CASE STUDY 5: Georgian College Applied Research

Georgian College, with the assistance of Doran Strategic Consulting, are working to develop a 5 year Strategic Plan for Research & Innovation at Georgian College that considers the College's strengths, industry & community connections, economic trends, enrollment projections, and political drivers; and is tied to a larger goal of building a Research and Innovation Zone in Barrie.

The project is being led by Georgian’s Centre for Applied Research and Innovation (CARI) with input from the President’s Office, Executive Team, the Henry Bernick Entrepreneurship Centre (HBEC), faculty & staff; as well as members of the local business and innovation community.

To build the strategic plan, a small set of key activities are being pursued, such as:

1. Assembly and review of foundational information that can be used in decision-making throughout the planning process (e.g. business plans, old strategic plans, best practices reports, government reports, etc.);
2. Stakeholder Consultations with faculty & staff, as well as the community at large. These are being conducted as facilitated workshops designed to extract content to support a new set of strategic goals to be proposed in the 5-year strategic plan.
3. Operational Planning will be done to review and improve Georgian’s research program delivery.
4. Creation of Strategic Goals tied to the College’s Strategic Mandate Agreement with the Province as well as emerging priorities.
5. Establishment of a funding roadmap that outlines the sequence of government grants that the College will apply for to meet the financial goals of the research program.
6. Establishment of Key Performance Metrics that can succinctly measure the performance of Georgian’s research program against the strategic goals.

This work is still in progress. An update to this story will be provided later.