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President’s Message
Serendipitous Circumstances
The Toronto region is a great home
for a global university
THROUGH THE CENTURIES, universities and their towns or cities
have sometimes progressed in parallel, and sometimes
not. The University of Toronto has been very lucky in this
geographic lottery, and continues to benefit from the development
of the Toronto metropolitan region.
Regional growth has yielded an outstanding and everexpanding
pool of local applicants. It also drove the creation
of our east and west campuses in the 1960s, leading in turn
to more choices for our students and U of T’s unique
regional academic system. The arrival of an extraordinary
number of immigrants has made our campuses a diverse
mirror of the region and the world. Moreover, we’ve benefited
from partnerships with outstanding hospitals, cultural
institutions, municipalities, social agencies and a huge array
of investor-owned and non-profit enterprises alike.
These regional opportunities – academic and otherwise –
and the diversity of the region have helped the university
attract faculty, staff and students from across Canada and
around the world. In turn, the university’s global prominence
arguably adds lustre to the metropolitan Toronto region.
Synergy between academic institutions and their regions
is nothing new. We see it, for example, in the emergence of
Silicon Valley. Students and faculty at Stanford and Berkeley
are certainly part of that success story. Perhaps surprisingly,
Toronto has also emerged as a globally recognized innovation
hub. The region places fourth in the OECD for entrepreneurship,
and recently was ranked fourth worldwide for startups
in information and communications technology. It hasn’t
hurt one bit to have three U of T campuses in the region. In
2011 alone, the university itself spawned 25 new companies.
And thousands of our remarkable alumni throughout the
region are leaders in the Toronto startup revolution.
This spring, addressing the Toronto Board of Trade,
I acknowledged our geographic good fortune and shared
some evidence of it. Among the statistics: Toronto is the
third-largest financial and digital media centre and the
fourth-largest health sciences and biotechnology cluster in
North America. Furthermore, even a conservative estimate
shows that the Toronto region contributes more to Canada’s
GDP in percentage terms than what New York, Chicago and
Boston combined contribute to the United States’ GDP.
But those numbers are only part of a larger and more
complex story. The Toronto region’s outsized clout reflects
consistent multi-sector strength. And that strength doesn’t
simply add up. Through cross-sector convergence, it has
multiplicative or synergistic effects.
The Toronto design sector – the third-largest in North
America – provides a telling example. More than 28,000
designers work in the region. The design sector depends
on strengths in information and communications technology,
marketing and advertising, product development,
and the creative and cultural industries. And of course, great
design drives success in these areas. Once again, it’s about
convergence.
The same could be said of your university. As I’ve written
elsewhere, Toronto is one of a handful of universities in
the world consistently ranked as top-tier across all major
disciplines. This characteristic – coupled with the curiosity
and creativity of our faculty and students – facilitates interdisciplinary
synergy. It’s a terrific asset for education as
well as scholarship and research.
How can the University of Toronto amplify this success
In my view, we need to build more national and international
networks. Regions and institutions are only as good
as their partners. This is part of a modern Copernican
revolution: away from the zero-sum game of “brain drain”
versus “brain gain,” and into the new world of “brain chains”
– interlocking jurisdictions that are stronger together. It’s
multiplicative convergence again: this time in terms of populations,
cultures and perspectives. And in this task, we
are extraordinarily fortunate to have a distinguished alumni
community stretching from sea to sea to sea in Canada,
and spanning over 170 countries around the world.
There are different versions of the old tale of the three
princes of Serendip. What the versions have in common are
the importance of the princes’ education, a narrative of
travel and return, and the enduring influence on human
affairs of simple good fortune. We truly have serendipitous
circumstances – and hope that, wherever you live or travel,
you will continue to regard the University of Toronto’s three
campuses as a second home.
Sincerely,
David Naylor
6 www.magazine.utoronto.ca PHOTO: © 2011 GUSTAVO TOLEDO PHOTOGRAPHY