Harold Jarche

Innovation and Idea Protectionism

by

Albert Ip talks about the reality of developing new products, and then dealing with lawyers and patent issues.

In these days of patent lock-up, it is NOT about publishing the achievement and improvement. My patent lawyer told me the other day, it is about limiting other people’s use of your idea. Hence this concept of patent portfolio and mutual licensing. He advised me to break my invention into several patents in order to start building a patent portfolio. When there is a way of doing thing which is lock up in other’s patent (by the way, I discover the method myself independently – but it does not matter, somebody has the exclusive right just before you), one can use one’s patent portfolio to negotiate for some mutual licensing. This makes sense, a lot of $en$e – but only to the lawyers! I ended up protecting my IP using "trade secret". BTW, if you ask nicely, I may tell you my trade secret after a drink.

Albert’s experience shows why the open source movement and intiatives like Creative Commons are essential for innovation and for our continuing economic growth. Innovation is NOT about limiting other people’s use of your idea. Our civilisation and technology is where it is today because scientists and others freely shared their findings in order to grow their disciplines. Albert is keeping his secrets, but on his terms. We should do like CC says – skip the intermediaries [lawyers].

Innovation Articles – Summary

by

The LearnNB community has been provided with a number of PDF articles on innovation – mostly Canadian perspectives. These are in preparation for the quarterly meeting this Wednesday, September 22nd. The documents have been hidden away (password-protected) in the collaborative work space for LearnNB (I can set up an account if you want one). I have also posted the names of the articles on the public LearnNB blog. A quick search today has shown that most of these documents are freely available, and I’ve done a quick synthesis of a few.

What follows are some short summaries of the documents that caught my attention.

A series of three articles from Research Money by Alan Cornford, (significant subscription fee required) provide some interesting observations on innovation. Cornford states that increasing R&D spending will not increase innovation capacity, as only 3% of of public R&D spending results in measurable innovation; the only way to measure innovation is through the outputs – or local wealth generation; and there is plenty of VC money available, but not enough finance-worthy ventures. The key to driving innovation is having the right people. He also shows that private sector investment has 15 times the return on investment as that of the public sector. His main recommendation is not to weaken public R&D spending, but to strengthen it through private partnerships, especially with small and medium sized enterprises. Cornford is also in favour of enhanced R&D tax credits and the channelling of government investment into "community innovation idea outreach" to communties and SME’s
.

Where local SME (small and medium enterprise) R&D receptor capacity is limited (as in most of Canada), the universities, polytechnics
and colleges can conduct applied R&D for local SME industry and therefore benefit from these increased R&D investments, while community SME innovative capacity grows.

Cornford also produced a report for ACOA in 2002, entitled – Innovation and Commercialization in Atlantic Canada , which I have not read yet.

A different perspective is presented by Douglas Barber, who in 2003 surveyed the 120 most innovative companies in Canada, (those who spent more than 3% on R&D) and determined that the main issues around innovation were inadequate tax

incentives, lack of qualified workers, uncoordinated government support and regulation concerning R&D. These companies included Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, BCE

Emergis Inc., Corel Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp., and Sierra Wireless, Inc.. This paper focuses primarily on large companies, not SME’s.

Denzil Doyle in a 2004 report for ITAC (PDF) examined the selling of Canadian high-tech companies and purchases by foreign investors. This again focuses on larger companies, not the smaller companies that are predominant in Atlantic Canada. Doyle concludes that:

This paper has been written on the assumption that Canadian policy makers want to position Canada as a global player in the worldwide high-tech industry. In order to achieve

that goal it will not only have to create a favourable environment for foreign-owned branch plants but it will have to grow several world class companies with the majority of

corporate decision-making carried out in Canada. Examples of such companies are Nortel Networks, Cognos, ATI Technologies, OpenText, McDonald Detweiller Associates, and

Research In Motion.



While Canadians can be proud of their R&D skills and achievements in nearly every field of technology, more attention should be paid to ways and means of commercializing

more of the resultant technology in Canada. This will require the development of a financing industry that is capable of launching companies properly and of taking financial

control of them when the original investors decide to exit their investments.

