We are engaged in capability development with tertiary education partners across Canada and regional workplace partners in Canada’s “Automobility Hub”. Industry 5.0 concepts are not well-known amongst these companies, except for Canadian companies with European worksites – e.g., Magna International – and a Canadian SMEs integrated into Canadian value chains for European manufacturers.
We report here our in-progress planning to engage those companies through links to Industry 5.0 content in our learning resources on Workplace Innovation. This will come initially through our tertiary education students on-site with them in work-integrated learning placements.
Congratulations to our WINCan colleague Victoria Abboud, for her Medal of Excellence teaching award from the University of Windsor's Faculty of Engineering. Vicki is leading development of the EMPOWR program to support Engineering graduate students in honing their non-technical ("durable") skills to enhance their impact in Canadian workplaces.
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.
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.
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.
In this article, originally posted in Academica Forum, Thomas Carey and KPU Vice-President Salvador Ferreras discuss how educational institutions are and need to respond to the rapid acceleration of “Industry 4.0”. The rapid pace of change will require our educational institutions – from primary to post-secondary – to revisit how we can best foster innovation, agility and adaptability to a new industrial and economic reality.
In this article, originally posted to Inside Higher Ed, WINCan’s Co-Principal Catalyst Thomas Carey makes the case that adding depth to student learning by integrating outcomes from the liberal arts into all post-secondary programs is not enough to prepare graduates for the workplace. Instead, he argues that institutions need to also integrate Knowledge practices to ready graduates for workplace success.
I use design thinking, in fact IBM's version called IBM Design Thinking, in my work everyday on a very wide range of problem spaces and with a wide variety of organizations. I'm therefore often surprised by the limited view people have of the applicability of design thinking. Many people believe that it is only relevant to the user interface or the "look and feel" of an app or application. Nothing could be further from the truth. These people are essentially conflating and thereby confusing design and design thinking. I explained the difference between the two in my previous post.
In this article, originally posted to academica forum, WinCan’s Co-principal Catalyst and Academic Partners Lead, Tom Carey, identifies four ways in which all post-secondary students can develop the capability for workplace innovation.
WINCan workplace partner Karel Vrendenberg (IBM Canada) recently wrote an article with Sara Diamond (OCADU) entitled, "There's no innovation agenda without design thinking" which generated significant interest and discussion. One of the commenters wrote, in part, "...functional and aesthetic design is important but the technological innovation and the ability to implement the ideas are even more so. The kind of design the writers are speaking of acts as a discriminator if there are competing products but without the existence of a new product, does not come into play."
In this post, WINCan’s co-Principal Catalyst, Thomas Carey identifies a key challenge facing post-secondary institutions and their students “how can we better prepare graduates to engage with future learning and knowledge practices?” Through discussions with other higher ed professionals, a solution emerged: “let’s treat our teaching and learning environments as model workplaces, full of experiential learning opportunities for reflective practice on changing knowledge work, practices and roles.”
As a complement to an earlier post (Four Ways …), Tom Carey, Co-principal Catalyst and Academic Partners Lead, outlines ways in which post-secondary graduates can develop innovation capability by being enabled both for innovation and by innovation.
