Redefining The Art of the Possible: Research and Innovation at McMaster University
Driven by the imperative to shift from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy, a partnership-based, multi-sector innovation ecosystem establishes itself in Hamilton, Ontario.
Affordances: a Way to Think About Change
We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have contradictory reactions to the same things. Our response to change is a perfect example. We’re tempted to wash it away with anodyne sayings like “change is the only constant.” Yet we’re uniquely adapted to change. We possess agency: when the game changes we intuitively know what to do.
The concept of affordances1 offers interesting insight into our psychological adaptation to change. Affordances refers to how we stand to gain or lose from interactions with our environment. This might sound like an unhelpful abstraction but consider: a house affords shelter. A lab affords research. A startup affords jobs. When affordances ‘collect’ in places, a productive niche in the ecosystem may form.
Smartphones provide awareness of how affordances vary regionally and globally. This leads to a form of socioeconomic arbitrage with transportation networks affording people the mobility to move where they can make the most of their skills, advantaging some areas while disadvantaging others. This situation creates an imperative: every region and every city must act decisively or risk increasing the mobility effect.
People who create affordances for others – including those who successfully innovate – strengthen the social structures of which they are part, often emerging as leaders. At the community level and beyond, skillfully combining affordances like research and commercialization infrastructure creates the conditions for a culture of innovation2 to take root and thrive. With the global information playing field level enough to reveal just how dramatically affordances vary, the fate of regions resides with decisions and actions leaders take today. What is the “right” set of affordances that convinces people to come, to stay, and to build?
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
Knowing is one thing, doing is another. Of Canada, Alain Francq, the Director of Innovation for Conference Board of Canada, recently said, “We have a dire need for transformative intervention across multiple facets of the economy – technology, industry, culture, government – to improve our innovation performance.” His observation aligns with the viewpoint that, strategically, Canada hasn’t yet successfully implemented knowledge-based economy policies – evidenced by low IP ownership – and is thus losing ground internationally. When a structural mismatch of affordances occurs companies leave and potential knowledge-based startups fail to form. Other places pull ahead.
At the regional and local level, the story is very often much more hopeful, including places where the imperative to shift from an industrial to knowledge-economy footing is paramount. Hamilton, Ontario, known for decades as Steeltown, earned a labour intensive, heavy-manufacturing reputation centred around giants Stelco and Dofasco. The collapse of the steel era could have led to disaster, the disjuncture between what affordances the city possessed and what was needed so profound that recovery proved impossible.
But that isn’t what happened. Instead, Hamilton’s leadership sparked an economic reinvention, relying in large measure on their close relationship with McMaster University. A robust multi-sector innovation ecosystem now sits an hour west of Toronto including life sciences, advanced manufacturing, automotive, and ICT.
Fusion Pharmaceuticals is a prime example. A radiopharmaceutical company led by McMaster professor John Valliant, Fusion was acquired in March for $2.4 billion USD. Fusion’s targeting molecules emit alpha medical isotopes to “precisely and effectively induce cancer cell death.” Incubated and supported by McMaster, Fusion significantly elevates Hamilton’s reputation for biomedicine, pharmaceutical, and nuclear medicine excellence.
Economic Transformation: Making Change a Good Thing
Compressing a city’s economic transformation into a few paragraphs runs the obvious risk of over-simplification. New infrastructure affording new economic pathways takes time. Change doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it satisfy everyone. Steelworkers don’t just become coders; people struggle when shifts of the magnitude Hamilton endured occur. That truth is an essential part of what makes the Hamilton-McMaster fulcrum worth understanding because the reality is that the menu of affordances Hamilton must provide its citizens has been radically rewritten. People with skills they can’t use will leave; people wrong-footed by a changed world need help. Innovation, both social and economic, is therefore a critical component of the city’s strategic economic development plan, harnessing change along with McMaster to found a knowledge-based, diversified, and resilient economy.
Redefining The Art of the Possible
Dr. Darren Lawless is Associate Vice-President, Research Innovation Partnerships at McMaster. His challenge is fascinating: demonstrate the art of the possible. “We all have to change, and McMaster can help. The way we change is by forming partnerships, and showing the art of the possible.”
