Recently our friends at the Ron Joyce Centre for Business Studies at Mount Allison launched a new speakers series aimed at bringing business thought leaders to the campus. And they really hit one out of the park with their inaugural session featuring CBC news senior business correspondent and co-host of the Lang and O’Leary Exchange Amanda Lang. Most of you will have seen enough of Amanda over the years to know the calibre of her work and the passion and knowledge she brings to it. And she certainly did not disappoint on this occasion. Lang is working on a new book, due to be published later this year, which will focus on the importance for Canada to up its game in innovation and productivity. Nothing new in that you might say, but I think there is much to take seriously in some of the points she is raising about what has to change in Canada if we are finally going to crack this one.
For Amanda, while there were a range of issues she brought up in her talk, she really emphasized two things: fundamentally overhauling much of our education system; and being more confident about embracing failure. I find it hard not to agree with these assertions. Canada is not alone in having an education system that was designed in and for another time. At an innovation conference last fall in Tampere, Finland, this was a topic of much interest with speaker after speaker ringing the alarm bells over the outdated nature of education systems, and how ill-equipped so many of our young people are for the challenges that follow school, whether in post-secondary education or in the workplace. I think one of the key messages there, and in Lang’s talk, was the need for our education systems to be more open to inquisitiveness, to experiential learning, to encouraging our children not to be afraid to ask why, or why not. And for parents to reinforce that cultural shift at home. Embrace and encourage curiosity. As Lang said, the purest scientists are perhaps our youngest citizens, the pre-schoolers for whom every day is an adventure in exploration and asking why. And in relation to this, she suggested we have to put our scientists, our researchers, and our entrepreneurs up on the same pedestal we so naturally put our favourite hockey star or musician. Embrace and celebrate science and the simple act of inquisition.
And secondly, we have to get past our tendency to frown upon or avoid the unpleasantness of failure. This is something that Lang suggests may in part be a Canadian thing, just as we tend not to be very bold about celebrating success. One of the qualities typical of the workshop and seminar speakers Tech South East has brought in is that most of them can speak from the perspective of having both succeeded and failed in tech start-up ventures. And of course we know from statistics (and they never lie) that the majority of tech start-ups, in the order of 8 out of 10, don’t last the first year. The reality is probably not quite that scary, especially with the growing number of tech-oriented incubators and related mentoring and advisory services popping up across North America. But the point Lang makes is that instead of shunning failure, we should embrace it (a badge of honour if you will), respect it, and learn from it.
Amanda made some very sound points in her talk and I for one look forward to her book in the fall. At the very least, its focus is one that Canada really needs to address and start making more significant progress on. In the meantime, congrats to the team at Mount Allison and the Ron Joyce centre. This was a terrific beginning to a really good initiative.
Doug Robertson
President & C.E.O. of Tech South East Inc.
