LinkedIn is no longer just about networking or pleasantly sharing accomplishments – it’s at risk of becoming just another place for clickbait. More on that below, including a few words on the words we use to talk about the economy. But first:
In the news
Black entrepreneurship: Federal funding programs that support Black-led business are set to expire in the spring. Dominique Gené and Chris Hannay report on calls from business groups to make those funding streams permanent.
Reality check: Canada is unlikely to meet its goal of exporting hydrogen to Germany by 2025 due to a supply-demand mismatch and decades-high inflation levels, Irene Galea reports from Berlin.
Oil market fears: Expanding conflict in the Middle East has rattled global oil markets, though ample supply has so far helped stabilize prices. Brent Jang and Emma Graney write about how potential Israeli attacks on Iran’s oil production sites could change the picture.
On our radar
- Canada’s job numbers for September on Friday will feed into the Bank of Canada’s interest rate decision on Oct. 23.
- U.S. bank earnings season also launches on Friday, with JPMorgan and Wells Fargo up first.
In focus
(But please do not unfollow me on LinkedIn.)
I have a love/hate relationship with LinkedIn, and I think it’s Canada’s fault.
Let me explain.
For most of my career, LinkedIn was a useful way to find news. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I even considered using the platform to share it.
After more than a decade in journalism, my life brought me into roles where it made sense to see the networking site in a new light: as a platform to reach smart and engaged audiences with the news and views of organizations I was fortunate enough to support. It was a place I could reliably visit and be free from the toxicity of Twitter and the oppressive perfection of Facebook and Instagram.
But as Tim Kiladze wrote in this weekend’s cover story, even that relative peace is at risk. Users post under their real names and openly identify where they work, but the platform’s tone and content are still changing: “LinkedIn’s no longer just about networking or pleasantly sharing accomplishments,” Kiladze writes. ”It’s at risk of becoming just another place for clickbait and, sometimes, unhinged rants and accusations.”
I would add “destructive thought leadership” to that list.
I want to be clear that I don’t think the idea of companies highlighting how their expertise is relevant to the issues of the day is a bad thing. In various roles, I encouraged it, and still would. What I’m talking about are the posts that throw around words like innovation, productivity and competitiveness like so much rice on newlyweds.
Which brings me to why I blame Canada – its policy makers and business leaders, to be precise – for my stormy affair with LinkedIn.
In many ways, the platform is a microcosm of a wider paradox: Those decision makers know the country is facing urgent economic challenges, but the very words they’ve used to talk about those problems are losing their meaning. In a recent piece on Canada’s productivity crisis, Dan Breznitz, the Munk Chair of Innovation Studies at the University of Toronto, unpacks why it’s imperative for the country to fix its innovation failure. But did your eyes glaze over when you read the words “Canada’s productivity crisis” or “innovation” just now?
That’s not your fault. “By now, not only have people tuned out, but we cannot even talk about what needs to be done,” Breznitz told me. “We ruined the words we use to talk about it.”
In 2015, Justin Trudeau overcame a suggestion that the Liberal Party would grow the economy from the “heart outwards,” but recent polling on economic issues shows he might not have gained much ground in communicating his plans. Innovation is central to them, we know, but the first two “key actions” the party lists since winning that year are plans to make plans:
- “Brought in the country’s first-ever innovation and skills plan.”
- “Introduced the first-ever national Intellectual Property Strategy.”
Before Trudeau, there was Stephen Harper. And though he lost that election, it wasn’t for a difference of opinion over innovation. One section of the Conservative Party’s “Seizing Canada’s Moment” campaign was a focus on solving the issue “by helping to bring new ideas and knowledge to market in a variety of ways, including by stimulating more demand for innovation from firms of all sizes and encouraging more innovation-focused business strategies.” Sounds good!
Wait, what?
The devaluation of words isn’t just a problem on Parliament Hill. Bay Street often calls out Canada’s lack of productivity while showing little evidence they’re spending on growth. So when, say, Bank of Canada officials attempt to address these problems in relatively plain terms, the words might be falling on innovation-immune ears.
Psychologists might call this “semantic satiation,” a phenomenon in which repetition turns a word into meaningless sounds. A confession: As a journalist and communicator, I’ve typed the words “productivity crisis” and “innovation challenge” so often that I might be part of the problem. I hear them and my first thoughts are of cumulus clouds.
On LinkedIn, Kiladze writes, promotional corporate content is a growing feature on news feeds. The “key takeaways” posts from CEOs that follow speeches or fireside chats, for example – “usually written by someone in the communications department” – often underscore the need to boost Canada’s ability to innovate.
But what does that look like? All too often, that leader behind a lectern.
And what does that look like in Canada?
So it is with a mixture of interest and trepidation that I navigate to LinkedIn these days, for fear of catching out someone disguising their trip to Hawaii as a way to talk about a company’s unique position at the intersection of innovation and productivity. It leaves me with the same foggy feeling I get when political leaders talk about Canada’s “unique” position to compete on a global stage ... somehow. Maybe with our heart outwards. Maybe by “encouraging more innovation-focused business strategies.”
A gentle suggestion: Tell us what your company has done. Show us what your party’s innovation plans have created. And if LinkedIn reaches a point where anonymous hobgoblins are allowed to meet those genuine ideas with hateful, unhinged rants, maybe I’ll finally complete my full retreat to email: cws@globeandmail.com.
(But please follow me on LinkedIn.)
Views
Reguly: Lebanon’s economy was in dire shape even before the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Rapley: Rumours of China’s economic resurgence are greatly exaggerated.
Keller: The economic cost of ‘free’ roads is high. The political benefits are higher.
Charted
Top banks for equity financing underwriting
Y2K was still a major concern for Bay Street the last time quarterly stock sales were this bad, Jameson Berkow reports. The total value of new stock sales by Canadian companies from July through September fell 74 per cent to $1.8-billion from $6.8-billion year-over-year, according to data from LESG Data & Analytics released Friday. That is the lowest total for any quarter since 1998.
Morning markets
Global markets were mixed as traders assessed recent U.S. jobs data and fears over tensions in the Middle East sent oil prices higher.
Futures were down on Wall Street and the TSX.
The Canadian dollar traded at 73.59 U.S. cents.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was slightly down in afternoon trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.44 per cent, Germany’s DAX lost 0.28 per cent and France’s CAC 40 was up 0.044 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.80 per cent after the yen sank against the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1.60 per cent.