Other documents available from the government of Canada, include: Knowledge Matters: Skills & Learning for Canadians

This document addresss, at a very high policy level, how the government can foster learning for in public education, build the workforce, and attract more immigrants.

The series of government documents on innovation are good for those planning initiatives that they wish to align with government policy – good until the next election.

A shorter paper, by Peter Josty on technology commercialisation focuses on Alberta’s situation, and provides some case-specific information, as well as a short SWOT analysis. This is a quicker read than some of the others, with a Western perspective.

I’m sure that you’re seeing some common themes (tax credits), and there are more documents that I haven’t read yet. I hope that this quick summary provides a bit of an overview for my colleagues who will be at the meeting in Fredericton this week. See you there.

Innovative Entrepreneurs

by

Dave Pollard has written a concise article on how to stimulate and measure Canadian innovation. He trashes the methods used by the federal government and the BC science council to measure and promote innovation. I agree with his verdict – they’re lame.

And if you want to stimulate innovation, invest in the people that live and die by innovation — entrepreneurs. Their profits stay in the community, get reinvested, and create jobs. By all means subsidize those entrepreneurs to do their research at Canadian universities — you better believe that research will be focused on commercial opportunity.

To continue the thread started by the Atlantic open source gatherings this Summer, as well as the blogger meeting in Moncton this week, the common threads of interest appear to be:

  1. open source models for software, innovation and learning
  2. new business models, including natural enterprises
  3. networking and learning in the digital commons (blogs, YASNS, wikis, etc)
  4. economic development at a grassroots level in Atlantic Canada

I’m sure that many of the small, outwardly focused, technologically savvy companies in the region would not been impressed by measurements like "percent of population completing university", as a means to determine innovation. There are many successful entrepreneurs here who have skipped university in order to really innovate.

At the blogger dinner in Moncton there were at least three new business initiatives that we discussed and these will be followed-up. Not bad for seven folks in the space of a couple of hours. This was more successful in fostering innovation that most sponsored conferences on innovation. So let’s keep the conversation going, especially in the blogosphere, and let’s have a mass innovation meet next month. With 20 to 30 entrepreneurial individuals networking over pizza & beer (or your choice of brain food) I’m certain that we can start an Atlantic movement to help each other, and kick butt internationally.

All of the ingredients are here – smart people, nimble companies, a sense of community, existing relationships, and a hunger for something better. There are still a number of us who have to get to know each other a bit better, so I hope to see many of you in Sackville at the end of next month.

Please post your comments as well as your preferred dates.

 

Emergent Learning Forum – East

by

Still hyped from last night’s blogger meeting, I am following up on Jay Cross’ suggestion to hold an Emergent Learning Forum (ELF) Flash Meeting. Cameron, Chris and I discussed having an informal social gathering in Sackville for October. We’re looking for a location, and think that we might be able to negotiate a spot like the president’s cottage at Mount Allison University, or the local pub, or if worse comes to worse – my place. The ELF mission is in line with our practices to date, and I think that it might be a good thing to be part of a larger movement – ELF is:

A non-commercial, global community of people who make decisions at the intersection of learning, technology, business, and design.


Mission


Promote understanding and use of learning in industry and government worldwide

Provide a forum for resolving issues impeding the progress of eLearning

Identify and publicize new developments and emerging best practices

Host a global virtual conversation of vital eLearning issues



Values


We tell it like it is

We value the impact of eLearning on human performance improvement

We are stridently non-commercial

We practice what we preach

We dare to be at the leading edge

We believe in sharing best practices freely and without boundaries



How We Operate


We encourage our members to network with one another

We do not offer consulting services and do not charge for research reports

We promote applied best practices

We think of ourselves as innovators and provocateurs

We eject people who use our gatherings for blatant, uninvited sales pitches



Membership


Membership is free and open to anyone who makes decisions about eLearning.

Our community includes designers, training managers, consultants, product developers, academics, researchers, and business managers.

Fifty to sixty people attend [the San Francisco area] monthly meetings.

Our mail list includes 1500+ opt-in members.

