A big thanks to my colleague Chris Burns of Kwantlen for the heads-up about this cool resource:

The U of T has just made a customized tabulation of Canadian Business Patterns freely available for web-download.

They special-ordered 2007-2011 data broken down at the Dissemination Area (DA) level, as opposed to the CMA (Census Metropolitan Area) level available in the standard CBP product.

Establishment counts for each DA are available by 6-digit NAICS code, or number of employees (in groupings). DA's typically have 400-700 residents.

Tables are in Beyond 20/20 format. Download Beyond 20/20 software [free, Windows only, 19.8 MB]

Need to find the numbers of specific dissemination areas (DAs) to make sense of the data in this product? Start with the Reference Maps at the Statistics Canada site.

When you think of innovation, do iPads or copper mines come to mind? Blackberries or sawmills?

According to a recent paper by Dr. Richard Hawkins, Canada Research Chair in the Social Context of Technology at the University of Calgary, (and former SFU BA + MA student), Canada's innovation measures, policies, and strategies are all geared toward tech products when our current and future prosperity are largely reliant on innovation in our resource industries.

Hawkins' paper can be downloaded via the site of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa:

Looking at Innovation from a Uniquely Canadian Perspective: The Case for a New Alliance of Practice, Policy and Scholarship

See also the somewhat shorter University Affairs article about the paper:

Resource industries should be central to Canada's innovation policy

As you may have noticed, the regular announcements from the Bank of Canada's Mark Carney on what will happen to our interest rates invariably talk about "business and consumer confidence" measures.

I thought perhaps some of you would be interested in seeing the actual data behind such measures. SFU's ThomsonOne-Investment Banking database provides several time series on this topic:

• Canadian Federation of Independent Business Business Surveys by province and industry

• The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) jointly sponsored by the Ivey School of Business and the Purchasing Management Association of Canada

• The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey

• The Consumer Confidence Index by Decima Research (with detailed breakdowns by income, age, province, etc.)

• Canada's Country-Specific Index as part of the Ipsos/Reuters Global Consumer Economic Assessment (GCEA) survey.

• The OECD's Consumer Confidence Indicator for Canada

T1-IB can be a tricky database to use. If you are interested in finding this sort of thing, start with the following search path in the database:

Datastream (bottom left corner) > Navigator > Explore > Economics > National Sources > Canada > then Surveys & Cyclical Indexes

Contact your librarian if you would like to chat about such searches: Mark - Business: mbodnar@sfu.ca & Jennifer - Economics: jlbancro@sfu.ca

SFU Library has started a trial Statista, a source that offers "statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on over 600 industries."

Although some of the info in Statista is available for free, the subscription version offers a much larger pool of data, as well as

• the ability to download graphs in jpg, ppt, xls formats;
• access to a database of studies and reports; and
• links to original sources

Statista makes use of over 10,000 sources, a few examples of which include the Business Software Alliance, the Convention Industry Council, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

This is a bit of an odd source, so you may need to explore it to get a good idea of what it offers. However, here are a few examples of stats and reports that caught my eye:

• Survey - Use of cloud-based brands by gender in the U.S.

• National Hockey League venue construction / renovation costs by stadium from 1991 to 2010 (in million U.S. dollars)

• Global market share: Statistics and facts

Notes:

1. This trial will end on May 2nd.
2. Please send feedback to Walter Piovesan [ walter@sfu.ca ] or Mark Bodnar [ mbodnar@sfu.ca ]. I'm particularly interested in how you feel it compares to the Market Share Reporter.

When better to talk about Work Motivation resources than on a sunny spring Friday morning when motivation can be, well, somewhat lacking...

I just noticed that an updated edition of Latham's "Work motivation : history, theory, research, and practice" has arrived in the SFU Library.

From the publisher:

This book...

• Includes anecdotes about and from the major thought leaders in the field of motivation: Personal insights from and about leading personalities in the field of motivation such as Bandura, Frese, Hough, Judge, Kanfer, Lawler, Locke, Pinder, Rousseau, and Vroom make the material come alive. Behind-the-scenes accounts of research and the researchers who conducted studies in North America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe are addressed.

• Offers a chronological review of the research on and theories of motivation in the workplace: Written in a meaningful and memorable style, a comprehensive treatment of work motivation is given from the end of the 19th century to the present.

If this is the sort of information you need, you might also try...

• Employee motivation as a subject in the SFU Library catalogue
• Employee motivation as a subject in Business Source Complete

OK - now stop looking out the window and get back to work! :-)