Kamloops: At The Confluence of Small Cities, Technology, and Opportunity
Where the future of small city innovation meets the forces of global technological change lies enormous social and economic potential.
The combined strength of the North and South Thompson Rivers meet at Kamloops, British Columbia, with the confluence forming the 500 kilometer long Thompson River. Kamloops is also the confluence of two important ideas: technology-powered innovation and the economic future of smaller population centres worldwide.
Smaller cities and towns face a problem. In a world where digital transformation is all-pervasive, AI is exploding, all the techs–med, fin, clean–prefer to co-locate, conditions disproportionately favour larger cities. Technology development tends to cluster where specialized infrastructure, resources, capital and support services are present. The gravitational pull of this clustering effect draws talent away from smaller places, an effect sometimes worsened when government innovation programs disproportionately fund existing urban tech clusters.
This makes Kamloops something of an avatar for smaller cities and towns everywhere. Its innovation ecosystem lies at an earlier stage of development than Vancouver, four hours west and operating under radically different conditions. How well Kamloops’ business community, university, municipal government and others respond to global competition and change–and the support they generate from sources like partnerships and government tiers–is a critical indicator of how well-equipped they will be to adapt and prosper in the decades to come.
Different places, different paths, different destinations.
A comparison to Vancouver is apt because it makes another important point: the two places are evolving differently, with direct consequences for how Kamloops is to succeed and for how external players, government included, help or hinder the process. Vancouver’s location gave rise to its evolution into a world destination, global gateway, and a place easily accessible to all comers; Kamloops lies within Kamloops Desert, itself encompassed by the Okanagan Desert, and has evolved into a thriving but smaller city based on entirely different conditions. The contrast emphasizes the importance of place on the evolution of a city and the very different resulting ways of managing common concerns like health, happiness, economic development and resilience.
Dr. Lincoln Smith is the Director, Research Partnerships & Enterprise Creation at Thomson Rivers University (TRU) and the former Executive Director of Kamloops Innovation Centre (KIC). Seconded from the university to KIC over a decade ago, and recently returned to TRU, he is uniquely well-situated to discuss the role of innovation, the supporting ecosystem, and the critical success factors of smaller population centres—which collectively represent a vast reservoir of largely untapped innovation potential.
The role of place and the subsequent consequences of the distinct evolutionary paths communities travel framed much of our discussions. This conversation included the concept of biological succession, a natural process where an ecosystem directs and is directed by the species it contains. Succession is how an ecosystem and its inhabitants interact and influence change over time. When disturbed, an ecosystem continuously adapts and reacts toward a state of balance constrained by climate and resources. This results in what you’d expect to see: different places populated by different but well-adapted species, e.g., Vancouver’s Western Cedars and Kamloops’ Ponderosa Pine.
The concept transposes very well to innovation ecosystems because it accounts for concepts like differing initial conditions, competition and cooperation, niche specialization, and the importance of an underlying resilient, diverse ecosystem.
Kamloops’ Innovation Ecosystem.
Innovation ecosystems usually feature certain cornerstone actors, universities among them. TRU lies in Kamloops’ west end, due south and a winding six minute drive from KIC across the Overlanders Bridge. TRU is a good place to begin because one of the central tenets underlying Smith’s approach is that the city’s entire innovation ecosystem strengthens and develops from three university-related processes.
The first is that students and local innovators, entrepreneurs and founders learn to apply startup skills. These include evaluative techniques like minimum viable product (MVP), and a methodology geared toward rapidly disproving ideas; concepts surviving this process rapidly advance with the aid of real-world testing, mentorship and other supports.
The second concerns widening the innovation pipeline. Too many ideas never surface because there are too few established processes within universities or communities to capture and support them. At TRU there are extracurricular (non-credit) startup processes for students, and emerging examples of co-curricular activities like the TRU Tourism Innovation Lab. There are further opportunities to embed startup course content at the curricular level within as many programs as possible.
The widened pipeline has a second important dimension: the connection between TRU and KIC. Non-TRU students can access crucial very early stage support at the university, while students whose ideas have survived the initial crucible may graduate to KIC. This partnership lets in more ideas, provides more structure, and increases the probability that innovations get to market.
The third element is something “veterans of community building” will quickly endorse: embracing failure. This foundational concept is central to the cultures of research, innovation and entrepreneurship. Risking, experimenting, failing, learning and iterating toward success are DNA-level behaviours; encouraging other actors within an innovation ecosystem to think similarly is a crucial cultural goal.
None of these will surprise community builders. The point is that it’s happening in Kamloops at a different point in its evolutionary timeline than places like Vancouver, under different conditions, and with different indicators of success. For comparison’s sake, TRU transitioned from Carboo College to a university in 1989. Today, the university aims to: “earn recognition as the most committed and innovative university in Canada for research and scholarship based on community partnerships,” reflecting enormous institutional progress, particularly when viewed beside century-plus old universities.
