Canada 3.0 Teaches Us The Path to Innovation in Canada

Canada 3.0, the annual digital forum which was held in Stratford from May 2-4, stressed that Canada, according to the Stratford Report 2011, once among the leaders in the world in innovation had terribly slipped in the last three years, dropping tremendously in the rankings.

Canada was ranked last in a survey of five comparable countries when it came to the open sharing of information.

The more open information we have, the easier to innovate once again. There should be no shortage of ideas – Canadians spend more time on the Internet than any other country in the world and therefore will intercept those ideas more often.

However, there needs to be digitally minded public policy versus traditional policy- Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart must determine through a rigorous investigation what the blurred lines are between the unfettered access to consumer information by marketers and what constitutes an invasion of privacy.

At the same time she must not upset the potential of great innovation for such data can bring relevancy to make a difference in our lives.

The difference is greater health, safety, lifestyle, productivity and regulation to name a few among everyone participating in the social web through various technologies and interfaces available.

Web 3.0 is not about invading your privacy further, bur rather about making your life better with machines communicating with machines allowing you to make better choices.

The Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, Ray Ozzie, retired on October 28 of last year and lamented in his Dawn of a New Day speech: 

“Let there be no doubt that the big shifts occurring over the next five years ensure that this will absolutely be a time of great opportunity for those who put past technologies & successes into perspective, and envision all the transformational value that can be offered moving forward to individuals, businesses, governments and society.  It’s the dawn of a new day – the sun having now arisen on a world of continuous services and connected devices.

And so, as Microsoft has done so successfully over the course of the company’s history, let’s mark this five-year milestone by once again fearlessly embracing that which is technologically inevitable – clearing a path to the extraordinary opportunity that lies ahead for us, for the industry, and for our customers”.

Some emerging mobile technologies not named apps, both old and new, include low energy bluetooth (50x faster than traditional bluetooth), participatory sensing through devices (neuromarketing), near-field communication, the QR Code, augmented reality, digital watermarking and more.

That in itself creates more possibilities than you can imagine as we have just reached the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mobile innovation.

We can’t fear being data mined for things that that will be useful towards the future, and we can’t be afraid to share through large networks of information collaboration made possible further by enterprise networks and cloud computing.

We should however cryptographically secure our important personal data and devices as a measure of protection against unwanted hackers, but this is proving very difficult. Privacy Comissioner Stoddart wants to fine companies drastically that don’t secure personal data.

We have reached the intersection of marketing data relevancy, data privacy and data security.