Blog submitted by Sara Diamond – President, Ontario College of Art and Design

We have a terrific opportunity in Ontario to leverage creative industries; introduce design thinking and methods to traditional industries and use the digital revolution to leap forward.  Ontario cultural industries, representing content, services and platforms, are economically important, with an 8% growth rate since 2000; billions of dollars of profit each year and high-paying knowledge-industry jobs, and with a strong ethnic diversity that can reach global and Canadian markets. Technology strengths include micro-electronics for display technologies, animation, mobile technology and applications. While the GTA is the powerhouse, through effective clustering these industries have positive impacts on local economies. Migrating into Ontario are two international gaming companies, Electronic Arts and UbiSoft; their presence is testimony to existing capacity in Ontario—they will stimulate the further development of Canadian gaming companies. 

Here are three proposals:

Ontario has the fourth most powerful design labor force in North America and Ontario has top ranked PSE design programs.  We have the talent, but too few Ontario manufacturers hire this talent base. Studies show that manufacturing industries that take advantage of design knowledge thrive. They develop unique intellectual property; they diversify products effectively; they find business efficiencies and anticipate consumer trends and demand. Designers can look at existing technology and imagine new applications. Designers have the skills to collaborate with workers on the shop floor who are an under utilized source of creative ideas for new products and processes for their industries. Let’s create incentives to bring design companies, designers and design researchers together with the manufacturing sector to help traditional industry thrive. 

Core industrial sectors, such as financial and health services are going digital, and mobile. This transition requires fastidious attention to the interface between humans and the technology working in the background.  That is a cultural problem.  Significant profits can be made by bringing together creative industries, service industries, and the mobile sector.  Ontario has capacity in these areas, but requires action on policy and investment to ensure that companies are internationally competitive.  

Digital media is booming and can continue to boom, with national as well as international markets. Digital media is rooted in traditional cultural knowledge and production. While technology platforms, content enablers and creative content have often developed side by side, without strategic integration, there is growing success in intertwining capacities, through clustering related industries together, providing research capabilities to industries through our post-secondary sector and creating efficiencies within production and distribution.  Ontario firms need capitalization to grow to the next stage, as well as business development support and cross-sector match-making.

We can have our Silicon Valley, and more.

As an example of Ontario talent Xenophile Media, Toronto, continues to win prestigious international Emmys!

Ontario Students developing their talent: OCAD/Telus Design Collaboration.

Sara Diamond
President, Ontario College of Art and Design

Tags: creative, INSIDER EP.3, knowledge-driven economy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under Issue This. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.