new technologies, new processes and new approaches to success.

Yet, Canada is also undergoing a labour rights movement.  Like many other Western countries, there is a growing focus on mental illness and the social and economic losses incurred by a poor understanding of how mental health works and how mental fitness is accommodated.  This unheralded business crisis has spawned strategies and studies in jurisdictions around the world.  Responses include plans like Canada’s first, national mental health strategy.

At the same time, we are experiencing the rise of the social entrepreneur – Conscious Capitalists who see profit as a stepping stone towards meaning and legacy, rather than an end in and of itself.  These entrepreneurs, conscious of the impact of their actions on future generations (as they themselves are the first generation of Canadians being told to expect a lower quality-of-life than their parents) are largely focused on reducing our national carbon footprint, not through expensive schemes but as a matter of efficiency.

Mental health and innovation – these two things are inextricably linked.  As the Occupy movement helps spurn mental health protests and as governments and industry increasingly turn to young entrepreneurs to craft tomorrow’s action plans, these two things will merge.

Inoculation

Canada is on the right track and has an opportunity to be a world leader in connecting cognitive ability and creativity, consciously.  While it is highly unlikely our manufacturing sector will ever recover, it is increasingly apparent we don’t need it to.  Natural resources aren’t a long-term sustainable enterprise, nor are current practices in Canada as environmentally sound as they could be.

Natural resource dollars stimulating the Knowledge Economy and empowering social entrepreneurs, however, is a win-win.  These Conscious Capitalists, with greater access to venture capital and partnerships with natural resource extractors, can find new ways to reduce the footprint of resource extraction on the one hand and explore new opportunities in the creative industry.

To fully harness the capabilities of creativity, we need to understand how it works and how to foster it.  That means, understanding the impact of work, home and social environments on cognitive development as well as a less stigmatic view on the underlying genetics.  Occupational Mental Health and Safety, Mental Fitness and a focus on Conscious Capitalism – it’s the same confluence of history we saw during the industrial revolution, only we’ve moved from physical well-being to cognitive well-being.

Welcome to the 21^st Century; welcome to the Conscious Society.