Vancouver’s Ruling Industries

Vancouver’s economy is ruled by retail, resources and real estate. But does this make us less innovative?

Vancouver didn’t quite make the big leagues regarding innovation, according to a recent survey of the world’s cities. But we’re at the top of the minors.

When it comes to economics, Vancouver is a city flush with Re’s; our economy is dominated by three main industries – resources, retail and real estate.

(According to retail consultant and wag David Ian Gray of Dig360 Consulting, reefer should be a fourth on the list to reflect our powerful marijuana growing industry. But dope-growing being illegal, that’s a little hard to measure.)

So we shouldn’t be too upset that Vancouver placed at a mere no. 49 among rankings of 331 cities with the most innovative cultures, as decided by the Innovation Cities Global Index put out annually by Australia-based research firm 2thinknow.

Apparently, except for that marijuana thing, we still are buoyed by the same economic pillars we had roughly 100 years ago.

That’s not to say we’re completely nowheresville in terms of climbing aboard the new innovation – or knowledge – economy. We’ve certainly improved from our 75th-place ranking last year.

According to 2thinknow, this was because we’re getting better at the things that count in terms of innovation ability – cultural assets, human infrastructure and networked markets.

But we’re still not there yet. We apparently have diverse cultural assets – presumably because we have so many cultures – and a “balanced” networked markets score (don’t ask me what that means, I don’t know either).

But we’re lower in the human infrastructure category. I didn’t know humans had an infrastructure, so I take this to mean our residents aren’t quite educated in the right areas to spur innovation pursuit. On the other hand, it could mean our brains aren’t wired the right way to think innovatively.

They’re probably right in that. (See the “Re” analysis of our economy above). Too much human infrastructure in resources, retail and real estate, and not enough in innovation – which is the combination of disparate knowledge areas to create something new, different and – especially – useful. (By that score, cultivating marijuana might classify as a “knowledge” business – it’s certainly innovative.)

Whatever, we’re listed as a “hub” city, which is a kind of farm team for the top guns of innovation – the “nexus” cities.

There might be a chance for Vancouver to make the jump to the big leagues soon, however. Unfortunately, it won’t be because we are suddenly going to become more innovative.

Mostly, it will be because of our proximity to Seattle, which came in at 25 and is one of 33 nexus cities in the world.

As the U.S. economy improves – when, is anybody’s bet – Vancouver’s huge cohort of small and medium businesses will benefit from the growth of Seattle megacorps like Microsoft, Boeing and Starbucks.