In GE’s latest Global Innovation Barometer, 61 per cent of Canadian businesses say revenue generated by collaborative activities has been growing.
Partnerships across teams, companies and borders are driving innovation and solving some of the bigger challenges
Looking out over the open pits of the oil sands north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, you have a sense of the scale of the operations. By one measure, Canada's oil sands deposits cover an area equal to that of Belgium. At the vast operating pits the very air smells of petroleum. The environmental problems associated with the oil sands are well known, and larger than the resources of any one company to handle.
Enter COSIA, Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a joint research undertaking of most of the players at Fort McMurray. Launched in 2012, it seeks to collaborate on research into those environmental problems, including those of tailings, air, water and greenhouse gases. "It's an exciting opportunity and it's also unprecedented," says Judy Fairburn, an executive advisor at Cenovus, one of the participating firms, and COSIA chairwoman. "It's challenging mainly because it's never been done before."
COSIA is an example of the new face of innovation: collaboration. So far, its alliance partners have shared 560 distinct technologies that cost $900-million to develop. And while there are natural misgivings among competitors in sharing such costly research, the efficiencies and economies of sharing outweigh traditional views on protecting intellectual property. Such partnerships are increasingly taking place between companies and research universities, companies and government agencies and between firms both large and small.
Canadian companies acknowledge that collaboration is becoming essential to innovation. In GE's 2014 Global Innovation Barometer, 85 per cent of executives in Canada agreed that innovation is now a global game, and that combining talents, ideas, insights and resources across the world is the way to make it happen. Furthermore, 61 per cent of Canadian businesses report that revenue generated by collaborative activities has been growing.
That's a big jump over last year, when the GE survey showed only 49 per cent of Canadian executives were realizing profits from collaboration. Says Tom Corr, president and CEO of the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE is a government agency that helps commercialize innovation): "We're seeing it in mining, manufacturing, aerospace and medical devices."
And yet there remain lingering fears of collaboration because of perceived risks, especially of losing control over IP or of losing revenue. In the GE survey, 68 per cent of Canadian executives say that the benefits of collaborating outweigh the risks, compared with 77 per cent of executives worldwide.
Getting over that fear is important, says OCE's Corr. "We see [reticence] all the time. Big companies don't tend to want to deal with little companies, and the small ones have difficulty being noticed. It doesn't happen naturally. It takes a common purpose to get them to work together." He uses the example of aerospace companies that might want to research new materials, but can't afford to do so on their own. "Even though they may be bitter competitors, they feel there's a benefit. A rising tide will lift all boats."
Large firms too often become focused on internal development, the so-called "not-made-here syndrome." For their part, small firms fear "being stepped on by a large organization," says Corr. Yet they can still be protected by legal agreements. It's not difficult, even though some small firms are reluctant to do so because they're afraid they'll discourage a partner, especially big ones with influence. "But big companies are loathe to operate otherwise," he says.
Indeed, not moving forward in a business-like manner with proper safeguards could be more limiting. One solution for both sides is to engage a mutually trusted intermediary who can help bring them together and ensure both parties are comfortable with collaborating.
For big and small firms, the prospects are immense, including for the oil companies participating in COSIA. The alliance says that the companies are eager to turn carbon − a pollution liability of the oil sands − into an asset, something that could spawn a new industry. Indeed, a study by Prize Capital LLC found that the classic recipe for a new industry is the model used by COSIA: It taps a large pool of talent, focuses on innovation and can nurture that innovation because it will improve companies' bottom lines.
"We're confident that, through sharing and collaborative innovation efforts, we will make a real difference," says Cenovus's Fairburn.
− Story originally appeared at gereports.ca
For more innovation insights, visit www.gereports.ca
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's advertising department, in consultation with GE. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.