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The Obama administration was present in full force at the Summit.  Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and principal policy advisor to President Obama emphasized the importance of research leadership – the Carbon Capture Research Initiative, China-US collaborations and also Australia-US partnerships developing on the research front.  I wondered where Canada is in these discussions?  I think there is a great opportunity for BC to partner with California (at the very least and perhaps also Alaska, Washington, and Oregon) on climate research.  We now have the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) which is our 4 research universities working collaboratively on questions that come directly from the BC government and the Cabinet Committee on Climate Action.  But the opportunities to partner with a powerhouse like California are immense.  A similar climate research institute was proposed last year but was vetoed by the Governor (along with ~400+ other bills) due to budget problems.  But I suspect the UC System and the Cal State system will move ahead on this initiative using general federal funding.  We need to be in discussion with them.

The panel on Adapting to Climate Change was introduced by Mike Chrisman, California Secretary for Natural Resources (Secretaries in California are like our Ministers).  Mike supervises a huge portfolio and 10s of 1000s of employees.  He has been a real champion of the Pacific Coast Collaborative and especially of ocean health that led to the West Coast Governors’ Agreement on Ocean Health. http://westcoastoceans.gov/

Bryan Walsh, the environment columnist for TIME Magazine moderated this panel and started off with our own Premier Gordon Campbell.  The premier talked about the fact that climate change has been with us in very tangible ways in BC for some time – e.g. the beetle kill is about the size of the state of Iowa right now.  A good mental image for the mainly US audience.   He spoke about new economic opportunities, the clean energy fund and our provincial responses on a number of fronts.  He ended with a call to action for climate solutions.

Ann Veneman, the Exec Director of UNICEF and former US Dept of Agriculture Secretary was next up.  She focused on issues of food security and the idea that people should be migrating on “merit”, not as climate refugees.  She emphasized the impact on children and women relating to the availability of water, food and health care.   Other speakers included Yannick Glemarec, Exec Coordinator for the Global Environment Facility and Dir of Environment Finance for the UN Development Program, Larry Schweiger, President of the National Wildlife Federation, Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam’s Horn of Africa Regional Office.

In the next blog I want to focus on the comments of 3 speakers – from the World Bank, Stanford and the Alliance of Small Island States.

The experience of LA is still overwhelmingly one of cars, cars and more cars.  On a previous trip, with Jane Bird, CEO of Canada Line leading the way, we took transit to the airport – actually it didn’t quite make it to the airport – there was a transfer to a shuttle bus from the light rail line.  So we have done quite a few things right in Vancouver.

The point is that LA is an interesting location to choose (for the second year in a row) for bringing together Governors from around the world to take action on climate change.  One of the key points is the emphasis on the power of the “sub-nationals” to make change and drag along all their federal counterparts.

I attended  Summit 1 last year in my capacity as Commissioner of the Pacific Coast Collaborative Commission (www.pacificcoastcollaborative.org).  This was a one-year Commission to lead B.C.’s participation in the Pacific Coast Collaborative. The Collaborative is a forum to develop agreements amongst the Premier of British Columbia and the Governors of the States of Alaska, California, Oregon and Washington. The agreements provide a framework for cooperative action through the sharing of information on best practices with the goal of positioning the region as the heart of innovation and sustainable living in the Pacific Century.  They focus on clean energy, regional transportation, research & innovation, emergency management and a sustainable regional economy.  Hopefully the Leaders will meet this Fall to sign-off on the agreements that were constructed over the past year.

This year, I was supported by the UBC Sauder Business School to extend my regional contacts and bring back the learning/experiences into Sauder and UBC.  The Summit is organized into plenaries and breakout sessions.  Both tended to have extensive panels – ensuring that everyone gets their time in the spotlight and their opportunity to talk about the challenges and actions being taken in the various regions.

