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/ Canadian Government Executive
// May 2016
Nestor
Arellano
Natural Resources Canada’s
IN-spire Innovation Hub
I
n the constellation of innovation labs
in Ottawa, NRCan’s IN-spire hub
(Inventive by Nature: Support Part-
nerships, Ideas, Research, Experi-
ments) has already made its mark. NRCan
launched the idea of an innovation hub in
July 2013 and had it up and running with-
in eight months—the first department to
spawn such a centre in the Government of
Canada. Its mandate is to serve as a learn-
ing hub, a network enabler and as a space
to experiment with new ways of work-
ing. It is intended as a sort of marketplace
where managers and innovators within
NRCan can reach out to each other. The
hub is also a place where innovators can
be trained and be put to task to develop
potential solutions to existing problems
or put forward ideas for doing things in a
smarter way. “Successful culture change is
never the work of only a few, which is why
our mission is to inspire a critical mass of
employees to adopt new ways of working
in order to innovate for the public good,”
says Lauren Hunter, the head of the unit.
One objective is cutting of the bureau-
cratic red tape that typifies the long cycle
of most government projects. The IN-spire
process of problem-solving is marked by
prototype design, concept testing, pilot
testing, evaluations and iterative revisions
until solutions are deemed effective for
implementation. IN-spire is involved in a
wide range of “big signature projects and
teeny-tiny tools, completed initiatives and
experimental developments,” according to
Hunter.
One such project involved helping sci-
entists share their research findings with
colleagues spread across the country. The
usual method, of course, was transmitting
research documents over the Internet. An-
Design
other traditional method was to film the
research team’s presentation. However,
this method was expensive and time con-
suming because it often involved flying a
film crew to various sites.
Valerie Thomas, the project lead who
was tasked with this problem, came
up with a solution that not only helped
NRCan cut the cost of film production but
also democratized the whole process. She
created a kit that allows users to create
video recordings of their presentations.
The kit consists of an iPad, specialized
lenses and simple recording equipment.
Cost: $2,000. Moreover, scientists and
NRCan personnel can train on the record-
ing and editing equipment in as little as
two weeks and the whole system can be
up and running in less than two hours.
Thomas’s kit is now being replicated and
deployed across various NRCan locations.
Changing the Culture
The goal of IN-spire is to develop more
innovators like Thomas and eventually
populate NRCan offices with teams of in-
novators. IN-spire’s recruitment campaign
couldn’t have come at a better time, but
there was a hurdle. “Applicants felt that
being creative and innovative actually
reduced their chances for career advance-
ment,” according to Hunter. As many as
18 percent said this was true occasion-
ally and a whopping 41 per cent said it
was true frequently or very frequently. In
fact, 50 percent of the applicants said they
were thinking of leaving the department
and 90 percent were taking steps to put
their plans in motion. IN-spire sought to
reverse that sort of thinking.
The IN-spire team talks about building
a “culture of yes,” using the word rule in
the “loosest sense of the word,” and aim
to defy “the culture creep of no.” In re-
cruiting its members, IN-spire eschewed
organizational charts and fixed positions
and instead chose people from the NRCan
community who are problem-solvers that
think outside the box and were already
showing a passion for innovation in their
area.
“We prefer to take in people who are in
a position where they have limited ability
to use the innovation skills they have–we
don’t recruit from places where people are
already well positioned to make a differ-
ence,” said Hunter. “Part of our success is to
try to improve the total innovation talent
available in public service, which we feel
is best accomplished by unleashing many
innovators as possible from their desk
jobs, not moving innovators back and forth
between innovation-related positions.”
IN-spire began with an original team
of five individuals. Now there are two IN-
spire teams in NRCan, one focused on pol-
icy initiatives and the other on so-called
free-agent pilots. Fifteen more “innova-
tors” are being groomed to eventually fan
out across the department.
Hunter likes to quote Leonard Cohen:
“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how
light gets in.” She continues by saying that
“At IN-spire, we’re here to find small cracks
in a rigid system – a place where there
is space for change – and work to widen
them until there is space for new struc-
tures to flourish.” It might also be a place
for a new culture to take root.
N
estor
A
rellano
is the Managing
Editor of
C
anadian
G
overnment
E
xecutive
The hub’s goal was
to create a sort of
marketplace where
managers and
innovators within
NRCan can reach
out to each other.