This all seems pretty good to me, so tell me if you’re interested in:

  1. Trying this out under the ELF umbrella.
  2. Having an informal gathering to meet people who are interested in the digital economy, new business models, some techie stuff, and have a sense of community both locally and globally.
  3. Limiting any presentations to 5 minutes (inspired, isn’t it?).
  4. A continued focus on social networking software, small business, and open source business models.
  5. Having it take place in Sackville, with suggested dates of any afternoon during the last week of October, the 25th to 29th.

In the meantime, we will scope out locations, and remember that Sackville is less than a two-hour drive from Halifax, Charlottetown, Miramichi, Fredericton, Saint John and Moncton.

 

Moncton Blogger Gathering

by

At Steve’s initiative, a number of us ( Seb, Chris, Cam, Will) met for an informal dinner to meet and catch-up. Some folks met for the first time and it was good to partake in the conversations. Apparently Steve has been dreaming up some good stuff, called Data Libre, so check out his new & improved blog.

Most of us would like to see more of these events – informal, loosely joined – around blogging, open source, micro-businesses, natural enterpises or some other common ground. The Sackville bloggers are looking into organising a gathering here, perhaps in late October, so we’ll keep you posted. It would be good to get about 20 people together around open source and small business partnering – or something else, if you care to comment.

Blogs or LMS?

by

Jeremy Hiebert makes an interesting comparison between blogs and LMS in higher education:

But then I really cringed when I hit the conluding sentence: "A blogging tool would be a valuable addition, therefore, to any LMS." No, no, no, no, NO.



In spirit, blogs are the opposite of a Learning Management System like WebCT. If you lock personal publishing away inside an LMS, it’s the equivalent of yet another crappy discussion board in a course. Blogs work because people are engaged in their own interests and can find their network from the entire world. An LMS constrains the topic, assignments and partipants, closing off any potential for authentic outside interaction and personal engagement.

Could not have said it better myself – it’s about learner control.

 

Next NB – what’s next?

by

I attended the Next NB education discussion session at Mount Allison University this evening. Not a lot of of people showed up, given conflicting appointments and the rather poor advertising, or maybe just due to apathy. I found out why the website doesn’t work, and now Lisa, our facilitator, has my utmost sympathy.

There were 15-20 people in attendance; most of whom were middle-aged or older. Attendees included university professors, retired professors, school disctrict representatives, teachers’ association representatives and others – not quite what one would call vox populi. I made comments based on my previous posts, so I won’t repeat them here. Some other interesting comments were:

  • We should bring back the teaching of civics in school.
  • We need to be inclusive of all minorities.
  • We expect too much of our teachers.
  • We should reinstate apprenticeship programmes.
  • Low expectations are a critical problem.

As you can see, it was quite the potpourri of perspectives this evening. Not much was accomplished, but all comments were recorded. My suggestion to link to other blogs and conversations will be taken up, and I’m told that there will be links to this blog on the Next NB site.

A document entitled A Covenant with our Children: Education in New Brunswick (PDF) was handed out tonight. From the document:

  • We must embrace the movement towards standards-based assessment, increased accountability and greater social inclusion. [interesting trio]
  • Principals and vice-principals should be removed from the collective bargaining unit of the New Brunswick Teacher’s Union (sic) [is that why there were two reps from the NBTA in attendance?]
  • Education reform is too important to allow the voices of teachers to be barred from the conversation. That discussion must include an open dialogue about French immersion. [and the students?]

Lots of stuff to digest, but I kept asking myself, will this exercise change anything? I’ll finish with an often quoted observation from Albert Einstein:

The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far, has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way that we thought when we created them.

Drupal Review

by

Cameron Bales and I just wrote a review of the Drupal content management system for Rick Bruner’s Business Blog Consulting site. I’m sure that we may have missed a few things, so please post any additions or other comments about Drupal. This will enable interested parties to make informed technology decisions without the marketing hype that you would get from proprietary software. We may be open source evangelists, but we won’t hide any weaknesses because we know that the community will help to solve any problems. The more I use Drupal, the more I feel that it is an excellent CMS to manage a website and multiple blogs. I also know that it can do a lot more.

Update: Boris Mann adds more details and perspective to our review.
and … there are further comments on the Drupal site; so read them all to get a complete perspective.

One final reason to use Drupal – because Doc Searls does!

Wisdom of Crowds for Health & Education

by

In Deschooling Society (1970), Ivan Illich explained why we must disestablish school:

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.