Will report using a series of blogs around various sessions.  Perhaps the most powerful opening remarks were made by Dr. Jane Goodall (I missed Harrison Ford on the first day!)  She began by giving the call of the chimpanzee which was quite beautiful.  Mainly she commented on her recent experiences and the programs of her foundation.  In particular she has visited Greenland where the melting is profoundly changing the character and culture of the landscape and its people.  She is involved in a “Take Care” youth program and a  “Roots and Shoots” program – service learning – 8000 groups in 100 countries (www.rootsandshoots.org).  She also spoke passionately about the need for ecological audits being integrated as part of standard business procedure.

My favourite quote was one she attributed to an Inuit person:  something to the effect that there is no doubt that the ice is melting – how long will it take to melt the ice in the human heart?

The Blue Man group  (loved their blue masks) were an engaging introduction to the Tuesday morning session of the Vancouver Peace Summit on Educating the Heart:  Creativity and Well-Being and Heart-Mind Education.  I hadn’t seen them before so was in for a treat in terms of their multi-media presentation and then the way they took the large audience at the Orpheum got us totally engaged.  The topic was around how to promote creativity — and the Blue Man group shared their process with us.  They enter a series of creative mind-sets that are opposites — the scientist and the shaman, the group member and the trickster, and the hero and the innocent.  One of the most fun moments was when everyone (except me because I somehow didn’t get one) had to put on their red clown nose and be “innocent” and playful.  It is all about how to focus your attention.  Another quote I like was:  Play with the rules instead of playing by the rules.

The session on Creativity and Well-being included an impressive cast of speakers — people like Sir Ken Robinson, Eckhart Tolle and so on.  I noted down points like…

…the power of the imagination…creativity is putting the imagination to work or applied imagination…relationship between economic development and creativity… its all about problem formulation… creativity needs to be sown into every part of the education process…

Similarly, the session on Heart-Mind Education had a stellar line-up — Stephen Covey, Clyde Herzman, Adele Diamond, Mairead Maguire.

There were some challenges for me in getting the most out of these sessions.  There seems to be a human propensity for trying to do too much in a defined amount of time.  180 minutes to fit in Blue Man, 7 speakers in the first session and  7 speakers in the second session.  And hear from the Dalai Lama — which was also an issue for me — I couldn’t hear him very well.  I really wished they had focussed on one panel and therefore had more time.  I also had issues with the space — we really don’t have an inspirational space in Vancouver for these types of numbers.  The Wosk Centre for Dialogue works so well for a smaller group — but going big presents challenges for us.

What I most enjoyed was the fact that we were talking about educating the heart and its importance in all part of our lives.  And the fact that the Dalai Lama left us to go and talk to 16,000 teenagers — I think that might have been his most important gig!

I missed the Women and Peace-building session in the afternoon.  It was probably amazing.  Partly because they allowed 30 minutes for just the Dalai Lama and Maria Shriver in conversation.

What a week — so great that Vancouver hosted the Peace Summit.  Hats off to Charles Holmes and all the folks at the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education.

For more SI2 info go to http://www.si2.ca/.

The afternoon brought a connection between social innovation and ecology — Frances Westley from the University of Waterloo talked about social and ecological resilience –and evoked the work of Buzz Holling, the famous UBC ecologist (even tho’ he left us awhile ago for southern climes).

Frances is the JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation — she is heading up a Canada-wide initiative in social innovation, SiG (Social Innovation Generation), a cross-sectoral partnership to build capacity for social innovation in Canada funded by the J.W McConnell Family Foundation, University of Waterloo and the Ontario government.  She is a scholar in the area of social innovation — her most recent book  Getting to Maybe (Random House, 2006) focuses the dynamics of social innovation, and institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems.

Her presentation gave us a theoretical framework for understanding the engagement of vulnerable populations, building linked socio-ecological resilience and building capacity for social innovation.  Relevant for the “Resilient Cities” conferences coming up October 20 (www.gaininggroundsummit.com).

On Saturday morning we finished up with an Open Space session with groups tackling topics such as:

1.  How can we have broader investment in social innovation across Canada?

2.  The idea of a Canadian Drug Policy Consortium.

3.  How do we engage the broader community in social innovation?

4.  What should the research agenda be around social innovation?

5.   How do we tell the community story around the 2010 Olympics?

6.  How do we accelerate knowledge mobility around social innovation — and take action?

and others that I seem not to have noted!

