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

Workplace Innovation as an Example of Expanding “Ways of Knowing” in Polytechnic Education

Workplace Innovation as an Example of Expanding “Ways of Knowing” in Polytechnic Education

The value of Workplace Innovation in preparing graduates for the Future of Work has been explored from different angles in our WINCan work and in this blog. Here we consider the implications of developing “every graduate” innovation capability on prevailing ‘ways of knowing’ in higher education. Our focus will be on polytechnic education and institutions, and how in that context including workplace innovation capability as a graduate outcome prompts us to:

  • expand our conception of knowledge as driven solely by technology, and to

  • discover new ways of working beyond traditional vocational and professional domains.

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.

“Every Employee” Engagement with Workplace Innovation: A Professional Development Ladder

“Every Employee” Engagement with Workplace Innovation: A Professional Development Ladder

We describe in this post a way to bridge the perceived gap between the innovation capabilities and experiences across the workplace: a Ladder of Opportunities to progressively build skills, knowledge and mindsets for innovation, allowing employees to choose their own level of engagement a any given time. We also outline results from initial Proof-of-Concept tests and work underway with workplace partners.

Looking Outside Higher Ed for Insights on Sustaining Strategic Innovation

Looking Outside Higher Ed for Insights on Sustaining Strategic Innovation

The U.S. daily newsletter Inside Higher Ed recently highlighted our WINCan project to explore how we can effectively adapt insights on organizational innovation from the corporate sector to Higher Education. Our guest post in IHE’s Higher Ed Gamma column was entitled Looking Outside Academia for Insights on Sustaining Strategic Innovation.

Case-Swapping to Adapt Resources on Workplace Innovation Across Contexts

Case-Swapping to Adapt Resources on Workplace Innovation Across Contexts

In one of our previous WINCan projects, a collaboration between workplace and academic partners to share and adapt learning resources on Workplace Innovation, we developed a case-based instructional design model intended to foster resource sharing and adaptability. In a new project launching this week, we’ll be testing those ideas, by creating new online learning resources to incorporate Workplace Innovation concepts and activities into a course at an Ontario higher education institution…while in parallel working with another higher education institution (in Alberta) and an Ontario workplace partner on pilot studies to assess how those resources could be adapted for their specific contexts.

Prototyping Cycles and Minimum Viable Products in Higher Education

Prototyping Cycles and Minimum Viable Products in Higher Education

In Part I of this blog post, we explored how one Research Insight on Strategic Innovation from research in the corporate research – distinguishing Discovery, Incubation and Acceleration activities and the corresponding organizational competencies – plays out differently in the context of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In developing our two Strategic Innovation scenarios for higher education institutions, another major difference we noted was the challenge of rapid prototyping as an Incubation activity.

How do Competencies in Strategic Innovation Differ across Sectors?

How do Competencies in Strategic Innovation Differ across Sectors?

In our previous WiNCan posts on the Sustaining Strategic Innovation in Higher Education project, we described some of the insights from a series of research studies on strategic innovation in the corporate sector and our use of scenario prototypes to experiment with adaptation of those insights for strategic innovation in Higher Education teaching and learning.

What We’re Learning for the Adaptability of Insights on Strategic Innovation Across Sectors

What We’re Learning for the Adaptability of Insights on Strategic Innovation Across Sectors

Here are some highlights from what we learned in the process of creating and analyzing these scenarios as a proof-of-concept tests. Some of the research insights from the corporate sector that we had expected to be useful did provide value in the scenarios, at times in surprising ways. Other research insights did not align with the context of the scenario institutions, although we noted other contexts where they might contribute value. We’ll focus here on the issues in Talent Management for Strategic Innovation which emerged in the scenarios; important insights also arose in the broader area of Governance and Management of Strategic Innovation.

Looking Back at 2020 Milestones and Looking Forward to 2021 New Ventures

Looking Back at 2020 Milestones and Looking Forward to 2021 New Ventures

As we head into 2021, we thought it would be a good time to celebrate our WINCan accomplishments in 2020 and look forward to some of our new ventures. One of the new initiatives we had on our exploration list for 2020 a year ago has blossomed, some of our ongoing projects reached important milestones, and we also have new ventures now emerging.

Scenario Prototypes to Test the Adaptability of Insights on Innovation Across Sectors (part 1)

Scenario Prototypes to Test the Adaptability of Insights on Innovation Across Sectors (part 1)

As a sector, higher education is at the low end of innovation rankings. The challenges we face – demographic, technological, political, and pedagogical – will require sustained innovation at a strategic level. Most recently, Josh Kim recommended that higher education look outward for insights on strategic innovation: “Higher education will not figure out its future by only thinking about higher education. We need to look outside academia, and where possible, use these examples to think about our possible higher ed futures.”