When the city shared with McMaster its strategic goals and objectives, including expanding its emphasis on life sciences and advanced manufacturing, it logically built upon McMaster’s existing applied research strengths. “We can help in those areas,” says Darren. “We have an amazing ecosystem of researchers.” Other interests shared between the partners include information communication technology, transportation (air, marine, rail and road), and music.
The message is: bring us your challenge.
-Dr. Darren Lawless, McMaster University
“Stacking” Affordances
Forward-looking government-university partnerships are crucial for economic reinvention, with innovation ecosystems forming the backbone. But the “stack" of affordances cities must accumulate in order for their economies to spark waves of successively more complex products – the hallmark of thriving innovation ecosystems – demands robust private sector participation. Bridging the academia-business gap is unquestionably a major challenge. But the Fusion acquisition and yesterday’s announcement that the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub 3(CP2H) will have access to funding of up to $169 million 4 suggests abundant expertise, scale and opportunity.
McMaster targets private sector partnerships, its research centres making clear their interest in solving research problems impeding industry growth, and driving innovation. The foundation of their private sector appeal lies in the promising intersection between applied research and commercialization; the university’s research infrastructure expanding and accelerating the frontier of discovery while reducing risk.
MMRI
McMaster Manufacturing Research Institute’s May 2nd, 2024 open house makes for a good example of a university-led event bringing together ecosystem players in pursuit of innovation, jobs, and regional competitive advantage. The open house featured technical solutions designed by McMaster researchers and students5, dozens of area manufacturers, and public sector ecosystem groups, including NGen, Ontario Centre of Innovation, and Southern Ontario Network for Advanced Manufacturing (SONAMI), of which MMRI is a member.
We're regarded as one of Canada's most corporate-friendly research entities.
-Dr. Darren Lawless, McMaster University
MARC
McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC) is a useful example of a hub and spoke partnership model that creates a productive 2-way street for multiple automotive companies. The Centre’s breadth of electrified vehicle research, scale of operations, and ability to push the boundaries of innovation via interdisciplinary work makes for a compelling package, explaining why competitors have come to build a shared R&D resource into their respective businesses. Working with MARC – relationships include GM, Stellantis and Honda – offers more than one form of strategic benefit. Resource sharing reduces R&D costs and shortens research timelines, and there are multiple technology acquisition paths for promising innovations. MARC’s startup program supports researchers and entrepreneurs entering the market with their own offerings.
Trust, Communicate, Experiment, Share Risk, and Act
But all of this doesn’t answer a fundamental question: how does it all work? Underpinning McMaster’s civic and corporate partnership strategy is an open and personal philosophy, reflecting the culture of a university intent on being of service. For Darren Lawless, this philosophy is enacted in five clear ways: trust, communicate, experiment, share risk, and act. This result is simultaneously practical – advancing known municipal, business, community and university interests – while setting the stage for the unexpected.
I've never seen a community as integrated, as strong as Hamilton.
-Dr. Darren Lawless, McMaster University
By definition the unexpected defies prediction. But when we want to precipitate the unexpected — say a chance meeting of keen minds leading to a breakthrough — we are certainly capable of supplying the right mix of ingredients. “Serendipity is something that I think we can help create within the innovation ecosystem, which I'm passionate about,” says Darren. “We’re running a lot of networking events, which is a key role for McMaster. You should go talk to them! He's right over there, she's right over there. All of a sudden, the conditions for serendipity arise and new opportunities are created by meeting and talking with people.”
It seems slightly contradictory that part of dealing with the complexity of modern innovation includes intentional doses of randomness in search of serendipity. But less and less can great minds go it alone. They need the place, the infrastructure, the team, the support — and the ensuing collision of ideas where the magic of innovation so often now lies. “The world is very complex, so you have to have an open mind. You have to experiment, you have to pilot,” Darren says. “And you have to be honest: if something doesn't work you stop. But instead of looking at failure and success as a zero and a one, let's try and understand why it doesn't work, because maybe you're close. Maybe there's a better way.”
Innovation ecosystems like Hamilton’s afford ideas, the currency of the knowledge economy. Partnered with McMaster, the city’s innovation infrastructure affords it the opportunity to pursue transformational economic leadership, powered by locally developed solutions to complex, global challenges.
“The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.” J.J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
That is, to manufacture more affordances.
Co-led by McMaster (Global Nexus) and University of Ottawa in collaboration with the Ottawa Health Research institute (OHRI).
Including $115 million of federal funding.