In group 6 we actually ended up talking a lot about the idea of “social patents” — we even bought (for $14) the domain name www.socialpatents.com.  And we started a blog at:  https://socialpatents.wordpress.com/.  Desperate to take action and find some new ways to mobilize knowledge — to get it out of our institutions into the community.

Thanks again to Tom and Graham.  As usual, workshops like this provide good time for reflection and learning.  Can’t have enough of that.

Amazing events of late — just back from LA from the Governors’ Global Climate Summit and haven’t yet reported out on the Social Innovation and Social Institutions workshop of last weekend or the Educating the Heart Session with the Dalai Lama.

Here goes with a report on the workshop sponsored by the SFU Segal Business School on Exploring the Interplay of Social Innovation and Social Institutions. It was very well organized and directed by Professor Tom Lawrence of the Segal Business School and his energetic assistant/PhD student, Graham Dover.  Worth going to the session just to meet and get to know these two people.

It was extremely helpful just to get a definition of what we mean by social innovation and social institutions on the table.

Social Innovation: “new ideas…developed to fulfill unmet social needs, not restricted to any sector or field”.  “profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or believes of any social system” Frances Westley 2008.

Social Institutions: “enduring beliefs, rules and practices that shape a community”

Thursday evening was a session with Judith Marcuse — she is doing very interesting work with movement and dance in helping us communicate social and other issues.  Was a good ice-breaker and made it easy to engage the next day.  Friday started with a comprehensive presentation from Donald MacPherson — one of the City’s key people in Vancouver’s drug policy saga.  This presentation was a case study platform for thinking about social innovation and interaction with social institutions.

However, the high point of the day for me was a set of stories from four of the participants.  I wish I had taken notes so I could remember them better but I realize that the beauty of well-told stories (and these were) is that they take you away to the place and  the people  so you are left with a powerful sense of the emotion and meaning behind the story and not necessarily the specifics.  But — here is a taste…

John McKnight told a story about a community that took its health care into its own hands — with some simple acts.  What was really useful were the principles he outlined in terms of lessons learned from the experience –  for example, people overcame the institutional assumption that the hospital was the primary determine of health — NEVER make institutional assumptions!  What was really innovative was taking clients/consumers and converting them into producers and citizens — this is a topic worth exploring in our own context.  I could go on for a long time around lessons learned from John.  Will get his book:   Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets.

Nadia Kanegai grew up on one of the 82 Vanuata islands (in the South Pacific) and she took her grandmother’s words to heart:  the purpose of life is to help others.   Nadia, without funding or support has helped over 10,000 impoverished individuals.  The best part of the story was her role in the rehabilitation of Morris Ben Joseph, who was proclaimed “the worst criminal in Vanuatu”.  She knew she could help him change his ways to become an integral part of the community and that is exactly what she did.

Robert Kkalyesubula grew up as an orphan but studied to become a medical doctor. His dream was to provide medical care to the HIV-AIDS ravaged rural areas in Uganda.  His was a story of the will to make change and his organization now provides medical care to thousands.

Shauna Sylvester told a story about women in Afghanistan and the incredible courage required to make change in that part of the world.  These stories transported us to the core of social innovation — helping people and communities have a better life — health, food, shelter, family.

I was also fortunate to sit with Peter Block for lunch.  Peter is a partner in Designed Learning (www.designedlearning.com) in Cincinatti and the author of many books, most recently — Community:  The Structure of Belonging.  Always inspiring to hear about what people are doing in their communities all over the world.

This is getting too long — will have to do a Part 2!

Innovation and BC’s 2020 Economy.  A great topic and well-covered by the third session — a panel discussion entitled:  Tomorrow’s Technology Today:  Innovation and BC’s 2020 Economy.

The final panel of the summit was well moderated by a pro — Dr. David Turpin, President of the University of Victoria.   Dr. Turpin started off the session with a succinct summary of the report that he and some colleagues authored for the BCBC on Universities and the Knowledge Economy (http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/2020_200909_Turpin.pdf) which emphasizes the important role that graduate students can play in the research team –especially their role in knowledge transfer.