To address these challenges by ‘disrupting ourselves’ in higher education, experts in teaching and learning have suggested that lessons learned in the corporate sector could be adapted to the context of higher education teaching and learning. Recent research with Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. has identified exemplars in strategic innovation amongst mature organizations who have institutionalized strategic innovation Beyond the Champion. As noted in our previous WINCan posts about this project, we are exploring whether – and how – we might adapt insights from this corporate sector research to improve and sustain strategic innovation in higher education teaching and learning.

The Business Case for Work-Integrated Learning in Workplace Innovation

The Business Case for Work-Integrated Learning in Workplace Innovation

We have reached an important milestone in our WINCan “Wildly Important Goal” for higher education programs – ensuring that Every Graduate Can Be an Innovation-Enabler in the workplace (and in their other roles as community members and global citizens). Ta-da: the first offering of our foundation course unit on Understanding Workplace Innovation: Concepts and Cases concludes this week, thanks to our wonderful partners at Monash Arts in Melbourne.

For those of you familiar with startup jargon, this was our Minimum Viable Product project test with real students (and followed our Proof-of-Concept studies in B.C. and prototyping work with workplace partners in Ontario). Our next few blog posts will highlight what we – and our students – have learned from this experience and where we’ll be taking this endeavour next.

An Innovation On-Ramp in an Arts Faculty with Interdisciplinary Learning

An Innovation On-Ramp in an Arts Faculty with Interdisciplinary Learning

A wonderful pilot group of keen students has been working with us this term to create an initial course unit providing both a conceptual overview and practical experience with Workplace Innovation. That initial unit, ATS2211 Understanding Workplace Innovation, is a prerequisite for the follow-up work-integrated learning course unit with a workplace innovation project team.

… In this post, we’ll describe two initial elements of the course unit design which demonstrate how project work in the course unit addresses the key goal of our workplace partners: Every Employee Can Engage with Innovation in the Workplace. Those initial tasks are in Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation. In our next post, we’ll describe additional elements of the learning design which provide experience as representative users in Design Thinking projects.

Mobilizing Research at the Intersection of Innovation and Human Resource Management

Mobilizing Research at the Intersection of Innovation and Human Resource Management

For many organizations, employee-led innovation has become a key element in responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for our life “beyond lockdown”, an initiative led by Workplace Innovation Europe is supporting workplaces who want to build on this momentum for employee-driven innovation, as a key organizational strategy for thriving post-COVID. In European research, Employee-Led Workplace Innovation has been shown to improve organizational performance and quality of work for employees, with a strong evidence base emerging on how to achieve these complementary goals …

Proposed new university in Ontario highlights Workplace Innovation in its Academic Strategy “Green Paper”

Proposed new university in Ontario highlights Workplace Innovation in its Academic Strategy “Green Paper”

The Ministry of Colleges and Universities in Ontario released last week its Policy Framework for a Major Capacity Expansion in the province’s college and university sectors. While we knew this was coming at some point, it is a pleasant surprise to see them get this out the door while expending so much effort on dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. (But the crisis is not ignored in the Policy Framework, which notes that in the short term “Given the current fiscal situation, proponents are encouraged to bring forward proposals that do not require provincial capital or operating funding in the near term” !)

Sustaining Strategic Innovation in Teaching and Learning: What Can Higher Education Learn from Corporate Innovation Leaders?

Sustaining Strategic Innovation in Teaching and Learning: What Can Higher Education Learn from Corporate Innovation Leaders?

We’ve previously outlined our new project to explore how research insights from corporate sector research could be adapted to guide strategic innovation in higher education. In this post, we’ll consider the research evidence from one stream of research from the corporate sector about sustaining strategic innovation through new management structures and talent development approaches. In subsequent posts, we’ll describe our progress with potential prototype studies to explore adapting some of these insights to sustain strategic innovation for teaching and learning in higher education.

In this post, we summarize three of the research insights on sustaining strategic innovation which caught our interest for the higher education teaching and learning context…and why.

Revisiting our definition of Workplace Innovation

Revisiting our definition of Workplace Innovation

We’ve been creating resources for our first course unit in Monash Uni’s Workplace Innovation option, to go live with a pilot cohort in August. That’s led to a new working definition for Workplace Innovation:

Workplace innovation is the social process of mobilizing new ideas to create better work.

Here’s our initial drill-down on the words and phrases, to help students explore what it means for them: