Yeah, Ottawa is in the thick of winter, and so when I ask "is Ottawa hot," I am not referring to a sudden Spring thaw.
Andrew Wahl of Canadian Business tweeted this report out of McKinsey this morning. It includes the great visual captured below.
Looking at the chart (click to see full size), Ottawa looks like a veritable hotbed of innovation, based on increase and number of patents filed. We score low on the diversity axis (meaning that the patents are being filed from a smaller pool of companies) but maybe that's not bad for a smaller centre.
All in all, this is a report I am sure my friends at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation(OCRI) will be happy about. (Disclosure: I am on the organizing committee of Zone5ive, OCRI's marketing forum.)
Along with his tweet, Andrew asked the questions "where is Kitchener," home of RIM and, what happens to Ottawa-Gatineau "after Nortel?" These are excellent questions that deserve further study. I'd like to know what percentage of the patents filed in 2006 (which dictates the the size of the Ottawa circle) are Nortel patents, for instance.
Also, I think this chart is only part of the picture. Sure, Ottawa may have seen a steady increase in patent filings during the period covered, but how many products did it bring to market? What would this heat map look like if it were technology product revenues?
How many of those products were designed to meet actual, pent-up customer demand, and not some engineer's notion of what would be cool?
I've met a lot of technology entrepreneurs in my decade as a marketing consultant. My concern is that this town maintains its engineering culture and build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. For many engineering/entrepreneurs, the end game seems to be acquisition by a company with marketing muscle, or selling the IP to a bigger player.
Am I wrong? Are things heating up? I'd love to think that Spring is around the corner.