Which led into comments from the founder of MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems) Arvind Gupta — Dr. Math (those of you who read the Vancouver Sun will remember the great series on the importance of math — and Arvind’s approach to helping parents (and students) learn to love math).  But Arvind was on the panel to talk about what it takes to build a knowledge economy — basically knowledge workers.  And what we need to do to make BC attractive to the best possible students from around the globe.

MITACS operates a kind of “dating service” between research programs/students and industry.  It matches up graduate student expertise with identified problems from industry.  Money is matched and the outcome is often a job in the end for the student.  The Provincial government put in $10million into the internship program several years ago (Accelerate BC) and the program needs another infusion soon to keep these matches going.

Dr. Michael Gallagher, President and CEO of Westport Innovations Inc., talked about the vision of Westport to promote natural gas as an alternative fuel to oil.  Westport is one of BC’s poster companies for global success in terms of rate of growth and potential in the clean-tech landscape.  Michael emphasized three themes — the importance of commercialization of  research results, the challenges that face companies as they grow such as intellectual property issues and finding skilled employees,  and the importance of partnerships with other businesses (like Terasen (natural gas) and Cummins (engines).

The last panelist was Jayson Myers, President and CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.  Jayson talked about the importance of the commercialization process — how do we generate something of economic value?  He talked about new solutions, new products, re-engineering existing businesses and differentiating our various products and services.   He also called for leadership from both business and government to tackle these challenges.

So now a plug for Chapter Three:  Positioning for Prosperity:  Commercial and Industrial Opportunities for a New BC Economy. Tuesday October 20 7:30am-12:15pm.  That is one busy week in Vancouver — Outlook 2020, the Gaining Ground conference, and various other activities!

It’s all about people — how we educate them, value them and motivate them to learn, re-tool and learn again.  The second session at the Chapter Two Summit was entitled:  In Training for Prosperity:  Education and the Real Value of BC’s Human Capital. Tamara Vrooman, President and CEO of Vancity Credit Union was a superb moderator — smoothly linking the presentations and asking questions that drew out the essence of the issues and a focus on what can be done.  The panelists were Clyde Hertzman, Director of the Human Early Learning Program at UBC,  Judith Sayers, Strategic Advisor for the Hupacasath First Nation and Anibal Valente, Vice-President, PCL Constructors Westcoast Inc.

Clyde gave us a passionate and fluent summary of ‘15 by 15‘ — a comprehensive policy framework for Early Human Capital Investment in BC.  15 by 15 refers to the BC government Strategic Plan commitment to lowering the provincial rate of early vulnerability to 15% by 2015.  Clyde presented six recommendations from his report (http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/2020_200909_Hertzman.pdf) but perhaps most useful was when Jock Finlayson asked from the floor — what are the top 3 to-do’s to get results in improving our early childhood education and development — which is an important investment to help us tackle the demographic challenges that Baxter talked about in terms of a skilled workforce.

1.  Support the government’s plan to institute full-day kindergarten as part of the strategy to provide “seamless transition for families as the parental leave period ends in order to make quality services for children age 19 month to kindergarten affordable and available…”

2.  Expand maternity and parental leave — we need to “support parents to synchronize caring and earning” —  we need a good balance of time and resources for in-family care and resources for strengthening the community service component.

3.  Keep following the development trajectory — make sure we monitor regularly so developmental challenges are caught early when they can be corrected relatively easily.

Next, Judith clearly outlined the challenges facing First Nations people and encouraged the business community to look to First Nations as an incredible pool of talent and human capital at a time when we see the general population aging and retiring.

Dan Perrin’s paper on First Nations and Economic Prosperity in the Coming Decade (http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/2020_200909_Perrin.pdf) contains two important messages:

1.  Aboriginal education achievement has to be a high priority in terms of maintaining some of our gains from the last few years and ramping up to achieve more gains, more quickly.

