Gillian Sudlow
Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century ...

In Part I of this post, [Dr. Thomas Carey] offered reflections on the discussion paper Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce prepared for Fall 2024 consultations led by the Government of Canada’s Minister of Workplace Development. Those reflections were based on our experiences in the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, fostering collaborations with workplace and higher education partners to advance employee-led innovation in Canada.

This follow-up post complements those previous reflections with insights specific to another emerging focal point for our current collaborations within Canada and beyond: Developing a distinctive role for Canada in Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0.

Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce (Part II—Industry 5.0)
Gillian Sudlow
Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century ...

In this three-part post, [Dr. Thomas Carey offers his] reflections on the discussion paper Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce prepared for Fall 2024 consultations led by the Government of Canada’s Minister of Workplace Development. These reflections are based on experiences by our team within the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, around our mission to foster collaborations with workplace and higher education partners to advance employee-led innovation in Canadian workplaces.

Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce (Part I)
Gillian Sudlow
Helping Students Develop the Communication ...

In this post, Rob Danisch, Communication Studies Professor at the University of Waterloo, reflects on the importance of focusing on teaching creative and critical thinking skills to help students become innovation catalysts …

In my case, I’m a Professor of Communication Studies. This means that my classes focus on the kinds of communication practices that can foster or catalyze innovation. It’s not music we are learning to play, at least not necessarily; we are learning an embodied knowledge about our everyday habits of interaction. And I’ve long wanted to teach the embodied communication practices most helpful for creating a culture of learning and catalyzing innovation.

Helping Students Develop the Communication Skills They Need to Be Innovation Catalysts
Gillian Sudlow
Resources for Building a Sustainable ...

Our WINCan team was delighted to be invited to present our current work at the October conference of the EU’s Workplace Innovation Network on The Future of Work. The focus of the presentation was our recent progress on establishing a sustainable Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts in the Windsor-Essex region, including the larger plan to integrate workplace innovation as a key enabling element in the region’s Innovation Ecosystem.

Resources for Building a Sustainable Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts
Gillian Sudlow
Case Stories of Workplace Innovation for ...

In Part I of this post, we provided an overview of a WINCan project with our summer research intern – Kyla, an undergrad in the Integrated Sciences program at McMaster University. The aim was to assess the feasibility of creating  case stories to illustrate workplace innovation activities that would be of specific interest to Science students. The previous post discusses source material for illustrative case stories for two of the innovation activities – Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation – in our adaptable learning resources for Understanding and Applying Workplace Innovation.  

We follow up in this post with illustrative case story sources for Design Thinking and Intrapreneurship. We also describe a potential practice case story with which students could engage as a test of their understanding, based on a Design Thinking experiment to improve a biochemistry lab course at McMaster.

Case Stories of Workplace Innovation for Science Students – Part II

2024

The Emerging Professional Role of Workplace Innovation Catalyst

The Emerging Professional Role of Workplace Innovation Catalyst

Amongst the insights from the FSC research – with workplaces across Canada – was recognition of an emerging professional role for Workplace Innovation Catalysts at the program and organizational level, who could encourage, enable and support workplace innovation initiated and led by other employees (Carey, Frye et al 2023). In this post, we will highlight the activities and impacts of the WEtech Innovation Catalyst program and describe some of what we learned about the Workplace Innovation Catalyst role during our research collaboration.

Welcoming New Higher Ed Partners for 2024 and 2025

Welcoming New Higher Ed Partners for 2024 and 2025

This month, we were delighted to have educators from four new institutions collaborating with us on Developing Student Capability for Inclusive Innovation in the Workplace: …

Each of these new partners  – and their distinctive institutions – will add to the diversity of our higher ed team, in line with the innovation team precept that a more diverse team can create greater opportunities for breakthrough innovations. This is also a wonderfully interdisciplinary group, with backgrounds or current responsibilities in the areas of  Communications Arts, History, Women’s Studies, Science, Business, English Literature, Health Sciences, Education, Philosophy, Workplace Learning and Employability.

WINCan Workplace Partner Wins National Award in Developing Innovation Culture

WINCan Workplace Partner Wins National Award in Developing Innovation Culture

For our WINCan team, one of the highlights from last year’s project with the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre was the opportunity to interact with the two lead Innovation Catalysts at ENWIN Utilities in Windsor (ON):

  • Barry Leavitt, ENWIN’s Director of Operations and Innovation (the “Innovation” part of the title having been added to reflect the growing importance of inclusive workplace innovation at ENWIN), and

  • Rosana Kemsley, ENWIN’s Manager of Human Resource Services.