Business innovation is a hot topic all around the world at the moment. Unfortunately, the heat is restricted to the relatively small circles of players discussing investment, technology and government economic development.

Word has filtered down from academia that businesses, and by extension their host countries, can enjoy increased productivity by investing in research and development for business innovation. The promise is: innovation provides an advantage over competitors, which leads to more jobs, which creates higher living standards.

At the country level, governments are churning out new national programs and tax incentives designed to spur investment in research and development. Canada is no different. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty just released a new budget bristling with these so-called economic levers. As Carol Goar in the Toronto Star points out, though, it's just the same old same old.

"The trouble is, he is following the same course as his predecessors – Michael Wilson, Don Mazankowski, Paul Martin, John Manley and Ralph Goodale – cutting red tape, lowering corporate taxes, handing out research grants, putting money into higher education and subsidizing leading-edge science."

And there's more legislation sure to come. But, just as surely, there is more to come from Canada's competitors too. They are all doing the same things as Canada - the same things that have been tried for years. More and more, the game looks like a futile arms race. Increasingly cash-strapped taxpayers give the wealthy tax breaks, trying to bribe them into risking more of their discretionary cash on the innovators: the entrepreneurs and inventors.

Nevertheless, it all boils down to neanderthal motivation: carrots and sticks. Carrots in the form of R&D tax incentives for business and education subsidies for the public. Sticks in the form of economic predictions of disaster. Well, doing the same thing and expecting different results is insane. At best it will only help us to keep pace with the other nutcases.

Canada ... we need a game changer. Dammit, we need to turn to our families and to our neighbors and beg them to understand this is war.

It`s too important to leave to the politicians and lobbyists. It`s more important than hockey and gold medals, more important than the petty entitlements and comforts of our personal lives, and now that our war in Afghanistan is ending, more important than democracy in distant lands. As Goar concludes in her column,

"Our standard of living is slipping. Our kids won't be able to earn a good living in a static economy. Our country won't thrive unless we raise our game."

Our best hope for a game-raiser is to make the issue personal in our social networking. With social media, each of us today who recognizes the threats and opportunities has a handy weapon to confront the innovation challenge - not by turning to government but by sharing our passion with our friends. Urging them to invest their attention, time and money in the battle. To raise their own game with learning. To forsake consumer credit for business investment. To invest in Canadian innovators. In short, to make sacrifices for Canada.

If we can only find the courage to risk ridicule for being vocal, to honestly reflect on the sustainability of the game and, with that, change our own values, we will eventually outflank our government-addicted competitors. Or perhaps show them a better way and engage them as allies.

At the very least, by engaging our friends and families in open government (as envisioned by David Eaves), we can make the tax incentives and government programs more accountable and effective.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to reframe the innovation issue as a war for Canada's future. However, as far as wars go, this could be a good one.

Even if I manage to jam my foot in your door, you will soon discover that my CV has gaps and my career track seems to lack focus. To top it off, I am also a budding geezer. So I should just suit up for the Commissionaires right?

Well, this isn't a plea for a pity job. I have too much confidence in what I can offer to the right team.

A lot of learning has been going on during my career gaps, mostly in anticipation of where I see the world going. Since my last job as Partner Communications Manager at HP, I have been supporting (on spec) the work of a mad business genius in Sweden and learning from him. He has plans to create a new five billion dollar market for enterprise mobility. While parts of his plan for Mobile Process Services are extremely academic and complex, they're not untested.

The plan includes  business process engineering, extreme agile team networking, embedded collaborative learning, axiomatic design, distributed relational databases and wireless machine to machine communications. The beauty and magic of it all is in how he wants to mesh the parts. Despite his past successes, esteemed academic support and intricately detailed plans, however, we have failed to sustain industry attention.

No wonder huh? I'm sure your eyes glazed over half way through the list. The point is that although I haven't succeeded yet, I have learned to speak the language and understand the culture of the people who inhabit these alien techno-worlds. I can put that knowledge, along with my more mainstream skill set, to work for your technology clients.

Most recently I have been building a social media presence with Twitter and my blog. It's a slow process since I am selectively targeting an audience of business and corporate education innovators. My plan is to build relationships with people working at the frontiers of business innovation because this market will be hot and I have ideas for communicating complex tech business plans.

In addition, I want to build relationships with established communications professionals and companies because I know that, while there may be opportunities to get work and actually make myself useful, there are also opportunites to learn more.

Thanks to Danny Brown for this chance to get back in the game.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am an atheist with an appreciation for the teachings and inspiration of religious traditions. Although this article talks about God, please remember that I use the term only because it's easier than constantly saying "the awesomeness of nature or science." I also use the word "God" as the traditional placeholder for that which is too sacred to be named.

My story is about the way wise people in the forgotten past may have tried to understand and represent the relationships between man, woman and God, their sacred source.

Let's start with the idea that the first people to believe in a single source of everything believed that God is infinite and perfect. God is the ONE. And let's assume there were ancient mathematicians trying to understand the world using algebra and geometry. So, if they wanted to diagram the idea of God, they used the symbol "1".

Part of the Unfinished Lecture Series at Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto February 11, 2010

From the OCAD web site: "Our world becomes increasingly more interconnected and the frequency of change continues to accelerate. What roles can designers play in this evolving cultural context? How can we shift the perspective of our craft and practice to make broad and meaningful impact with our work? In this talk, Henry will explore the different trajectories of design, design thinking, and the interface between design and other professions."

Henry Hong-Yiu Cheung is Practice Lead for Systems at Scale at IDEO

At the highest level, Cheung's lecture reinforced a couple of ideas that many designers already know but that are still percolating into more public awareness. His ideas are both bold and generous.

The first idea stems from Cheung's specialty - Systems of Scale, Essentially, this is about rolling out design thinking for greater effect in each application. To do this, designers need to embrace "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life."

The second idea is a wakeup call for anyone who still thinks design is about effete 2D artists creating pretty pictures or sci-fi style cars. In fact, much of the talk revolved around the business design of processes - how designers are helping people do their job.