Process Indicators Over Outcome Metrics.
The potential in Kamloops and similar communities is real, with the potential to be unleashed in the form of a mini-tidal wave of innovative activity–with the right partnerships and support. For example, BCAN (B.C. Acceleration Network) reported in 2018 a 24x ROI (return on investment) on government funding directed to regional technology accelerators. The main takeaway is that support for regional innovation is a smart use of funds, with measurable outcomes.
Everyone wins when the objective is to unleash a wave of regional innovation. For this to happen, robust, diversified regional innovation ecosystems are needed; indicators of how successfully this works are therefore paramount. Consequently the ideal success measures of regional, i.e. non-city, technology-powered innovation are often process indicators–activities which build the ecosystem’s foundations. Recall that regional technology innovation ecosystems exist earlier in development than larger cities, evolving under different economic conditions, and arriving at a different but equally productive final state. Later stage outcome measures– income, jobs and patents–are important but must be seen in the context of an innovation ecosystem’s stage of development.
“If we only invest in and count in “Western Cedars” because that’s what we see in currently successful areas, then we undervalue and undercut areas where Ponderosa Pine would thrive.”
Dr. Lincoln Smith, Thompson Rivers University
Interaction is the most crucial innovation ecosystem characteristic. Interaction effects go right to the heart of economic complexity, the most accurate measure we have of measuring advanced economic activity. The reason for this is straightforward: innovation today is complex beyond the capability of a single individual. It takes the combined efforts of skilled individuals, think of AI applications for example, to solve these challenges. Consequently, creating conditions that encourage higher rates of interaction increase the probability of groundbreaking innovations, positive spillover effects, and a more diverse and resilient ecosystem. When regional innovation ecosystems build supporting infrastructure and programming, interaction effects multiply among participating individuals and groups (including those trained, for example, at TRU).
These interaction-based indicators include program enrolments; events organized by ecosystem members followed by steady and increasing participation; company collaborations, staff movement between companies; and shared interest groups formed by ecosystem members. These interactions become stronger when ‘upskilled’ community members and students participate; when awareness and promotion of ecosystem activities by community and business leaders increases; when trust forms that the ecosystem is sustainable; when mid to senior-level employees are attracted to the area; when partnerships form with other regions and larger innovation ecosystems; and government supports early stage innovation ecosystems with targeted programming.
Innovation Ecosystems Evolve, New Needs Emerge
If there is another key takeaway from the focus on process metrics and foundation building, it is the reminder that innovation ecosystems follow the rules of succession. Skipping stages and jumping steps won’t lead to the diverse, self-reinforcing innovation ecosystem that becomes a wellspring of new ideas and businesses. Imagine for a moment that a successful tech startup emerged from Clearwater, B.C., population 5000. It’s far from impossible. But a question would come from this success: what happens next? If the company’s product was based on drones, would the next step be to create a Clearwater drone technology cluster? Or would it be to see what could be done to ensure that more technology businesses emerged? The answer is the latter: focusing on a niche too early in a community’s innovation ecosystem lifecycle chokes off other opportunities that form the basis of a healthy, diverse economy.
There is unanimous agreement that innovation is a key driver of economic activity. Nor is there disagreement that regional centres are an untapped reservoir of innovation potential. The question is how to break the dam, and unleash all this potential. Part of the answer to this question lies in how we misperceive regional centres–as akin to cities in need but smaller.
This error in assessment has the effect of inadvertently diverting funds away from regions while also measuring them on outcomes that don’t map to their current state of innovation ecosystem development.
When we think about how different places become populated by successive waves of species over the course of time, the adaptation that occurs, and the subsequent long term establishment of a unique ecosystem, it immediately becomes clear that places like Kamloops differ from Vancouver in more than just population. That observation should set off a chain reaction of policy, strategy, development and funding designed to maximize Kamloops’ innovation potential–and every other community they represent.
Getting there, making all this happen, stems from identifying where a community lies in its innovation ecosystem evolution. This involves uncovering areas of competitive advantage based on what makes a place unique, aligning the key actors, planning and developing local infrastructure, and implementing and measuring activities, supports and progress accordingly. Care should be taken to advance the innovation ecosystem in stages, with a consistent early-stage focus on building the ecosystem as a whole rather than over-specializing too quickly.
The hoped-for outcomes of this approach are unassailable: long term economic growth, “self-reinforcing processes of recombination” leading to resilience and diversification, talent attraction and retention, and community health, happiness and overall outlook. All of this is measurable, providing clear indicators to community builders, funding bodies and partners.
Kamloops is the avatar of regional technology innovation, sitting at once at the confluence of two great rivers and the confluence of smaller centres, technology and change. They have the assets, including Thompson Rivers University and Kamloops Innovation Centre, and community builders like Lincoln Smith to unleash a wave of innovation with the right support.