Beating Innovation Inertia at UBC

In a groundbreaking move, UBC dismantles the ivory tower walls.

Organizations large and small often develop lofty aspirations involving innovation strategies. But just as often, dysfunctional internal and external relationships get in the way. Universities can be particularly prone to innovation inertia because they embody a tangled network of often autonomous constituencies involving government and industry externally, and siloed faculties internally. 


The Problem

UBC has nearly 50,000 students, 4,500 faculty members and 10,000 residents spread over campuses in Vancouver and Kelowna. As both a small city unto itself and a cutting-edge research institution, its administrators reasoned, the university should be able to bring together faculty, students, private industry and government to offer the world a showcase of sustainable development. It was no easy task, however, to break down the fabled walls of the ivory tower.


The Solution

Enter John Robinson’s brainchild. For 10 years, the UBC professor and sustainability expert had been trying to create a centre for sustainability research. Slated several times to be built in various locations, his vision never became reality because the necessary partners couldn’t be brought together. Universities tend to have cultures of quasi-autonomous individuals in which research and teaching dominate, while industry tends to be product focused and thinks in the short term of quarterly results. It can be difficult to get both cultures on the same page. 


However, when the provincial government legislated tough new sustainability targets in 2008 and backed them up with a carbon tax, a new impetus was created for academia and industry to work together to increase sustainability understanding and to also boost the province’s emerging clean-tech industry. At the same time, UBC was preparing to launch its own sustainability initiative with the lofty goal of making itself the “most sustainable campus on earth” and a world centre for green research.


Robinson’s vision and UBC’s initiative were natural allies, but there was one thing missing: a strong history of partnerships with industry. And if a research centre for sustainability was going to work in the new economy of the 21st century, it would have to produce on-the-ground results that only industry could deliver.


So UBC pitched an alliance to industry. As a result, a $37-million super-green building is now rising on the UBC campus in Point Grey. The building, which will house the Centre for Interactive Research in Sustainability, will harness biomass for heat and electrical energy generation in partnership with GE Power and Water, and Nexterra, a B.C. company that builds systems that produce gas from waste fuel.


The partnership will act as an accelerated product development platform for Nexterra while also creating a research and learning facility for UBC that includes the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; the UBC Clean Energy Research Centre; the faculty of applied science; and the Sauder School of Business.


Lessons


• • Break down the silos. Every organization has internal and external relationships, but these partners often don’t see themselves as collaborators. Leverage capabilities, innate talents and funds from all points. 

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• • Innovation takes a community. Most businesses presume their innovation challenges are operational. But most challenges can be overcome if the operation is reorganized to integrate internal and external communities.

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• • Be creative about value. Conventional thinking about cost and revenues often don’t recognize innovation’s true value. Sometimes a deemed cost can be viewed as revenue if it is reduced through innovation.