The Blueprint of Innovation: How Kingston's Infrastructure Fuels Its Ecosystem
The Blueprint of Innovation: How Kingston's Infrastructure Fuels Its Ecosystem
Building Kingston's innovation ecosystem begins with strategic collaboration.
Key Takeaways
Interview with Donna Gillespie, CEO of Kingston Economic Development Corporation.
Kingston's first-ever integrated economic development plan is revolutionizing its innovation ecosystem, involving key stakeholders from academia to government.
Kingston is emerging as a unique hub of intellectual capital, focusing on specialized innovation clusters like health and sustainable manufacturing.
The city's strategic approach to infrastructure not only meets immediate needs but also anticipates future challenges and opportunities.
Kingston's quality of life and built environment are integral to retaining and attracting the talent that fuels its innovation ecosystem.
Main themes: Building Innovation Ecosystems; Local Unique Innovation Ecosystems; Adaptability and Resilience in Innovation; Interconnectedness and Complexity
Integrated economic development plans and innovation.
An economic development strategy succeeds only so much as it solves the broader needs and priorities of the community. Those needs and priorities reflect the moment: the current set of challenges and opportunities on the path to greater economic prosperity and resilience. Moments missed invite an erratic, unpredictable future. Consequently, it is incumbent upon municipal officials to collaborate beyond their individual mandates. From the mayor’s office to departments like planning, transportation, and utilities, to economic development corporate leadership, an integrated economic development plan provides shape and direction to the infrastructure necessary to seize the day.
Innovation features prominently in many of these plans. While inventors working out of garages is an inspiring metaphor of entrepreneurial determination, innovation is evolving into fully-fledged, technologically advanced ecosystems, paralleling the understanding that innovation is a primary economic driver. Strategically designed research and commercialization zones provide bright minds with specialized support, tools and infrastructure. Researchers and entrepreneurs incubate nascent startups within a wrap of professionalized support services–from lab to market–with the objective of increasing the odds of success. The combined efforts of economic development organizations, capital providers, government, private sector, academic institutions and others supply new customers, educated employees and the means to pay them.
The idea? Harnessing creativity at the scale of cities and nations, completely transforming the inventor pipeline from unpredictable fits and starts into a continuous, self-sustaining, ever-evolving flow of products and solutions. Done right, innovation ecosystems are the quintessential example of one plus one equalling three.
Setting the Stage: Kingston's Economic Landscape
Little wonder then that integrated economic development plans need to be robust and forward looking. If innovation has levelled-up, sparked by the new thinking required to address the astonishingly complex frontiers of science, technology and engineering, the municipality itself, as the platform upon which the innovation ecosystem depends, must similarly adapt. In Kingston, Kingston Economic Development’s CEO, Donna Gillespie, initiated the city’s first ever integrated economic development plan in 2020, gained board and Council approvals by year's end and launched in 2021.
It sounds obvious, but I think organizations often operate more in silos than they need to. Our ability to be successful—whether it's supporting a new startup, an existing business, or attracting new investment—is hinged 100% on municipal priorities and understanding how they are linked.
– Donna Gillespie, CEO, Kingston Economic Development Corporation
The Competitive Edge: Infrastructure and Beyond
Kingston faces the same accelerating global challenges as any other city, driven by digital transformation and its breakneck pace. To navigate these challenges, the city's integrated economic development plan includes infrastructure as a top priority, aligning current and future needs under a single economic framework. This approach not only addresses immediate necessities like transit, housing, and daycare but also anticipates emerging strategic needs. Emphasizing the need for partnership and collaboration, the plan is championed by a steering committee featuring municipal and higher education leaders: Mayor Bryan Paterson; CAO Lanie Hurdle; Craig Desjardins, Kingston’s Director of Strategy, Innovation & Partnerships; Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queens, Patrick Deane; the President and CEO of St. Lawrence College, Glenn Vollebregt; and Donna Gillespie, Kingston Economic Development CEO.
Kingston’s integrated approach ties together the city’s competitive advantages into a unique selling proposition. The lede might be that the city is a hub of intellectual capital with the highest number of PhDs per capita in Canada. But the story is that people stay, attracted by “an amazing quality of life that has a lot to do with the built environment”, supported by “the infrastructure that a large city would have. But it's on a very human scale.”
Putting the Plan to Work
The integrated economic plan takes those advantages and puts them to work. One aspect is a forward-looking focus on two innovation clusters: health and sustainable manufacturing. The objectives are to retain and grow the existing job base, facilitate ecosystems for companies to connect and collaborate, invest in strategic business infrastructure, support entrepreneurial activities, and encourage large-scale foreign direct investment.
Sustainable manufacturing is supported by existing infrastructure like GreenCentre Canada, which “accelerates promising chemistry solutions that advance both the economy and the environment in unison” and a strong private sector, including Kingston Process Metallurgy. Recently added infrastructure in the form of RXN HUB provides space for innovative new companies and the capability to pilot chemical processes.
More wet-space labs and a health innovation lab are planned in support of med-tech life sciences, making the underlying link with chemical labs and testing very clear.
Gluing it all together is responsive city leadership: “Within one day, on a long weekend, I was able to pull the Mayor, the city CAO, the head of Queen’s, the head of the St. Lawrence, RMC’s Base Commander, our member of Parliament, and MPP around the table.”
Infrastructure as a Launchpad
The integrated economic development plan provides a cohesive “why here and why us” appeal. It enables Kingston to consider partnerships and opportunities previously unavailable, which is important because it allows the city to create value in areas of strength–like health innovation and sustainable manufacturing–at greater levels of complexity and opportunity. The plan’s emphasis on big city infrastructure on a more human scale positions Kingston as open to other opportunities offered by its talent base, capacity to innovate and willingness to collaborate.
The Groundbreakers working definition of an innovation ecosystem is (1) a designed region featuring: (2) specialized actors; (3) an intentionally high rate of actor interactivity; measured by (4) successive, evolving, dynamic waves of increasingly diverse and economically complex products and solutions; (5) quality of life improvements; while (6) contributing to and supported by external and internal built environment infrastructure.
Using this framework, a few things become obvious about Kingston and Kingston Economic Development’s integrated economic development plan. The steering committee models the high rate of interactivity required from higher education, government, and economic development leaders. Leadership of this type opens the door for innovators and entrepreneurs to succeed via two mutually reinforcing paths: expansion and improvement of infrastructure, e.g., new chemical and health labs, and new partnerships and collaborations designed for entrepreneurial activity. It signals an understanding of the connection between innovation infrastructure and the local built environment, recognizing that quality of life measures, e.g., entertainment, daycare, and transit both retain and attract talented people. And those people give back, “Kingstonians are very positive and supportive. It's easy to pull the right team of people around to foster an opportunity or to help somebody succeed."
*
Next week: Kingston's not-so-secret weapons are its leading higher education institutions. How Kingston Economic Development works with them is key to arriving at the forefront of innovation.
