Mac meeting on innovation, communication

Some of the best minds in the world have gotten together in Hamilton to figure out how to communicate more productively.

The International Forum on Research and Development, hosted by McMaster University, has drawn nearly 200 delegates from 11 countries.

They represent corporations, universities, research companies, and government – trying to find new ways to co-operate and innovate in a number of fields.

And while innovation seems to be a buzz word getting a lot of attention these days, the real question is – what does it mean, and – why should we care?

Gilles Patry has been both a university president, and the founder of Hydromantis – a Hamilton company dedicated to innovation in water and wastewater management.

“The economy is based on our creativeness (sic) and our competitiveness. And for us to be more creative and more competitve, to produce essentially a society that everybody wants to live in, we have to innovate, we have to find new ways of doing things, more efficiently, in a more effective way, and so innovation is the process by which we bring ideas to market, number one, and that’s the traditional way of defining innovation, but it’s also ways of doing things differently. “

The conference aims to bring new ideas from science, engineering, medicine and social sciences together — and build new partnerships between them.

It wraps up Tuesday afternoon at Liuna Station.

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