This past week at Collision Toronto, Canada unveiled a new "Tech Talent Strategy" that includes a number of initiatives designed to attract more human capital across the science, technology, engineering, and math sectors. (Sidebar: The STEM sectors are great, but I'm really a fan of STEAM.)

At a high level, these measures are intended to continue to grow Canada as a hub for global tech talent. So they cover things like promoting Canada as a destination for digital nomads, improving the Start-up Visa Program, and dunking on US immigration policies by creating an open work permit stream for H-1B specialty occupation visa holders.

Overall, it seems great.

But there are people who are concerned about the pace of immigration in Canada. Over the past year (ending in Q2-2023), the country added about 1.2 million people. This is a record. And perhaps the greatest concern, is that we simply aren't building enough housing and related infrastructure.

But I don't get this logic. Canada is a relatively small country. Attracting smart and ambitious people from around the world is good for us. And there are simple ways to address these concerns: build more housing and related infrastructure. I'm pretty sure that we can figure out how to do that.

This morning I came across two news item that are interesting in their own right, but also have a noteworthy relationship.

$AAPL now has a market cap that exceeds $1 trillion. And not surprisingly, everyone, from the New York Times to Bloomberg (photo essay), is talking about it.

But the one thing that continues to stand out for me about this story is what Steve Jobs said back in 2011 when he unveiled iPad 2.

He said that fundamental to Apple’s DNA is its ability to marry technology with the liberal arts and the humanities. Its secret sauce is not technology alone.

Now let’s move on to the second piece of news that caught my attention.

As of 2017, less than 5% of college and university students in the US were studying one of the big four humanities majors – a sharp cliff-like drop from 2011 according to this data.

That’s almost certainly because business degrees and STEM degrees are thought to be more valuable and in demand in the labor market. And I’m sure they are right out of school.

But perhaps we shouldn’t forget Apple’s trillion dollar lesson. And I think this goes for both the tech space and the real estate industry, as well as others.

John Maeda – Design Partner at venture capital firm KPCB – recently published the second and 2016 edition of his #DesignInTech Report. I shared his first one almost exactly a year ago. His core thesis is that we are heading towards a world where technology, business, and design become closely integrated – in school, in business, and so on. Throughout the report he looks at the increasing impact that design and designers are having within the startup ecosystem. Here are a few verbatim bullet points: - Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results. - 36% of the top 25 funded startups are co-founded by designers, up from 20% in 2015. - The general word “design” will come to mean less as we will start to qualify the specific kind of design we mean. - Currently design education lags the technology industry’s needs for data-oriented, coding enabled graduates with business acumen. - We must consciously invest in education to develop a more hybrid perspective on creativity in the 21st century: Technology x Business x Design. - President Obama’s signing of ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) into law in 2015 is a positive sign: by turning STEM into STEAM (adding Art) in K-12 education as a US priority. As somebody who studied design (architecture), business, and computer science (briefly, before switching to architecture), I probably have a bit of a biased view here. But to the extent that I can be objective, I really see this as the future. I am a big supporter of the transformation from STEM to STEAM. Below is a quote that Maeda uses to end his report, which I will also use to end this post:

“Engineers are efficient problem solvers. Business people think short term. Designer want things to be elegant and beautiful. All three need to create collaboration and harmony, and honor the value each other brings. There needs to be a new kind of ‘multi-dimensional’ approach to design that is yet to be invented.” –Linda Holliday