With the final summer roundtable session, the one million acts of innovation group, created by Taimour Zaman and Ted Malucci, the goal was simple - what can the group take away from these first four discussions and build upon during the ‘live’ sessions beginning in September? Each of the previous sessions has been building towards this goal.
There have already been indicators as to which way the group was leaning. They have already created an innovative program partnering with universities to mentor engineering students. This act has already been
discussed in previous recaps but Taimour Zaman, founder of the Access-Group and co-creator of the One Million Acts of Innovation group, shed some new light on the program.
“It’s not about your point of view, it’s about passion,” he said. “Get students to participate in what they’re passionate about – have CIO’s give them case studies on a subject that excites them! When they come back and present their case, the CIO the team can them give them an alternate case that directly concerns the CIO.”
For all the discussion on innovation, even a definition of innovation that leverages the concept of “change as action,” the group still needed a concrete framework for their upcoming program.
It’s not surprising then, that the idea of linking the much needed framework to business models was proposed. Plenty of effort and discussion has focused on the difficulties companies in Canada face in commercializing their ideas. Many in the group believe Canadian companies need help marketing their innovations better. A few of the participants commented that Canadians seem to have an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality. This thrust the conversation forward as the group paused to think about the indicators that a business has fallen behind on innovation and what tools they would need to get back on track.