2.  Economic Success for First Nations “…has highlighted the importance of improved governance, self-determination and leadership for the economic and social development of Aboriginal communities.”  Information/assistance needs to get into the hands of First Nations as they get into business — various institutions and programs can help.

I have always imagined a wonderful scenario where the grade 9 aboriginal boy is bored silly by school, wants to quit and needs to have a sense of finding his way in the world.  Miraculously we have developed a program that will allow him to leave “traditional” schooling and move into the workplace where he learns on the job, is motivated by seeing what he can produce and at the end of the day gets credit for this work/learning in a diploma form and becomes a hugely productive and happy member of our workforce.  There has got to be a way to do this.  We are losing too much human capital because our system isn’t flexible enough to allow different kinds of learning.

And finally, Anibal from PCL outlined some of the programs that PCL has in place to respond to work force and skills training.  For example, this company has been proactive by creating the “PCL College of Construction”.  They have field personnel advisors who promote construction careers in high schools.  And they have made good use of the Provincial Nominee Program which assisted in bringing 86 skilled worked from other countries into our  BC workforce.

When asked about what the Business Council way forward might be, there was the following advice:

1.  Don’t wait for government or the competition to do it for you!

2.  Develop a Strategic Human Capital Plan — that coordinates levels of government and industry and educational institutions.

3.  Think about human development across the life course — from our first learnings as baby to our life long learning through to our senior years.

Whew — this post is too long.  Will make the one on Innovation shorter!

What will BC’s next economy look like? Chapter Two of the BC Business Council’s Outlook 2020 series is entitled: Foundations for the Future:  Innovation, Human Capital and BC’s Next Economy. Yesterday morning we were in the Pan Pacific “Crystal” Ballroom (you know the one with all the ceiling of solid little hanging crystal pendants — talk about a design problem — how to design a space for several hundreds of people that has good ventilation, views and a sense of place and energy about it — but that is another topic).

The “we” in this case is notable — need to look into the average age of participants but it seemed older than it should be for the topic of the future economy.  Maybe we need to have a Summit where we each invite a 20-something or a 30-something.

Anyway David Baxter — our favourite demographer — led off the morning.  In nutshell — baby boomers are entering their senior years and the pine beetle eating habits have changed the structure of our economy.  How are we going to pay our bills given our top-heavy age profile?  Interestingly enough while women still outlive men, that is gradually changing and eventually we’ll be housing more elderly couples.

A moment of levity came with a slide of a young boy holding a knife in an electric socket — this was in response to the question of “why” women live longer than men.  Baxter called it the “goofball” gene.

So how will we pay our bills?  Migration, work longer, work smarter and increase our productivity, increase employment in general and enlarge the availability of work.

Comes down to an import-export dilemma — we export fuel, natural gas, forest products, mineral products and services internationally.  All good.  But we import more than we export now — partly because we don’t grow our own food (also requires a longer discussion — not sure I buy all David’s arguments about why local food won’t work as part of the equation) so we need to import food products and of course manufactured goods are a large % of what we import.  As Baxter writes:  “…what we do, primarily, is to import manufactured products that we pay for by exporting natural resources (raw and processed).”

Interesting about our trading partners — US is number 1 ( 52% of our exports),  Japan number 2 (15%) — and South Korea (6%) (not China) is number 3.  So we need to pay attention to that.

All-in-all a good set-up for the panel on human capital and on innovation.  Blogs Part 2 and 3 coming up.

You can find David Baxter’s full report at: http://www.bcbc.com/Documents/2020_200909_Baxter.pdf

What I was left wondering is where does the new, green economy fit into this demographic/economic picture?  In the next little while we’ll be talking a lot about the green economy — the Province and the City are both setting out green economy agendas.  The Gaining Ground conference (www.gaininggroundsummit.com) has the green economy as an important theme.  If we think about it in import and export terms — what will the clean tech sector, for example, contribute?  And what policies need to be in place for this sector to flourish?

