The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), a business lobby group focused on fast-growing technology firms, is launching a new program aimed at growing the pool of innovation-economy-ready directors by training current and aspiring corporate board members on IP, data and cybersecurity. Here’s what you need to know.

The backstory: Over the last year, several firms have come to CCI seeking recommendations for directors, said executive director Benjamin Bergen. The group cast a net within its pool of 145 members to build a list of executives who’d be interested. But it identified knowledge and demographic gaps. 

The course: The six-week, 10-session Innovation Governance Program will give participants “a further understanding of the intangible economy,” focusing on IP, cybersecurity and data, said Bergen. They’ll also be instructed on compliance, finance and capital investment. Federal government agencies including the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Export Development Canada (EDC) and Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), as well as professional association CPA Ontario are sponsoring the initial cohort, for whom participation will be free. 

Graduates will then be added to CCI’s list, which the organization says is also designed to bring more women, members of visible-minority communities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities into contention for board seats. CCI hasn’t set any targets for representation in its cohort, and won’t require them of firms that want to use its referral service. But Bergen said it has asked BDC, EDC and SDTC to invite staff to participate in the IGP, “as a way to try and help with the diversity and inclusion piece.” 

The training: “Boards are starting to hear more about how they’re going to be held accountable” if there’s a data breach “and how security is important,” said Melinda Coultar, COO of Toronto-based Cycura, which will facilitate that portion of the program. Directors tend to focus on costs, legal counsel and insurance rather than ensuring management has a security strategy in place, according to Coultar and CEO Iain Paterson. 

“Resources is one of the core things that we talk about when we’re doing the board-level training,” said Paterson. Cybersecurity costs “are probably going to seem, to a board, alien and excessive” without the proper context. 

The Innovation Asset Collective, a federally funded non-profit focused on helping cleantech startups generate and use patents, will deliver the data and IP portions of the program; it shares board chair Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry), with CCI.

Bergen hopes the program will also build links across the country’s innovation economy, as scale-up executives take seats on peer firms’ boards. “There’s been, over the last number of years, a real north-south pole” between the U.S. and Canada, he said. The program is an effort to “begin creating some east-west connections for Canadian companies.”