Innovation

Technology provides competitive advantage and opens new markets. Creative marketing and business strategies lead to differentiation of products and services. 

Innovation is the overall process of successfully inventing, designing, commercializing, manufacturing and marketing new products and services. At Portfire, we recognize that innovation is the basis for sustaining business profitability and economic growth.

Innovation requires infrastructure for R&D, demonstration and production. It also requires knowledge and skills for portfolio management, stage gate project management, and metrics. Good intentions, and even experience, are not enough. Principles, strategy, proven processes and experience all need to be applied to extract full value from infrastructure and funding.

Improving the firm's capacity for innovation is investing in an intellectual asset that lowers costs through the effective use of facilities and budgets, and that adds value by creating new commercial opportunities.

Innovative organizations recognize that their success is not only dependant on the performance of their internal processes but that it is also significantly influenced by the performance of the industrial community in which they operate. The presence in Alberta of an effective innovation system, of export-oriented industrial clusters and of centres of excellence is a critical success factor for individual firms. Innovative organizations understand the value of collaborating with other firms and with government, in order to shape their environment in a way the lowers costs and favours  profitable growth.

Marc Godin is a THECIS Fellow (The Centre for Innovation Studies), affiliated with the University of Calgary.