How Goal-Driven Clusters Can Transform Montreal’s Innovation Ecosystem

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As discussed in my last post, true innovation thrives when we embrace the values of openness and collaboration. We need to do what we can to remove the artificial barriers that stand between researchers, entrepreneurs, and the public at large. But open access initiatives alone may not be enough to help us tackle some of the most important issues our society faces today. We also need to help create the kinds of environments where innovation can flourish, and encourage coordination in order to solve big problems. We should look to innovation clusters to achieve these goals.

In its most basic sense, an innovation cluster is simply a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and research institutions working in innovative industries. But this simple definition belies the true potential of innovation clusters. Shared space and infrastructure fosters the kinds of interactions between creative actors that result in bold new initiatives. Even more promising is the idea of orienting these ecosystems towards toward a common goal — the power of innovation clusters could be harnessed to make huge strides towards solutions to complex and far-reaching societal problems.

The importance of place

You don’t have to look far to see the impact that innovation clusters have had on the modern economy. Places such as Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts have become legendary for being hotbeds of creativity and bold vision. Despite the exciting opportunities for global collaboration offered by the Internet, local context and personal connections are irreplaceable. Steve Jobs famously designed Apple’s new headquarters to facilitate interactions between creative people, with plenty of common areas and open spaces. Simply put, place is important.

Governments and other institutions can certainly help the development of innovation clusters, but these efforts are most likely to pay off where creative people have already gathered.

Yet attempts to build clusters from scratch often fail. China, for example, has enthusiastically pursued a cluster-building strategy but has had few successes. Extreme examples such as the Kangbashi New Area underline the fact that clusters cannot be created from whole cloth, nor can they be treated as simply a different kind of real estate development. Governments and other institutions can certainly help the development of innovation clusters, but these efforts are most likely to pay off where creative people have already gathered.

It’s clear that Montreal has the right mix of culture, talent, and knowledge to foster high-impact innovation.

What does all this tell us about the possibility of an innovation cluster centred around Montreal? As a place, Montreal has a number of advantages. As most Montrealers know, the metropolis consistently ranks among the most livable cities in the world — a crucial factor in drawing the best and brightest to the area. Montreal also draws strength from its incredible diversity: nearly one-third of the city’s population was born outside of Canada. Add to these the fact that Montreal is Canada’s largest university city. With 170,000 students in the metropolitan area, Montreal now outranks even Boston — and 27,000 of these are studying in technology fields. It’s also no secret that Montreal has a vibrant and growing startup community.

It’s clear that Montreal has the right mix of culture, talent, and knowledge to foster high-impact innovation. But it is equally clear that Montreal is not Silicon Valley or Route 128. How can we encourage the development of innovation clusters without falling into the trap of the top-down model?

A common goal

One exciting possibility is the idea that we might be able to organize an innovation cluster around solving specific, large-scale problems. While government, universities, and private institutions would work together to provide the necessary infrastructure, the most important element would be a challenge. What if we could encourage a network of innovators to tackle, for example, Alzheimer’s disease? When John F. Kennedy famously challenged America to go to the moon within the decade, he said that “we choose to go to the moon not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” I believe that innovators, by their very nature, respond to this kind of call to action — after all, what is an innovator but someone who commits themselves to making a big dream a reality?

If we want to avoid research silos and encourage innovators from a variety of different fields to come together, we need to be able to inspire.

What would such an initiative look like? In my view, it would need to have at least three major features:

1.Large-scale problem: I mentioned before that innovation clusters are an organic phenomenon — while they can be encouraged, they cannot be built from scratch. If we want to avoid research silos and encourage innovators from a variety of different fields to come together, we need to be able to inspire.

2. Open access: I mentioned above that one reason that attempts to build clusters often fail is that they are treated as mere physical spaces. But there is another major reason that clusters often fail: a lack of commitment to the values of collaboration and openness that make innovation possible. No amount of shared space and infrastructure can overcome an unwillingness to share results, or a culture of competition within the network. Those who wish to join would have to commit to the open access philosophy of the cluster.

3. Outcome-focused: In order to inspire innovators, the goal of the cluster must be clear and unambiguous — extending life expectancy for people suffering from Alzheimer’s by 10 years, for example, rather than something like “working to find solutions to Alzheimer’s disease.” Of course innovation can often lead to surprising places, and our innovators will no doubt hit on solutions to problems not directly related to the stated goal of the network; but this goal must always remain clear.

Just as with the quest to land a human being on the moon, growing an innovation cluster that tackles large-scale problems will require a lot of support from different sectors, but the same goal that moves innovators to join the network may well be the best way to gain that support.

Conclusion

Just as with the quest to land a human being on the moon, growing an innovation cluster that tackles large-scale problems will require a lot of support from different sectors, but the same goal that moves innovators to join the network may well be the best way to gain that support.

It’s worth remembering that before John F. Kennedy’s inspiring words, the West was lagging far behind in the space race. The US was home to many of the brightest and most creative minds in the world, but it took setting their sights on a goal thought almost impossible to inspire them to accomplish one of the greatest feats of ingenuity in human history.