How can public investments in research translate into more innovation? A big part of the answer lies in improving science-industry linkages — and better methodologies to measure research impact, predicts Professor Sandra Schillo of the Telfer School. This comes as the application and validation of public research has emerged as an increasingly top-of-mind issue for governments around the world. “We don’t yet have a handle on all of the impacts — health, social, environmental — that governments are interested in, and currently, we’re a lot better at measuring some of the economic impacts,” she explains. “But I see great potential to bring evaluation tools from related fields into the innovation space and to use new methodologies to assess performance.”

Schillo’s experience in government and the private sector have given her valuable insights on the dynamics of innovation. She has worked on technology transfer and intellectual property management at the National Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She founded Innovation Impact Inc., a consultancy which helps government organizations increase the impact they derive from their innovation and entrepreneurship activities; clients have included Industry Canada, many federal science-based departments and agencies, and NGOs that are active in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Her PhD dissertation focused on spin-offs companies, at the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, University of Kiel, Germany. She completed her Masters' degree in Engineering Management at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. One of the many takeaways from her years living in Germany, from an innovation perspective, is that the country has a well-deserved reputation for “investing in the kinds of data-driven investigations that benefit innovation management strategy,” Schillo says. “It puts them at an advantage as compared to many other jurisdictions in terms of the ability of research to contribute to policy and program development.”

Schillo contends that Canadian policy development is hampered by the lack of access to relevant and timely data and analysis that could lead to better policies and programs – and ultimately to improved economic performance. A key theme of her work is therefore to contribute to a stronger evidence base to improve policy and program development in research and innovation management. In one project, funded by the NCA BioFuelNet Canada, she is working with colleagues to position biofuel R&D for enhanced use in policy, regulation, practice and commercialization. The research is expected help make future biofuels research more reflective of the needs of the industry actors and policy developers.

Another project, in collaboration with a colleague at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, is titled “Applying Quality Function Deployment to Science, Technology and Innovation Policy” (supported by the Telfer-Sprott Research Fund). This study aims to develop frameworks that explicitly link science and innovation activities with the policy and program objectives they are intended to address.

Professor Schillo brings a unique perspective to these areas, as an academic who understands the policy, economic and management contexts of innovation. “I hope to use that perspective to ask relevant questions and to design research that will help us identify the actual barriers to Canadians deriving more value from their investments.”

A study by Professor Morad Benyoucef and doctoral student Amir Afrasiabi Rad, titled “Pattern Extraction in Social Networks Using Formal Concept Analysis,” received a $30,000 grant from the Mitacs - Accelerate Program. Benyoucef, an associate professor in management information systems, and Afrasiabi Rad, Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, will build on their earlier work researching social influence and how it is propagated in social networks. Part of the grant covers Afrasiabi Rad’s internship at IBM’s location in Ottawa.

The project, to be conducted over two years, responds to the growing interest in using social network data to extract user interests, and subsequently market trends. It focuses on improved detection of communities in multimode heterogeneous social networks based on multiple factors, including user behavior. A key objective is to increase the accuracy of existing community detection algorithms, with potential for creating communities of influence. The work has interesting applications in recommendations systems, advertising, organizational planning, knowledge management, collaboration, team-building and human resources management.

A student blog was launched recently in connection with the C-Change, or Coastal Change project based at the Telfer School of Management, which is focused on managing adaptation to environmental change in eight coastal Communities in Canada and the Caribbean. Students here and at four partner universities provide updates about their work related to this project on the Coastal Change Student Blog. This initiative provides an opportunity for students to share their work with community members. The originator of the blog is M.Sc. Systems Sciences candidate Alex Chung, who is working under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Lane of the Telfer School. He will be conducting case studies for the partner communities of Charlottetown, PEI, and Isle Madame, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.

C-Change links community members and university researchers from Canada with members of the Caribbean community in support of research on coastal adaptation to environmental change including the impacts of storm surge and sea-level rise on susceptible coastal communities. C-Change researchers have been working with the partner communities to profile local community vulnerabilities and risks and to build local capacity for managing adaptation to pending environmental change.

The C-Change project is led by co-directors Dr. Dan Lane and Dr. Patrick Watson, Director of SALISES at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, along with a team of over twenty co-applicants, collaborators, and community partners. C-Change is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Read more on C-Change.

Many students entering university already have a variety of experiences with teamwork, but it is here where students will truly begin to deepen their understanding of working collaboratively. François Chiocchio, an associate professor in human resource management and organizational behaviour, is focusing his research on the characteristics of successful teams. Chiocchio, who is a new faculty member at the Telfer School of Management, has developed a unique perspective on why we struggle with teamwork and how we can get better at it.

Why is it important for students to learn teamwork?

We live in a connected world and, whether we like it or not, we’re going to be connected more intensely and in more diverse ways. Students need to understand and be prepared for that. In order to better connect, students need to understand and develop the attributes, skills and behaviours required for successful teamwork.

What makes team projects particularly valuable?

Class projects are a great way for students to learn how to be good team players. A project mimics the ambiguity and complexity of the real world. The classroom setting controls certain unknowns in the project, but overall, it is ambiguous and complex, which is exactly how the real world is.

Why do group projects sometimes lead to conflict?

For students, there is so much to learn that when a conflict presents itself, it tends to escalate spectacularly. It’s fairly common to hear students ask to have a team member removed in the first two weeks of the project, even if that’s not really a viable solution in the “real world.” In our professional lives, we know we can’t choose who is on our team, so exclusion is not seen as a solution. But all teams – whether composed of students or professionals –lack conflict management skills.

Group projects can be incubators of creativity, pride, and commitment. Sometimes, focusing on the positive helps in managing conflicts when they occur.

Helping people collaborate better will result in less conflict. This is one of the takeaways from my studies on teamwork in health care settings and interprofessional environments.

What about conflicts over individual performance?

Social loafers, or those who tend to withhold effort towards team tasks, may not intentionally set out to ride on the team’s coattails. Oftentimes, they can be excluded by others for a variety of reasons. Those doing the exclusion prefer to blame social loafing, but they are in fact contributing to the problem.

It’s a complicated issue that most people, not only students, don’t know how to deal with.

What advice would you have for those working on a team?

Even if you don’t like group work and prefer doing things individually, you can develop your skills and get better at teamwork. Some of us like teamwork, but aren’t terrific at it. Either way, it’s important to not let our preferred way of dealing with things get in the way of what the situation requires. Good team players learn to adapt. Those who are good at teamwork and are perceived that way by teammates do two things consistently: first, they commit publicly to tasks and deliver. Second, when they realize they cannot deliver as promised, they are open and proactive about it.

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