By Jennifer Lewington

Stratford, Ont.

As Canada debates how to become a leader in the global digital economy, a new research center, the Stratford Institute, is calling for "unprecedented" forms of collaboration to make the most of new technologies for business, social, and cultural gains.

The institute begins its work amid concerns that Canada is lagging in its taking advantage of digital media, which encompasses a range of uses as varied as electronic health records, e-mail, multimedia creative arts, online businesses, and social networks.

Stratford differs from other research facilities in Canada in that it brings together leaders from business, government, and the creative sector to explore the gamut of digital-media issues.

In May a conference of industry, government, and academic leaders recommended setting a national goal of providing all Canadians with the tools "to do anything online, from anywhere, anytime, at a reasonable and appropriate cost by 2017," Canada's 150th anniversary.

This fall the government is expected to release a digital-media strategy that advocates hope will recommend improved networks and infrastructure, content development, and expanded cooperative education—with added placements for university students in companies—to ensure that a new generation of learners keeps pace with fast-changing technology.

The nonprofit institute is a partnership of Stratford, Ont.; the province of Ontario; the Canadian software developer Open Text; and the University of Waterloo, which will start a program for digital media in Stratford this fall.

The institute's executive director is Ian Wilson, who previously led Library and Archives Canada.

Mr. Wilson envisions the institute, in a city best known for its annual Shakespearean festival, as a forum for "conversations"—a word he uses a lot—among disparate groups on how to harness digital technology for society's benefit.

"This [technology] is fundamentally transformative," he says, "and we need to have a conversation in this country about where we are going, what we want to do with it, what is the role of government, what is the role of universities and the private sector."

Mr. Wilson hopes to attract other partners, in Canada and internationally, once the institute officially opens, in several weeks. It is jointly housed with the Waterloo's new satellite campus in a former boutique hotel in downtown Stratford.

As many as 20 students will be enrolled in a master's program in business, entrepreneurship, and technology there. They will work in teams on digital-media projects of their own creation or tied to issues suggested by nongovernmental organizations and businesses. The students will work with advisers from the private and public sectors. In 10 years, university officials hope, the Stratford campus will attract about 2,000 students.

Mr. Wilson spoke with The Chronicle about the institute.

Q. Why base a think tank and research facility about digital media in small-town Ontario?

A: I've never thought of Stratford as small-town, with a major reach across the country, in Hollywood and in many other parts of the continent. It really is to enable us to provide an appropriate, very pleasant setting for some serious conversations and thinking and teaching and research, but conversations around Canada's future as a digital nation and the interaction of society and technology.

[It's] a neutral place where we have major access to one of the high-tech centers of Canada, in Kitchener-Waterloo, where we have serious access to governments at various levels and where we also have access to the creative community. Because everything I hear from my friends in the private sector is that their next generation of employees is going to come from the creative side.

Q: You've described the Stratford Institute as multidisciplinary and partnership-driven (business, academe, and government). Why this model?

A: In Canada we are of a size and scale that we are globally competitive, but we are also of a manageable size. ... Here we have a chance to do some interesting things, and we can seriously talk about Canada as a digital nation and what does that mean in terms of private-sector attitudes and investment, on government policy and direction and university teaching and the development and retention of skills, and on the integration of digital technology.

Q: You use the metaphor of 'playing in the sandbox' to describe possible collaborations. How would that work?

A: It's being able to bring partnerships together, to make the contacts and to get the right people talking to each other. [The institute would act as] a sort of a catalyst, an advocate and hopefully finding the strategic points where you can push.

Q: What is your research agenda?

A: We want to do it by projects, and we are still working through and defining our initial projects. ... One project dear to my heart is digitizing significant amounts of Canadian content and get[ting] it online. ... There are some interesting issues around research on search and retrieval. How do we put together the consortium that will help do it? How do we get the private sector involved? How do we get various levels of government involved? Partly we can be advocates for initiatives like this that cross all of our jurisdictional lines in the country.

Q: What scope is there for international collaboration?

A: In the world we are working in, there are no borders, other than a few countries trying to limit RIM [Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, based in Waterloo]. It is wide open. There are phenomenal things going on in Asia—Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China—that we need to plug into. In Singapore they are putting serious resources and serious effort, far more than Canada is. ...

We have to figure out how to jump ahead. To do that, we need unprecedented collaboration among the government, private sector, and the university, and they haven't figured out how to do that yet. ... We have been making contacts internationally. There is a lot of interest out there in working with us. It's [a question of] how do we turn that into something practical and real?

Q: What kind of graduates should Canadian universities turn out for a digital economy?

A: I would hope our graduates in any sphere or discipline will be able to have an active and productive presence in the digital economy. I do not see this anymore as limited to one area or one faculty of a university. It is everyone.

Q: Are universities graduating the right kind of students?

A: No. A few recognize it. But many of the students are doing it themselves. They are far more adept at using this technology than most faculty are. I've been known to criticize governments for ... working in narrow, subject-based silos. They don't exchange information with each other. Then I come to one of Canada's high-tech universities, and it is as siloed as government ever is, and the communication across the disciplines is not there.

Q: What kind of curriculum renewal is required?

A: If you want innovation, it happens when people from different backgrounds come together to address with the same urgency the same problem and bring different perspectives, different tools, and different ways of dealing with it. ... It is not an issue of throwing more money at it. It is an issue of finding new ways to collaborate.