Innovative research project examines role of ICT in creating, maintaining regional talent

CSPC 2015

A five-year research project examining opportunities created by information and communications technologies (ICT) is finding that there is resilience in urban centres with strong concentration of digital technologies, even when anchor firms fail. Preliminary evidence of the Creating Digital Opportunity (CDO) project, which launched late last year, was presented last week at the Canadian Science Policy Network with case studies of Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Waterloo.

"Knowledge is sticky. The Ottawa and Waterloo studies show that scientists stay close to home and research is embedded in the region. There's regional resilience," said Dr David Wolfe, CDO project leader and co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Univ of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. "Long-term investments in research yield results but many years down the line."

The Waterloo case study is examining the decline of Blackberry and its impact on the Kitchener-Waterloo region. Preliminary results suggest that the once dominant telecommunications giant was successful in attracting knowledge talent to the region, many of those workers remained in the region after the company's decline.

By using LinkedIn data to examine a small sample of ex-Blackberry employees, CDO team leader Dr Tara Vinodrai showed that "most of the talent stayed in the region or (nearby) Toronto"

"Is the region going to collapse under the weight of the demise? Probably not," said Vinodrai, an associate professor at the Univ of Waterloo's School of the Environment.

Ottawa is another region that suffered the loss of a major high-tech anchor — Nortel Networks Corp. CDO team leader Dr Tijs Creutzberg says the massive concentration of ex-Nortel talent has remained in the region, although a new industry structure has emerged.

"In six years Nortel went from 95,000 employees to gone. Against a backdrop of transformative, disruptive change Ottawa has bounced back several times," said Creutzberg, a director of program and business development at the Council of Canadian Academies. "(Nortel) seeded capabilities for a next-generation networking shift. Ottawa still benefits from 59-year-old government investments in radio and microwave research."

The CDO project is examining Montreal and its strengths in ICT hardware as well as university-industry linkages. Team leader Dr Catherine Beaudry said the manufacturing sector in Montreal has experienced significant decline but industry-academic linkages and collaboration have persisted.

"McGill (Univ) and Bell (Canada) are still central and École Polytechnique is also strong," said Beaudry, a professor in École Polytechnique de Montréal's department of mathematical and industrial engineering. "Is the government achieving its goal of university-industry partnerships? We ran into problems getting good data. It's a major problem, flying blind. Quebec removed names from the data."

The CDO project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. It will continue to examine the role and future prospects of ICT in creating and maintaining Canadian global production networks and global innovation networks.

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