There is almost an arms race quality to the way in which we are trying to save our current education and health care “systems”. I am coming around to the notion that the system is the problem. Much in the same way that The Support Economy diagnoses ‘managerial capitalism’ as the primary cause of the disconnect between corporations and markets, I am seeing that Illich had it right over 30 years ago – we have seen the enemy, and it is us. Through our large, corporatist systems we have created self-perpetuating monopolies in both health and education.

In order to get back some semblance of control, I would suggest that we stop paying the supply side of the equation. Instead of paying the suppliers (teachers, doctors, administrators, etc.), a socialist country like Canada would instead offer education and health insurance to all Canadians. Let the people decide where their money is spent. If the average Canadian is allowed to vote for the governement, why not be allowed to vote where education and health (our topmost priorities) money should be spent? This system would have some problems, such as wealthier people opting into expensive facilities out of reach of average Canadians, but I believe in the wisdom of crowds, and feel that communities would develop to support all members of society. At least we would have the tools to do something other than lobby government on how to spend our money.

  • Does the wisdom of the crowd reflect this sentiment?
  • Would it be even remotely possible to try to implement this kind of approach?

Update: Dave Pollard has posted another article on how to use the wisdom of crowds in business planning and decision-making. His flow chart shows how the solutions team needs facilitation skills much more so than subject matter expertise or managerial skills. hmmm?

Next NB

by

I received an email the other day, inviting me to participate in “A Covenant With Our Children – Education in New Brunswick”. This is described as a public forum to discuss what we teach and how we can better nurture a culture of learning with both parents, students, teachers and communities in New Brunswick. It will be held on September 14, 2004 at 7 p.m.
Tweedie Hall, Mount Allison University.

In reading through the Next NB website, I remarked on a few things. First, the article (PDF) that mentions Sackville is somewhat dated, and has inaccuracies, such as missing the fact that the Vogue Cinema is actually a private business that supports the Sackville Film Society, not vice versa. Second, the discussion forum is not easy to use, does not have an RSS feed, trackbacks or permalinks; so it doesn’t integrate well with other blogs – and that is my primary concern. There are already a number of conversations about education in NB happening on the internet, let me list a few blogs:

UNB, the sponsor of the Next NB initiative states that, “It is time for New Brunswickers to talk to each other.” Guess what – we’re already talking to each other, and maybe you’re not listening.

I have not had comments or input from Next NB on any of my posts about education (one-room schools, laptops in schools, goals), nor do they link to any other conversations in the province.

This focus on the province alone is another problem that I see with the initiative. There are interesting conversations on PEI and in Nova Scotia. Living in Sackville, I am only 8 km from the NS border, but I am only allowed to think of myself as New Brunswicker – I think not.

Anyway, I know this sounds like a bit of a rant, but please correct me if I am wrong. Has any blogger received input from NextNB? What do you think of their approach? I intend to invite them into the many conversations that are ongoing in the region and the blogosphere. Maybe they just haven’t read The Cluetrain.

One more thing – why do they have to have meetings in early September when many parents of school age children are signing kids up for extra curricular activities? Bad timing.

Update: I submitted a comment to the NextNB discussion forum on education. Not sure if the HTML will work, but tried it anyway. On submitting my comment, I received this message:

Confirmation / Confirmation

Thank you for choosing SNB Online. / Merci d’avoir choisi SNB en ligne.
Below is a summary of your order to keep for your records. / Vous trouverez ci-dessous le sommaire de votre commande. Conservez-le dans vos dossiers.
Order # / Numéro de la commande: 355160
Date of Order / Date de la commande: 2004-09-13
Item # / Article no: UNB8003
Name / Nom: Post a Comment re. Next NB / Afficher un commentaire sur Avenir N-B

Thank you for taking the time to voice your opinion. / Nous vous remercions d’avoir pris le temps de nous faire part de votre opinion.

Click here to return to the Next NB Discussion Forum. / Cliquer ici pour retourner au groupe de discussion de Avenir N-B.


I didn’t know that submitting a comment constituted an order for services from SNB; and now my comment waits patiently in the government-funded line up. Now this is a great way to get the conversation flowing ;-)