29, April 2026

In 2026 THECIS celebrates its 25th anniversary. To celebrate this, we are starting a 25th Anniversary Blog series where we ask prominent individuals to write a blog to provide perspective on a topic related to innovation and entrepreneurship. This Blog is by Andrew Maxwell, who is Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University and Founder pf the Disruptive Innovation Hub.

Blog 106. Canada’s Missing Adoption Strategy: Why Innovation Must Be Co-Created

Canada does not lack ideas. It does not lack research funding. It does not lack talented scientists and engineers. Yet productivity growth remains stubbornly weak. The usual diagnosis is a “commercialization gap.” But that framing is too narrow.

Canada’s real problem is an adoption gap — and more importantly, a failure to design innovation for adoption through co-creation with users.

We still treat innovation as something that flows in one direction: researchers invent, technology is transferred, organizations adopt. In reality, successful innovation rarely works this way. It is messy, iterative, and collaborative. Technologies evolve alongside user needs. Business models shift. Risks are negotiated. Adoption is not the end of innovation — it is embedded within it.

Technology Push vs. User Reality

History offers cautionary examples. Nortel once championed ISDN, jokingly referred to in the industry as “Innovations Subscribers Don’t Need.” The technology was sophisticated, but it solved problems customers did not prioritize.

BlackBerry believed its security architecture was the key to success. For certain enterprise users, it was. But for many customers, what mattered more was access to apps. Competitors focused on ecosystem development and co-creation with developers and users. The market followed.

In both cases, technological excellence was not enough. Adoption depended on understanding user priorities — something that emerges through interaction, not isolation.

 The Linear Innovation Myth — and Why It Fails

Much of our innovation system still assumes that technologies can be developed and then “transferred” to users. Even the term Technology Transfer Office reflects this assumption. But the phrase is something of an oxymoron.

Knowledge is rarely transferred in a neat, one-directional flow. Much of it is tacit — embedded in context, practice, and interaction. It is co-created between innovator and user. And it rarely happens in an office. It happens where engineers, operators, managers, and customers meet to solve real problems together.

This is where co-creation fundamentally changes the innovation process. Instead of developing technology first and worrying about adoption later, innovators and users work together to shape both the solution and the pathway to deployment.

 A Familiar Story

Just this week, I heard of a professor who spent two years on an NSERC-funded project. When the team finally engaged a major potential customer, the response was encouraging but sobering. The technology was interesting, the customer said — but it would need five additional features to be useful. They even offered to fund further development.

The research team saw this as a failure. They felt they had spent two years working on the wrong problem and ultimately abandoned the effort.

But that conversation was not the failure. It was the breakthrough. The problem was not the feedback — the problem was that it came two years too late.

In a co-creation model, that discussion would have happened in month two, not year two.

 Co-Creation Changes the Relationship

Co-creation does more than refine the technology. It changes the relationship between innovator and user. Instead of presenting a finished solution, both parties begin sharing operational challenges, risks, and constraints. The conversation shifts from “Will you adopt this?” to “How do we make this work?”

This often leads to two types of adjustments. The first involves modifying the technology. The second involves modifying the business model — phased deployment, service models, risk-sharing arrangements, or new pricing approaches. Often the answer is a combination of both.

Adoption rarely fails because the technology doesn’t work. It fails because the relationship doesn’t.

Co-creation turns adoption from a decision into a collaboration.

 Adoption Is About Decisions Under Risk

Adoption is fundamentally about how people make decisions under uncertainty. Organizations weigh potential benefits against costs, risks, disruption, and competing priorities. These are behavioral and organizational questions, not purely technical ones.

Yet many innovation efforts are led by engineers trained to optimize performance, not to understand decision-making under risk. As a result, innovations are designed for technical excellence rather than adoptability.

Co-creation helps address this. By engaging users early, innovators learn what risks matter, what constraints exist, and what trade-offs are acceptable. This reduces uncertainty and accelerates adoption.

 The Messy Reality of Innovation

Innovation is inherently messy. Outcomes are ambiguous. Ownership evolves. Roles shift. Yet our systems often try to eliminate this uncertainty through rigid project definitions and fixed deliverables. These attempts to control ambiguity can slow progress and discourage iteration.

Co-creation embraces uncertainty instead. It treats learning as progress. It allows technologies, applications, and business models to evolve together.

 What We Fund — and What We Don’t

Many funding decisions still emphasize publications, technical novelty, or adherence to predefined research plans. These are important, but they are weak indicators of real-world impact.

Assessing impact potential is harder. It requires understanding user needs, adoption barriers, and deployment pathways. These elements are often unclear early on, which makes them uncomfortable to evaluate. As a result, they are frequently overlooked.

But if we do not assess impact potential, we should not be surprised when promising technologies struggle to find users.

 Implications

For policy makers, this means encouraging early user engagement, supporting iterative development, and measuring success in terms of adoption readiness and deployment.

For organizations, it means engaging earlier in development and sharing risk to shape solutions.

For education, it means teaching engineers and researchers customer discovery, co-creation, and adoption thinking alongside technical skills.

 From Invention to Impact

Canada has invested heavily in research and early-stage innovation. These investments are necessary. But without attention to adoption and co-creation, many innovations will struggle to deliver productivity gains.

Canada does not just need more innovation. It needs innovation designed for adoption — and that begins with co-creation.