Sharpening Canada’s Skills Advantage

Executive Summary

In this first report of the Mitacs Skills for Innovation series, Creig Lamb, (Co-Founder, Shift Insights, BII+E alumni) and Dr. Daniel Munro (Co-Founder, Shift Insights, Senior Fellow at Munk School of Global Affairs) provide clarity on the technical and professional skills needed for different kinds of innovation.

Despite a highly educated population and a labour force of skilled and motivated people, Canada’s innovation performance continues to lag behind its global peers. This report seeks to better understand the specific skills Canadian talent must develop in order to address this gap and complete the full suite of tasks within the innovation continuum. These can be broadly divided into two categories: general skills, required across all types of innovation; and specialized skills, that some but not all people on innovation teams must have to succeed.

General skills are things like curiosity and creativity, statistical literacy, and basic digital skills such as the ability to navigate online research, and the application of scientific principles and methods, such as developing a hypothesis. Soft skills, like emotional intelligence, collaboration, listening, and communication are also included here. 

More specialized skill sets consist of advanced data and digital skills such as programming, computer science, and statistical analysis, as well as management and design skills, including prototyping, testing, and solutions design. 

This and future reports in the Skills for Innovation Series by Mitacs will generate insights to help educators, businesses, students, workers, and others build better strategies for developing, recruiting and harnessing talent to improve our national innovation performance.

This report is produced by Mitacs in partnership with the Brookfield Institute and Shift Insights.