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

Research-To-Practice Insights on Digital Transformation in the Nordic Forestry Sector

Research-To-Practice Insights on Digital Transformation in the Nordic Forestry Sector

In a  previous post on Results from our research project on Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work, we mentioned the one workplace partner for whom our initial effort to provide a targeted research synthesis was not successful (“ForestCo” in B.C.). They requested a research synthesis with examples of workplace innovation specific to their industry sector. However, our research did not identify insights on inclusive workplace innovation specific to the Forestry context (for reasons explained in that previous post).

We later followed up with a research synthesis on a closely-related issue of interest to ForestCo – Digital Transformation in the Forestry Sector – which also included research references on “why digital transformation requires workplace innovation[i]” and on the potential impact of digital transformation on the demographics (i.e., “male-dominated”) of the Forestry workforce. This research synthesis, whose highlights are summarized

Inclusive Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work: Research Project Results

Inclusive Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work: Research Project Results

We are now in the final stages of writing up results from our most recent  applied research project with workplace partners – sponsored in part by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre. We focused on adapting European research insights and exemplary practices on employee-led Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work into Canadian contexts. Our goal was to determine the applicability of these strategies for scaling up workplace innovation across Canada and to explore supportive public policy to  accelerate these advances. 

This post summarizes the major results from the project, excerpted from the final Project Report.

Enhancing Workplace Innovation with Research Insights: the EngServ Story

Enhancing Workplace Innovation with Research Insights: the EngServ Story

Our previous post this month contained highlights from one of our workplace partners who successfully advanced employee-led workplace innovation in their organization by adapting  Research-to-Practice insights on Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work from Europe. In this companion post, our team members share highlights from a second workplace partner, EngServ, (a Calgary-based Engineering Services company). Stephen Cohos is a professional engineer and Innovation Project Coordinator. Bios for our WINCan team authors are available here.

Applying Research-to-Practice Insights on Workplace Innovation: ENWIN’s story

Applying Research-to-Practice Insights on Workplace Innovation: ENWIN’s story

We are in the concluding stages of our research project on Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work, undertaken with  in collaboration with numerous workplace partners across Canada with the support of the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre. You can find background info and interim results in the project blog posts, and we will be posting over the next few months on the Results, Implications and Future Directions. 

The project plan was to share with workplace partners curated Research-to-Practice insights on Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work, and to have them create scenarios about how their organization could apply those insights to enhance their employee-led workplace innovation. Two workplace partners went further and have implemented those scenarios; in this post we’ll be sharing highlights from one of those success stories.

Research-into-Practice Examples to Advance Employee Workplace Innovation

Research-into-Practice Examples to Advance Employee Workplace Innovation

In this post, we will highlight three key collaboration processes between our project team and our workplace partners which enabled their mobilization of research into practice. We will then describe the Research-to-Practice Focus points selected by each workplace in that process, to direct our selection of research insights and exemplary practice for advancing the impact of their employee workplace innovation. 

Factors that Influence Motivation for Workplace Innovation (Part II)

Factors that Influence Motivation for Workplace Innovation (Part II)

In this post, we will present similar reflections re research insights on the remaining three Motivation to Innovate factors identified:

  • Innovation Results as an (intrinsic) Incentive: Improving Employee Quality of Work Life 

  • Extrinsic Incentives: What is the role of financial or other incentives?

  • Reducing the Perceived Costs and Risks of Workplace Innovation

Leveraging a Diverse Academic Collaboration for Capability in Workplace Innovation

Leveraging a Diverse Academic Collaboration for Capability in Workplace Innovation

While teaching and learning for Entrepreneurship capability is an established activity in postsecondary education, teaching and learning for capability in employee-led Workplace Innovation is a more recent development. Initiatives to develop workplace innovation capability in postsecondary education reflect growing recognition that “innovation and entrepreneurship are not only distinct concepts, but they also play out in postsecondary institutional contexts in different ways” [Selznick 2019].

Factors that Influence Motivation for Workplace Innovation (Part I)

Factors that Influence Motivation for Workplace Innovation (Part I)

Recent research by Terry has helped to clarify for us the factors that influence employee motivation to engage with workplace innovation [Soleas 2020, 2021]. This research adapted a common framework used for assessing motivation in the workplace [Flake et al 2015], and included an initial study with 30 recognized Canadian innovators as interviewees. The resulting prototype survey instrument was then iteratively refined in prototype tests with another 500 Canadians who had been identified as leading innovators in their workplaces.

Collaborating on Workplace Innovation Capability in ‘The Future of the B.A.’

Collaborating on Workplace Innovation Capability in ‘The Future of the B.A.’

Our course units in Faculties of Arts demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing B.A. programs to develop student capability for workplace innovation, extending other generic capabilities for employability currently being developed in those programs [Causevic 2022]. In this post, we address two issues about such B.A. program enhancements, as raised with us by postsecondary academic staff in B.A. programs which do not have a specialist vocational or professional focus (e.g., those labelled in Australia as a “generalist B.A.” [Gannaway & Sheppard 2019] and in North America as “Liberal Arts” programs).

