A Statistics Canada report released today, titled Foreign Direct Investment 2012, underlines why the market2world team spends a lot of time with our clients thinking about how our nation can tell a better story to attract more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Consider Canada City Alliance Inc. trilingual Web site - campaign design by market2worl

In the past few months we've publicized a 10-city Consider Canada City Alliance investment and trade mission to China, an Ontario Clean Technology Alliance mission to Germany, an Ontario Technology Corridor mission to Brazil, and an Ontario Food Cluster mission to France.

We also get to celebrate Canadian Foreign Direct Investment results including:

• An initial $10 million investment in an Ottawa technology incubation centre by China's $11 billion Zhongguancun Development Group (ZDG)


• A German pizza-making plant by Dr. Oetker that will create 120 full-time manufacturing jobs and contribute an estimated $26 million a year to the Ontario agri-food industry


• Why world-leading digital media companies like Google, Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Arkadium have set up shop here, attracted by a unqiue Canadian blend of smart people, smart tax incentives and other smart, entrepreneurial companies


• How the right combination of talent, vision and policy has convinced more than 30 renewable energy companies from around the globe to locate or expand in Ontario's 31,000-job, $27 billion (so far) clean technology sector

Today's Statscan report on FDI into Canada underlines two key trends:

1. "While the United States remains by far the largest foreign direct investor in Canada, the past decade has seen a gradual decline in that country's share of direct investment in Canada from 64.9% in 2002 to 51.5% in 2012."

In other words, the push to capture FDI dollars from countries beyond our powerful neighbour to the South is well placed. The megatrend is more globally diversified trade flows. For example, as we pointed out in our April 2013 press release for the Consider Canada City Alliance, with a 2012 total of $21.3 billion, Canada is now the lead country in the world for Chinese outward bound direct investment, outpacing the second place U.S. by $7 billion and more than double Chinese investment in Australia – the country widely perceived as the biggest beneficiary of Chinese investment flows. Oh Canada, not so anymore!

2. "The finance, insurance and management industries also accounted for a significant share of foreign direct investment in Canada with 32.6% of total investment in 2012. The manufacturing sector remained a significant destination of foreign direct investment in 2012 with a 28.7% share, while the mining and oil and gas extraction industry accounting for a further 19.0%."

In other words, while minerals, oil and gas, and other natural resources investments are important, it's our knowledge-based sectors, i.e. our people, not our rocks and bitumen deposits, that are attracting the lion's share of FDI into Canada. 

As one our clients blogged recently, "The question remains, how do we take full value of the potential?" One way is to relentlessly, engagingly and thoroughly tell our story. In other words, market2world!

Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., the public relations and marketing agency for global innovators.)

On Sept. 30th, 2011, I blogged about a new leader in the National Capital Region:

He's the most important CEO in Ottawa right now because he's committed like no one I've met to tear down the little walls and moats that have been building up for several years now to delay what is ours for the taking: To be the best place in Canada to start and grow a knowledge-based business.

That CEO was Bruce Lazenby, hired on to transform the Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation (OCRI) from its staid focus on large ICT companies to a sector-broadened, entrepreneur-focused organization that we rebranded as Invest Ottawa in Feb. of 2012 (Check out market2world's launch video below that shows a business community eager and ready to embrace change): 

Last week the Ottawa Business Journal, a media outlet that wasn't shy about taking OCRI to task for being out of touch, published an article entitled "Invest Ottawa: One year in" by Courtney Symons. Her story noted that whereas 0 startups resided at OCRI, "40 startups reside at the Invest Ottawa offices – 26 early-stage companies with the remainder being students within the Ottawa Young Entrepreneurs program run by Carleton University – and more than 200 firms have accepted services from the agency."

The article also quotes March Networks’ president and CEO Peter Strom, who said: “Their time and resources are better spent trying to help the smaller companies.”

And the numbers in the sidebar to the OBJ's story on Invest Ottawa's progress say it all. Thanks Bruce, to you and your revitalized team. Keep going!

324: Number of companies met with in 2012 (up 92 per cent over 2011)

191: Jobs created by companies to which Invest Ottawa has provided services

6,786: Number of mentoring hours by entrepreneurs-in-residence and advisers

227: Number of knowledge-based companies with which Invest Ottawa is working from its innovation department

220: Number of customized market research reports delivered to Ottawa startups

$5.5 million: Cost of those reports if the startups had acquired them on their own

$39.5 million: Investment dollars attracted by Invest Ottawa innovation clients

225: Number of workshops and seminars delivered to more than 4,800 entrepreneurs in 2012

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., the public relations and product marketing agency for global innovators.)