In my quest to learn as much as possible about the business school culture I have added the Harvard Business Review to my regular reading list.  I already tweeted that the September 09 issue is about Sustainability/Innovation and how green will save us.  There are four centre pieces under this umbrella — “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation”, “Six Sources of Limitless Energy”, “Using Gifts and Trees to Make Recyclers of Indian Consumers” and “Creating Value in an Economic Crisis” (Bill Clinton) but the key one for me is the innovation piece.

It is authored by Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami (1 academic and 2 business people) and their key message is that sustainability will yield “both top-line and bottom-line returns” for business.  The context is that often when companies have waved the sustainability flag in the past, it has been under the corporate social responsibility umbrella.  The discussion around board room tables often focused on the expectations that sustainability would adversely affect their bottom line, certainly deliver no financial benefits and perhaps even make them less competitive.But now the evidence is building that companies who embrace organizational and technological innovation that move them to be players in the zero-carbon economy and leaders in conservation, will be at the head of the pack as the economy cycles back.  The authors cite 5 stages that companies go through as they explore ways to make their companies sustainability flagships:

1. Viewing compliance as an opportunity;
2. Making value chain sustainable;
3. Designing sustainable products and services;
4. Developing new business models; and,
5. Creating next-practice platforms.

What is really interesting to me is the competencies that they cite as being necessary in companies that are going to be successful in moving through these stages.  These are clues as to how the business curriculum needs to adjust — competencies in carbon management and life-cycle assessment, ability to re-design systems to use less energy and water, capacity to understand what consumers want and to be creative in finding ways to meet the demands and the knowledge of how renewable and nonrenewable resources affect business ecosystems and industries.

So — if these people have it right — the drive for sustainability has the potential to motivate companies to be big innovators and to make the triple bottom line work — positive movement in the environmental, social and economic columns of the spreadsheet.

And — it also means that business schools have a responsibility to integrate new competencies or at least refine competencies to ensure their graduates have the skills to be sustainability innovators.  And the learning models to support building those competencies.

So — I am not ready yet to outline my blog approach — maybe there shouldn’t be one.

In the meantime, I am loving the fact that I get emails from Economist.com with the latest in a variety of topics including technology, green, business education and so on.  It is hard not to love their writing skill.  This one caught my eye:

The electrification of motoring:  The electric-fuel-trade acid test (Sept 3.09).

So I read on to find them talking about one of my favourite terms — invented at the Harvard Business School in 1995 by two researchers — the term is: disruptive technology — an innovation that fulfills the requirements of some, but not most, consumers better than the original technology.  They use the example of how charge-coupled devices or CCDs were the technical “disruption” needed to change us from careful photographers with only 24 or 36 shots in a roll  of film to free-wheeling snappers taking 1000+ pictures on a holiday (a weekend holiday) — and then sending them to all our friends.

The Economist writer used this story as a preamble/warning to the car companies that they had better be on the alert as disruptive technologies in batteries have been building over the past little while.

To quote:  “Bold claims are being made.  Carlos Ghosen, who leads the Renault-Nissan alliance, thinks 10% of new cars both in 2020 will be pure-battery vehicles…If that trend continues, liquid fuels might become as obsolete as photographic film.”

So if CCDs were the trigger for digital cameras, then the equivalent for electric cars is the lithium-ion battery or Li-ion.

The story goes on in quite a bit of detail —  rippling through options such as specialized city cars (accept minimal range), adding a gas-driven generator known as a “range extender” or do the all-battery thing but introduce battery-exchange stations.

This last idea has a proponent in a California firm called Better Place — they are looking to retro-fit current gas stations and turn them into car-charging and battery-swapping stations.

An interesting point from a consumer perspective is that “separating ownership of the battery from ownership of the car changes the economics of electric vehicles.  If you rent the battery rather than buying it, that becomes a running cost (like petrol) and the sticker price of the car drops accordingly.  This may not matter to the sophisticated economist, who would amortise the battery cost over the life of the vehicle.  Many people, though, are swayed by the number they write on the cheque that they give to the dealer.”

The article goes on to extend these ideas — giving me hope that when I am too aged to ride my Vespa, there will be a well-designed, electric car available — at least for rent!