I recently read a great book called “How to Fly a Horse”, written by the inventor of the “Internet of Things”, Kevin Ashton. Opening with an anecdote about the Wright brothers trying to figure out how to essentially “fly a horse”, it debunks our common beliefs about creativity and innovation. When reviewing some of the world’s greatest innovative breakthroughs, the reality of what really happened differed immensely from the Hollywood moments that most of us think of – that instant the Wright brothers flew, Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, or when Thomas Edison had his “Aha!” eureka moment. The long grind What Kevin Ashton proved is exactly what my personal innovation experience has been: the reality is one that would never fit into a Hollywood movie, as there is never really one hero or one moment. The ugly, unglamorous reality is that innovation is a long grind, a string of failures, a hundred supporters and a million moments, with progress only being made when there are huge amounts of collaboration between many parties attempting to innovate in generally the same areas. Another book I read when I was starting OMX and interested in innovation was “Start up Nation,” which is about Israel’s fast economic rise led by significant technological innovation concentrating in a few, very specific areas. The two themes I pulled out of the book were the connection to the defence technology requirements in a country constantly on edge – which drove immense innovation, and also, almost most importantly – the culture of collaborating around similar strengths, such as cybersecurity. They figured out the benefits of working together in a small, tight environment, essentially leveraging superclusters. Innovation collaboration There is a lot more out there about the benefits of collaboration on innovation, and I think we are all coming to the agreement that it is the critical component. The Canadian Federal Government stepped up this month and announced a $950 million initiative designed to jumpstart innovation in high-growth sectors. “By pulling in large firms, innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and industry-relevant research institutions, business leaders will come together – with partners and in new ways – to build business-led innovation superclusters at scale,” was the announcement by the Federal Government. The plans must build on shared private sector commitments, requiring industry to match funding. Since these are indeed matching funds that the Federal Government is committing to, the industry will need to really step up and make bold commitments to what could be significant R&D spending in the near future. For instance, I believe one of the biggest hurdles will be the change in industry’s mentality around collaboration in their R&D efforts – where IP is shared, where it is not clearly owned by one party. OMX’s Intellectual Property lawyer, Andrew Currier from PCKIP, believes that superclusters would likely have complicated IP agreements to really think about. The second biggest question will be whether the superclusters will be able to stretch funding long enough to see through to commercialization and see real financial success. And then, of course, I think back to my IP lawyer’s comment and really hope these partners think through shared IP when it comes to commercialization. But these are all good problems to have. At the time of writing this, the following superclusters have begun to form: Mining Innovation for a New Era (MINE) Resource Development, Mobility Systems and Technologies for the 21st Century (MOST21) focused on the Aerospace sector and an Ocean technology supercluster, OceansAdvance Inc. out of Atlantic Canada. There is also a possibility for a large infrastructure-focused one. Building superclusters Former Strategic Initiatives Manager at Bexar County...