Tag Archive | Canada
May 3, 2013  

April 2013: Stats of WorldOfInnovations.net

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Global overview

For the first month, 623 pages have been viewed and 385 unique visitors have seen WorldOfInnovations.net website. The visitors come from 53 different countries.

Top views by country

% calculated in comparison of pages viewed.

1. France: 193 (31%)
2. United States: 149 (24%)
3. UK: 33 (5%)
4. Japan: 27 (4.5%)
5. Canada: 13 (2%)
6. India: 13 (2%)
7. Germany: 13 (2%)
8. Colombia: 13 (2%)
9. Netherlands: 11 (2%)
10. Pakistan: 11 (2%)

Top pages viewed

% calculated in comparison of pages viewed.

1. Home page & archives: 250 (40%)
2. Q1 2013 Tablets stats: 33 (5%)
3. Babolat: 33 (5%)
4. Top Internet Browsers: 30 (5%)
5. How to innovate with social media: 26 (4%)

Top sites which referrer

% calculated in comparison of unique visitors.

1. Google: 87 (23%)
2. Bing: 29 (7.5%)
3. Yahoo: 24 (6.2%)
4. Twitter: 21 (5.5%)
5. LinkedIn: 19 (5%)
6. WebCrawler: 17 (4.4%)
7. WordPress: 14 (3.6%)
8. Blogger.com: 6 (1.5%)
9. Facebook: 3 (0.75%)

April 26, 2013  

BOYD: your employer’s Policy?

BOYD

Profiling Canadian businesses

In January 2013, the Future of Work campaign was launched, profiling Canadian businesses that are using technology to gain a competitive advantage and transform how they operate. BOYD, Bring Your Own Device, meaning to use personal device for professional usage.

Does your employer have a BYOD policy?

Below, answers given by Cisco campaign in 2013:

1) Yes, it allows devices to be used for business and personal (36%)
2) My work forbids us from using our own devices for work (27%)
3) I’m not sure (36%)

Results of Cisco Report

Below the 2012 results of Cisco Connected World Technology Report:

1) 90% young Canadians check their smartphones starting they wake up
2) 63% of respondents check their devices compulsively throughout the day
3) 90% upload photos
4) 87% check their Facebook
5) 56% use their phone for Twitter

Obviously these devices are becoming an extension of us, and it’s great to see that one-third of Canadians can use the devices they are most comfortable on at work.

Clear direction to employees on BYOD policies

What is also clear however is that confusion exists among employees about whether they have a BYOD policy. The challenge will be for Canadian IT managers and administrators to give clear direction to employees on BYOD policies moving forward.

Why? Because as laptops, smartphones and tablets continue to become more engrained in all aspects of our lives, the workplace of the future must include policies that welcome devices of employees. The pervasiveness of these devices ensures that the issue of BYOD policy adoption is a matter of when, not if.

BYOD is just now becoming a part of popular debate among IT managers and business decision makers so it is not surprising to see a large number of respondents unaware of where their employer stands on this issue, but look for this number to drop drastically in the new few years.

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April 19, 2013  

Canada: Poor grade in IT innovation

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Canada ranks 13th in countries benchmarked

Despite the presence of companies such as BlackBerry, OpenText, Mitel Network, Sierra Wireless and newcomers such as Hootsuite, Canada received in 2013 an extremely poor grade when it comes to innovation.

Canada ranks second-to-last among its peers in venture capital investment and business R&D spending, according to The Conference Board of Canada’s ranking of innovation among the world’s leading economies. And the rest of the report card doesn’t get much better, as Canada ranks 13th in the 16-country How Canada Performs benchmarking.

Gaps remain in innovation investment

Daniel Muzyka, president and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada, said despite a decade or so of innovation agendas and prosperity reports, Canada remains near the bottom of the pack among its peers on innovation. Governments and other organizations, along with many individuals, have done their best, but gaps remain in innovation investment and activities that have created serious consequences for the economy and society.

More importantly, Canada may have reached a point where it impacts the wealth and opportunities for following generations. “It may seem counter-intuitive due to our low overall ranking, but Canada actually gets above-average grades on the quality of its scientific research and the creation of new businesses. But these signs of promise are not being turned into commercially viable products and services, and successful, globally competitive companies are not emerging from our creative ideas,” he said.

Switzerland, Sweden & United States: “A”

According to the rankings, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States earn overall “A” grades. Canada is weak at all three categories of the innovation process – creation, diffusion, and transformation — and performs poorly on most of the 21 indicators.

Indicators of 2013 benchmark

Canada is above the 16-country average on six indicators: top-cited papers, ease of entrepreneurship, government online services, new firm density, scientific articles, and aerospace exports. It is about average on public R&D spending.

Canada performs poorly on most of the 21 indicators in this year’s revamped Innovation report card. By grade, Canada gets 13 “D”s, two “C”s, six “B”s, and no “A”s.

Eleven new indicators were added this year:

  1. New firm density – “B”, 2nd of 15
  2.  Ease of entrepreneurship index – “B”, 4th of 16
  3. Government online services index – “B”, 4th of 16
  4. Top-cited papers index – “B”, 5th of 10
  5. Public R&D spending – “B”, 8th of 16
  6.  ICT investment – “D”, 8th of 15
  7. Connectivity – “D”, 14th of 16
  8.  Patenting firms less than 5 years old – “D”, 13th of 15
  9. Patents index – “D”, 14th of 16
  10. Venture capital – “D”, 14th of 15
  11.  Business R&D spending – “D”, 15th of 16

Canada gets a “D” grade on venture capital investment. The rate of venture capital investment in Canada amounts to less than half of that of the “A” performers – the United States, Sweden, and Switzerland. Canada needs a larger and more dynamic equity and venture capital industry that is ready to invest in and provide guidance to Canadian seed, start-up, and early-stage companies.

Tools & metrics to attract investors

The Conference Board report, Financing Innovation by Established Businesses in Canada, discusses the tools and metrics innovators need to use to attract investors. Canadian companies are also poor spenders on R&D —regardless of the business they’re in, the report found. Canada has been a “D” performer on business expenditures on research and development (BERD) since the 1980s, and spending in Canada fell from 1.29 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2001 cent to only 0.89 per cent in 2011.

The United States spends twice as much as Canada on BERD, and Canadian businesses spend only a third (as a percentage of GDP) of what businesses in Finland spend on R&D. Canadian business leaders must recognize that the cost and risk of not spending on research and innovation are outweighing the cost and risk of spending and innovating.

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