A Microsoft Canada survey conducted by Harris/Decima recently revealed that a large majority of Canadians believe business leaders need to take more intelligent risks, and Microsoft Canada President Eric Gales has made it his mission to engage Canada’s future and current business leaders and address this important trend.

The January 2011 survey polled senior and junior/mid-level Canadian and U.S. office workers to better understand their views about technology and innovation in the workplace. The results were clear: 84 per cent of Canadians believe business leaders need to take more risks to create innovation, while only 53 per cent of Canadians feel the company they work for is already driving innovation.

This is a topic Mr. Gales is very passionate about.

“Canadian business leaders must embrace an appetite for intelligent risk instead of shying away from it to stay within the comfort of status quo,” he says. “Now is the time to create organizational cultures where risk is not a dirty four-letter word, but is encouraged as a valuable ingredient in fueling learning, creativity and inspiring innovation.”

Starting with an event at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, about two dozen students joined Eric Gales and DeGroote’s Dr. Benson Honig to discuss risk-taking in business. 

The McMaster MBA students certainly had something to say about the state of Canada’s innovation and how risk plays a role. Check it out:

On March 31^st, Microsoft Canada then hosted a media event where Mr. Gales, Peter Aceto, President and CEO of ING Direct Canada, and Dr. Honig, participated in a panel on the very same topic.

The lively exchange, which received coverage in the Financial Post, IT World Canada and IT Business, inspired all of us to take intelligent risks in both our personal and professional lives, but also encouraged Canada’s business leaders to lead the path by creating organizational cultures that encourage teams to take a chance on a great idea.

You’ve no doubt heard the news that High Road has had a few changes this week.

As my arrival and my new role as president of High Road is one of these changes, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself on our blog.

In a nutshell, here are a few of the reasons I’m excited to work with High Road:

• The stereotype is true: Canadians are really nice. The welcome I’ve received from the High Road team (as well as those in our U.S. office) in a very hectic week has been warm and genuine.
• I am an engineer by training, and absolutely cannot wait to work with High Road’s amazing roster of tech clients.
• I have a passion for working on lifestyle programs—everything from global launches to bingo halls. Let’s just say that in my past, I’ve broken up brawls over who yelled “Bingo!” first.  
• I love winter sports. Moving to Toronto from Dubai means that I’ll actually be able to ski on a mountain that hasn’t been constructed inside of a mall.
• I love Canadian beer. What’s not to love?
• I’m a Brit who’s lived in London, San Francisco, Oslo, Denver and Dubai, so I think I’ll fit quite nicely into the Canadian cultural mosaic.
• I’ve been a huge fan of High Road for years. There are few agencies in North America that have the kind of reputation that High Road has built for excellent programs and creativity. I’m thrilled to be a part of the strongest team in the industry.

I’m excited to be here, and look forward to your input and feedback as High Road starts a new chapter.

Annalise.Coady@highroad.com

“Mistakes are important. If your best people are always succeeding, fire them because they are not pushing their limits yet.”

You can’t get much more provocative than that.

Those were the stimulating words of one Bill Buxton, the celebrated Canadian researcher and an IT visionary when it comes to thinking about the power of innovation and turning ideas into action.

The always passionate and animated Buxton recently spoke at the Microsoft Innovate Plus  event in front of more than 100 Canadian IT decision makers at the swanky TIFF Lightbox facility (the official headquarters of the Toronto International Film Festival), and High Road was on site to hear what he had to say.

As principal researcher for Microsoft, he takes a vendor-agnostic view to technology and is a persistent advocate from innovation and design. Buxton notes that good UI design is as much an expression of culture and history rather than tied to a single company.  No slouch in the futurist department, the Queen’s University grad is primarily known as the father of multi-touch interface, having pioneered working systems that leveraged the technologies more than two decades before touch devices such as the iPhone arrived on the scene.  

“Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old,” Buxton explained. He also recalled using computer mouse back in 1980 – well before it became synonymous to the computing experience.

He termed these as textbook examples of “the long nose of innovation” – the idea that “new” technologies do not grow out of a vacuum and that the bulk of innovation behind any overnight success-type technologies actually occurred well before the product reached the tipping point and critical mass.

He referred to upcoming iterations of the Microsoft Surface multi-touch interface platform designed to transform how people interact with digital content – and should be ubiquitous within homes in the next few years.

For the IT executives in attendance, Buxton dispensed bon mots of wisdom. The important takeaway was his position that the innovation process is as much a journey as it is a destination. Even in tight economic times, IT decision makers need to speak the language of innovation, says Buxton, adding the firms that succeed will be the ones that continue to invest in innovation while growing the bottom line. 

When thinking about innovation and implementing new ways of doing things, never be afraid to fail, he offered.

“Success comes through repeated failures,” says Buxton. “We always study the successes, but it’s far more important to learn from our failures.”