Strategic Leap: Kingston's Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Economic Development
Strategic Leap: Kingston's Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Economic Development
Laying the groundwork for Kingston's next 'eureka' moment.
Key Takeaways
Interview with Donna Gillespie, CEO of Kingston Economic Development Corporation.
Joint strategic leadership from Kingston Economic Development and academic institutions is driving a comprehensive economic development strategy, setting the stage for Kingston's innovation boom.
Kingston's international alliances, like the Syracuse-Kingston Pathway, are strategically positioning the city in a global innovation network.
A unique concentration of intellectual talent, including a high number of PhDs, is being harnessed to fuel Kingston's specialized innovation clusters like health and sustainable manufacturing.
Collaborative planning between stakeholders, including higher education and municipal leaders, is building a resilient and adaptable innovation ecosystem in Kingston.
Main themes: Building Innovation Ecosystems; Adaptability and Resilience in Innovation; Knowledge Generation and Collaboration Among Innovation Actors; Local Innovation and Community Engagement
Strategic Economic Integration
Kingston’s economic development is a living, integrated enterprise, steered by a senior municipal and higher education leadership team. Collaboration at the level of Mayor, Principal and President models how tightly the strategic integration between the city, Queen’s University, and St. Lawrence College has become over the years. For CEO Donna Gillespie and Kingston Economic Development it is a productive norm, “I can't think of any project we work on where there wouldn't be somebody from St. Lawrence or Queen’s around the table. Each one of my staff works intimately with different departments and different individuals. That's just very common.”
This unified approach yields powerful benefits for a city roughly equidistant between Toronto and Montreal, and a short drive to New York state and its immense market. The Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor alone provides, within a three hour drive, reach to 14.5 million people. A burgeoning relationship with Syracuse promises to drive that number much higher.
Innovation-powered Economic Development
But market access loses lustre without a steady stream of innovative products and solutions, which is precisely where Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College and Royal Military College come into play as vital innovation ecosystem members. RMC is a research leader for the Canadian defence community. St. Lawrence’s innovation and business engagement group focuses on research, workforce and economic development, and community-based innovation. Queen’s international reputation for research excellence is fuelled by its own innovation ecosystem, in turn supported by Queen's University Partnerships and Innovation (QPI).
The collaboration between Kingston’s higher education institutions and Kingston Economic Development is a strategic leap forward, amplifying the city’s innovation capabilities across a spectrum of needs, from talent attraction to R&D, innovation, and the sort of at-scale market access only a tight partnership can provide.
Future-oriented Partnerships and Growth
The Syracuse-Kingston Pathway is a good example. Managed on the Canadian side by Kingston Economic Development, the bilateral arrangement offers “curated market entry mentorship, strategic workshops and events, access to incubation and accelerator space, funding opportunities, and introductions to key industry partners.” The partners are oriented around med- and biotech and include the respective cities’ academic and economic development organizations. For Kingston, the Pathway lowers barriers to market entry, making the city attractive to med- and bio- researchers and rooting startups locally.
For higher education partners, these arrangements complete vital pieces of the innovation pipeline: fusing their knowledge creation and transfer capabilities to professional channels where innovations are shepherded toward at-scale market opportunities. Kingston Economic Development’s economic partnerships also include the Great Lakes Economic Development Commission, of which Donna is a founding Board member, and the Eastern Ontario Economic Development Commission, which promotes the region for international, new foreign direct investment.
Economic and Social Impact
The innovation payoff for all involved is straightforward yet productively complex. Kingston is home to the highest density of PhDs in Canada. It attracts very high numbers of international students in addition to top talent from across the country. That talent is strikingly diverse from a talent perspective, including RMC: “We have one of the largest military bases in Canada, and you have to remember the senior leadership. They've traveled and are linked around the world.”
Given the current innovation infrastructure, surrounding built environment, and available economic opportunities the chances are good that graduates, researchers, and innovative thinkers will stay, working with existing employers and occasionally founding new opportunities of their own: “Queen’s has supported more than 700 start-up companies and entrepreneurs, including 600 in Kingston.”
Good Strategy Leads to Adaptability, Resilience and Opportunity
Therein lies the ‘productive complexity.’ Innovation ecosystems evolve over the course of time, influenced by factors like people, infrastructure, capital and location. They are complex systems increasingly influenced by professional collaborations between mutually interested parties, such as Kingston Economic Development’s integrated economic development plan steering committee. The key to it all lies in preparing the ground for a steady pipeline of ‘eureka’ moments from Kingston’s students, researchers, entrepreneurs and community members.
All told, Kingston is very well-positioned. Shared purpose among its senior leaders sits atop robust public and innovation infrastructure. Its economic relationships and expertise offer access and incentive to a highly educated workforce. Initiatives like the Syracuse-Kingston pathway (discussed in greater depth in the next article) signal that the city is punching above its weight. Kingston’s strategic partnership with higher education is instructive: an excellent example of using competitive differentiation to carve out long term social and economic advantage.