Workplace Innovation: From Goals to Game Plans

Workplace Innovation: From Goals to Game Plans

In this post, we’ll summarize the From Goals to Game Plan process to advance employee-led innovation in our partner organizations, which has emerged from the cases we have been working on with a set of initial representative workplaces. We’ll also illustrate our own use of such research insights and exemplary practices in developing this framework for two purposes:

  • as an organizing structure for our workshops to help partner workplaces to identify where and how they want to advance workplace innovation with their employees

  • and later as the organizing framework for two key outputs from the Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work Life project, a Research Adaptation Synthesis and its accompanying illustrative Case Stories from participating workplaces.

WINCan Team Wins Breakthrough Award for Teaching Excellence in Innovation

WINCan Team Wins Breakthrough Award for Teaching Excellence in Innovation

We are delighted to announce that the innovations in teaching and learning developed by our WINCan team and our academic partners in Australia and Canada have been recognized in the 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence award. The final stage of thisinternational competition was on September 16 th , hosted by Neapolis University in Cyprus as part of the 17 th annual European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

What We’re Learning about Understanding Workplace Innovation at Monash Arts

What We’re Learning about Understanding Workplace Innovation at Monash Arts

In our post in this weblog last month, we highlighted our inclusion amongst the finalists for the 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence award in Europe. One element of this final stage was the preparation of a book chapter to be included in the finalists’ Anthology of Case Studies to be published as part of the award process.

Developing Graduate Capability in Workplace Innovation is Recognized in Europe’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Awards

Developing Graduate Capability in Workplace Innovation is Recognized in Europe’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Awards

Great news: we found out this week that WINCan and two of our academic partners have been short-listed as finalists for the 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Award (based in Europe – this is the 8th annual award). In September, our team presents at the final competition round in Cyprus – virtually, from our home bases in Canada and Australia.

Adapting Workplace Innovation to Advance Quality of Work in Canada (Part 2)

Adapting Workplace Innovation to Advance Quality of Work in Canada (Part 2)

In this post we’ll describe the specific challenges being tackled by each of the partners who will be working with us to test adaptations of the insights in our Research Synthesis, to meet their needs and contexts (and, more generally, helping us to understand the issues and benefits for adapting European research into Canadian contexts). his both project involves both a synthesis of past research and a set of organizational innovation projects to apply, critique and extend that previous research. We’ll describe in this post the individual focal points for each of our four Field Test sites.

Adapting Workplace Innovation to Advance Quality of Work in Canada (Part I)

Adapting Workplace Innovation to Advance Quality of Work in Canada (Part I)

We’ll describe in this post our new partnership of experts in Workplace Innovation and four leading organizations who are advancing Workplace Practice and Policy (one pan-Canadian, three regional). With support from Canada’s Future Skills Centre, we will analyze and adapt the research base on Workplace Innovation for Quality of Work – mainly from Europe– to support more innovative, engaging and inclusive workplaces in Canada. We will be assisted throughout by Dr. Peter Totterdill, one of the world’s foremost experts in Workplace Innovation for Quality of Work and Founding Director of Workplace Innovation Europe.

Adaptable Learning Resources for Workplace Innovation: What Have We Learned? (part II)

Adaptable Learning Resources for Workplace Innovation: What Have We Learned? (part II)

In part I of this two-part series, we described the context and content of reusable course modules to introduce higher education students to Employee-Led Innovation in the Workplace, and how the modules were deployed in a course unit at a university School of Business.

In this follow-on post, we will also explore our initial methods for assessing the development of learner capability for workplace innovation, including use of a new workplace tool for assessing aspects of innovation mindsets.

Adaptable Learning Resources for Workplace Innovation: What Have We Learned? (part I)

Adaptable Learning Resources for Workplace Innovation: What Have We Learned? (part I)

One year ago, we began a WINCan project to explore how we could create resources, activities and experiences for adaptable teaching and learning resources which Higher Education institutions could adapt for teaching and learning for Workplace Innovation.

We were basing our project on an Instructional Design for adaptability developed in a previous Ontario-based project with six Ontario colleges and universities and six workplace partners from the corporate and public sectors. We also applied what we had learned in working with our collaborating institution in Melbourne (Australia) in co-developing their pioneering course unit on Understanding Workplace Innovation.

In this series of two posts, we will focus on what we’ve learned over the last year from adapting teaching and learning resources for Workplace Innovation in Higher Education. Our aim is to help Canadian institutions move toward the goal of “Every Graduate Can be an Innovation Enabler” with flexible resources and formats

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).

Design Innovation for Accountancy

Design Innovation for Accountancy

This post presents the third element of our proof-of-concept test of our prototype professional development Ladder of Opportunities in Workplace Innovation through identifying suitable case stories 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.

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.