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

StudentVoice

Looking through the Mirror: Understanding Workplace Innovation as a student Innovation Adaptation Exercise

Looking through the Mirror: Understanding Workplace Innovation as a student Innovation Adaptation Exercise

In March 2024, WINCan’s Dr. Thomas Carey had three  guest interactions (virtually) at the University of King’s College to work with students enrolled in a non-credit career development program called Liberal Arts Passport to Innovation. The Passport program is geared towards helping students frame their assets for employers and understand how their liberal arts skills and interests could be a fit with the innovation space. However, it does not teach innovation skills as such. The six student authors listed above were enthusiastic about adding two additional sessions to this co-curicular experience so that they could gain more familiarity with systematic approaches to innovation. A chapter from the WINCan Open Educational Resources (in the eCampus Ontario Open Library) on "Innovation Adaptation” was selected for this purpose and the class then decided to take this WINCan OER resources itself as the Innovation to be considered for adaptation in a pilot project.

Intrapreneurship as Workplace Innovation in Accountancy

Intrapreneurship as Workplace Innovation in Accountancy

This post presents our final proof-of-concept test of our prototype professional development Ladder of Opportunities in Workplace Innovation in the work domain of Accountancy. These tests were intended to identify how well the framework fits with what we know about workplace innovation in a specific workplace domain and to identify some of the context-specific issues to be addressed for the framework to be used productively. Previous posts looked at Job Crafting, Innovation Adaptation (including specific examples from the Audit area) and Design Innovation (with a focus on Design Thinking in Accountancy).

Workplace Innovation in Accountancy: Innovation Adaptation in Auditing

Workplace Innovation in Accountancy: Innovation Adaptation in Auditing

In previous posts, we outlined our prototype workplace innovation Ladder of Professional Development Opportunities and provided illustrations from the work domain of Accountancy for the first two opportunities (Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation), along with a demonstration of how innovative developments in Accountancy practice have opened up new opportunities for employee-led Workplace Innovation by accountants.

In this post we follow up with examples from the specific Accountancy subfield of Auditing, to illustrate the dual goals of employee-led Workplace Innovation (improving organizational effectiveness and quality of work life), adaptation of innovative accounting practices from sources outside the firm, and the development of new innovator roles for accountants in Audit.

Case Stories of Job Crafting in Accountancy

Case Stories of Job Crafting in Accountancy

Since Accountancy is a highly-regulated profession many people – including some accountants and higher education students in accountancy – have the impression that Job Crafting is a limited option within the profession. Our crafting examples here, from Jennifer and Candice, demonstrate some of the many ways that Job Crafting is commonly utilized by accountants… and how it will be needed even more as some of the changes in the profession outlined in our previous post come to fruition.

Workplace Innovation in Accountancy: Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation

Workplace Innovation in Accountancy: Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation

In this post we describe specific examples for workplace innovation in the Accountancy work domain for the first two elements of our prototype framework: Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation. A future post will add examples for Design Innovation and Intrepreneurship.

Why Accountancy as a Test Case for the Workplace Innovation Ladder of Opportunities?

Why Accountancy as a Test Case for the Workplace Innovation Ladder of Opportunities?

In a previous post, we outlined our prototype framework for a Ladder of Opportunities for professional development in for individual capability to engage with innovation in the workplace. We have been piloting, evaluating and refining this framework in two ways:

  • Proof-of-concept test cases in specific work domains, to identify how well the framework fits with what we know about workplace innovation in that domain and to identify the context-specific issues to be addressed for its productive use in domain-specific professional development for workplace innovation.

  • Ongoing experiments to apply the framework in higher education learning experiences, to develop capability in workplace innovation across a range of potential work domains

In this post, we describe our use of the Accountancy work domain as an initial proof-of-concept test case for the first of these evaluations.

Reflecting on Workplace Innovation for BioEngineering Technology and Services

Reflecting on Workplace Innovation for BioEngineering Technology and Services

In this post, Kevin Joslin, undergraduate BioEngineering student and Research Assistant with medical devices at the University of California San Diego, shares a student’s perspective on workplace innovation in the context of bio-engineering and technology services.

When I think of innovation, I always think of the product as new technologies and ideas, instead of the process of innovation itself. From my brief dive into a seeming Renaissance of new innovation and product development methods, I have seen the importance of further developing the way we approach inventiveness and technological progress.

How Can a Narrative Perspective Add Value to Innovation as a Social Process?

How Can a Narrative Perspective Add Value to Innovation as a Social Process?

How can an understanding of Narrative add value to workplace innovation as a social process?

That’s the key question driving our development of a new learning resource on Narrative Perspectives for Workplace Innovation. Our team at Kwantlen Polytechnic University – English professor Jennifer Williams and myself as a recent B.A. graduate – are part of a Learning and Teaching Innovation initiative within the Faculty of Arts. Our aim is to equip graduates with an interdisciplinary perspective on innovation as a social process, so they can contribute distinctive value to innovation projects in the workplace (and in their other roles as community members and global citizens).

Innovation and Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Innovation and Indigenous Ways of Knowing

In this post we highlight sample resources we discovered that showed promise in helping us address these goals. These came from multiple research areas, which we characterized under the following headings:

  • Indigenous Ways of Knowing and “Indigenous-Minded Innovation” as a Social Process

  • Research evidence on Indigenous Entrepreneurship

  • Research evidence on innovation within specific indigenous communities

  • Exemplary practices for incorporating Indigenous Ways of Knowing into higher ed programs