Innovating Innovation: It’s time for the Canadian Government to show real leadership in innovation

For some crazy reason The Globe and Mail rejected this proposed Comment piece, which I wrote this morning after reading about how the Feds are going to prioritize innovation in this week's Throne Speech and Budget. Anyway...I will crack that nut yet! In the meanwhile, for your reading pleasure....

Innovating Innovation: It’s time for the Canadian Government to show real leadership in innovation

The federal government has signaled its intent to invest in innovation. This is a welcome relief to those of us who favour a long-term investment in Canada's creative capacities, and who believe our nation can be a world-leader in existing and emerging sectors.

And yet there is a noticeably absent topic from our shared conversation about innovation. For all the op-ed pieces, throne speeches, budgets and policies that touch on technological and medical innovation, there is barely a word about social innovation.

What is social innovation? Social innovation is about conceiving and implementing new ideas that meet social needs of all kinds. Our country - like many others - faces a raft of challenges, such as homelessness, social cohesion, and decaying urban infrastructure. Social innovation can be employed to test, refine and spread solutions to these challenges.

Social innovation is not new to Canada. Canadian Healthcare is probably our most well known social innovation. More recently, Canada became the first country in the world to create a Registered Disability Savings Plan. The RDSP gives parents of children with disabilities a financial tool that helps them to save money, tax-free, for the future use of their children. The RDSP is the perfect Canadian story, emerging from the needs of citizens, spearheaded by an NGO, and ultimately entrenched in law by our government.

But we haven't been systematic about social innovation. While social innovation can and does "just happen", it can also be fostered, replicated and scaled. In the US, the Obama Administration has spearheaded the creation of a $50 million social innovation fund. In the UK, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) has spent the past several years studying and advancing social innovation. These governments recognize their role in creating an enabling environment for social innovation to thrive.

It's time for Canada to step up. Here are three things the Canadian government can do to facilitate social innovation:

More and Better Money

Canadian governments are the largest funders of our nonprofit sector, which is the largest in the world. Five percent of funding allocated to nonprofits should be reserved for social innovation, encouraging these groups to experiment and evaluate new ideas for meeting the needs of Canadian communities. The federal government should also encourage financial institutions, venture philanthropists and ordinary citizens to invest in social innovation by creating tax incentives and financing instruments that recognize a blend of financial and social returns.

National Framework and Local Action

Social innovation works best when it's open and participatory at the local level. Ironically, our national government is well positioned to empower local action. The federal government should work with private and nonprofit sector intermediaries to create a network of social innovation "laboratories". A national framework allows us to systematically study, evaluate and disseminate learnings; a decentralized approach allows us to engage citizens and address challenges directly in our communities.

Intra-Innovation

Any government's ability to empower innovation depends to some degree on its own innovation capacity. While governments are rarely known for their innovativeness, a simple first step is to create intra-organizational departments that allow Ministries to connect with each other. The MindLab in Denmark is a perfect example of this idea in practice. The issues we face are not limited to silos that neatly align with Ministerial boundaries; it is only through some form of inter-departmental integration that we can tackle our challenges in a systemic and sustainable way.

Our government has invested and will continue to invest in technological and medical innovation. But in this year's budget, most especially in these times of uncertainty, it is time for our federal government to innovate the way we innovate. It's time to invest in social innovation.