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Top 100 lists relive past glories, but what we need in B.C. is better intel about the here, now, and soon-to-be.

Top company lists are pretty good indicators of the B.C. economy – of yesterday. We need one that reflects today and tomorrow.

Looking over BCBusiness magazine's top 100 lists, I can't help but think, 1) Yawn, 2) The usual suspects, and 3) Eek, is this how it's going to be forever?

Not to dump on our own lists (or my employer, frankly), but one problem with these kinds of lists – there are several others – is that they're put together by economists who use old measurements to reflect the economy.  

As a result they reflect yesterday's economy instead of tomorrow's.

Let's take our 2010 list as an example: mining, energy, mining, forestry, mining, crown corps or agencies, couple of big retailers or distributors, real estate of course, and.... oh yeah, mining. Seems exactly like a list from 1990 with a few exceptions to spice up the pot a little.   

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. On the contrary, good on these traditional industries for being able to maintain their standing through the recession.

But jeez, I would have liked to have seen some semblance of economic diversity after twenty years of supposed industrial policy to steer us from the 20th century to the 21st.

Yes, there were some exceptions that hinted that this is actually the year 2010. There was the perennial leader, Telus, which operates in telecommunications; the information giant MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA); and, surprisingly, an Aerospace company in the form of CHC Helicopters, which transplanted to B.C. after building a world-class company in Newfoundland.

And if we dig a little deeper than the overall numbers, we see that the biotech company Cardiome led all companies in revenue growth by signing a deal with pharmaceutical giant Merck. It was the largest pharma-licensing deal in Canadian history. The last-biggest deal in Canada was Neuromed, also of B.C. and also licensed by Merck (which seems to see B.C. as biotech farm.) But those are two in a decade, which hardly classifies as an industry.

Also, it's nice to see that cleantech is on the rise in the province, since it's at least an indication that our traditional energy industry is turning to this century's energy supply requirements instead of stubbornly trying to survive on the last breaths of the previous century's practises.

But really, let's face it, the industries that are supposed to diversify us into the knowledge economy – technology, digital media, film, creative, smaller cleantech, sustainability, professional services – are still small potatoes in this measurement game.

While collectively employing thousands, generating billions in revenue and drawing mostly young people who represent the future, the knowledge industries are made up of many small and some medium-sized companies who are unlikely to ever reach the size of the old industrial-style mining and forestry sectors.

They are completely different animals, more concerned with brainpower, independence and lifestyle than they are with employing vast amounts of capital to rip out natural resources and create gigantic revenue numbers.

In other words, the method of measuring the winners and losers (a kind of outdated measure in itself) is wrong.

So maybe there should be some other kind of measure of an economy besides industrial-style raw numbers.

Unfortunately, the economic boffins who handle these things apparently haven't figured out yet how to measure the impact of 21st century industries. 

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  • tony wanless, 
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