What intangible assets, artificial intelligence, data centres and crisis teach us about managing change.

Throughout September, the KEI Network’s In Search of the Future Economy series examined intangible assets, Canada’s adoption of artificial intelligence, the expansion of data centres and the challenge of managing change. They are different issues, but parts of the same economic transition. Canada’s economy is changing faster than many of the institutions designed to measure, finance and regulate it. Much of what now creates value cannot be touched, yet supposedly weightless digital systems require electricity, water, land, security and community support. The central question is whether Canada can recognize change early enough to turn disruption into opportunity. Continued below

Last week’s Podcast Recordings:

AI, Data Centres and Trouble Ahead HERE

Continued from above

The economy changed before our measurements did. Accounting systems were designed largely for an industrial economy of factories, machinery, buildings and inventories. Those assets remain important, but modern value increasingly resides in software, data, intellectual property, customer relationships, organizational capability, employee knowledge and trust.

This matters particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises. A company may own relatively little physical equipment while possessing years of specialized knowledge, loyal customers, proprietary processes and employees capable of solving problems competitors cannot. When those capabilities are poorly reflected in conventional financial statements, an economically valuable business can still struggle to obtain financing. We continue, in effect, to ask knowledge enterprises for the collateral of industrial enterprises.

Valuing intangibles requires judgment, but accounting already estimates depreciation, pensions, impairment and liabilities. The challenge is developing transparent and auditable methods that allow lenders, investors and governments to recognize more of the value driving the modern economy. This illustrates the first lesson in change management: institutions created to provide stability can become obstacles when the world for which they were designed changes.

AI is a management challenge. Canada helped pioneer modern AI, but business adoption remains uneven. Statistics Canada reported that 19.2 per cent of businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services during the 12 months preceding its second-quarter 2026 survey, up from 6.1 per cent two years earlier. That rapid increase does not make AI simply a technology issue; it is also a management challenge.

Businesses do not transform because they buy software. Transformation occurs when people redesign work, learn where technology adds value and retain responsibility for important decisions. An AI pilot that ignores workflow, accountability and trust is a demonstration, not a transformation. Successfuladoption begins with a defined problem and asks how technology can strengthen human capability.

Chambers of commerce, educational institutions and trusted advisers have an important role.SMEs need practical examples, opportunities to experiment, guidance on data and privacy, training and access to financing. Change often travels more successfully through trusted relationships than through directives.

The cloud has a physical address. AI also leads us to the infrastructure that sustains it. The cloud does not float above geography; it resides in data centres connected to power generation, transmission lines, cooling systems, water supplies, fibre networks and communities.

Data centres will be part of Canada’s digital infrastructure, but their benefits and costs require scrutiny. Construction investment can be substantial while permanent employment may be comparatively modest. Electricity and water demands are local even when customers and owners are elsewhere. The issue, therefore, is not simply whether communities should accept or reject data centres, but what conditions should govern their development.

Communities can reasonably ask who pays for new infrastructure, how water and electricity will be managed, how Canadian data will be protected and what lasting economic benefits remain locally. The future economy may be increasingly intangible in what it produces, but it will never be weightless. Digital ambition without physical planning cannot provide a sustainable economic strategy.

When frustration challenges institutions. Necessary change often proceeds slowly because costs are immediate while benefits may lie years ahead. Institutions have rules, investments, professional practices and constituencies built around existing arrangements. When problems persist without satisfactory resolution, frustration can increase support for alternatives previously outside mainstream debate. The important question is not whetherevery proposedalternative is desirable, but why established processes have failed to resolve the underlying concerns.

Canada-U.S. relations offer one example of changing assumptions. Tariffs and disputes affecting Canadian industries have encouraged renewed discussion about markets, supply chains, defence capacity and economic resilience. Similar pressures exist within Canada. In Alberta, disagreements over energy policy, fiscal arrangements, regional representation and provincial powers have contributed to debate over the province’s future within Confederation.

On Oct. 19, Albertans are scheduled to vote on a non-binding referendum question offering two choices: remain a province of Canada, or direct the Alberta government to begin the legal process required to hold a future binding referendum on separation. The Oct. 19 vote is therefore not itself a vote to separate. Whatever the result, the debate demonstrates the importance of institutions capable of hearing grievances, testing competing arguments and responding through democratic processes. Managing change is not merely an organizational skill; it can become a requirement of social cohesion.

Crisis, experience and resilience. History shows that crisis can overcome resistance to change. COVID-19 compressed years of organizational experimentation into months as businesses changed supply chains, employees moved online and governments rapidly redesigned services. Crisis should not be romanticized because it damages livelihoods, confidence, health and lives, but it often exposesweaknesses that prosperity and habit allowed institutions to overlook.

Canada now faces several pressures at once: geopolitical uncertainty, vulnerable supply chains, productivity challenges, an ageing population, strained infrastructure, rapid AI development and growing competition for energy, data and critical minerals. These pressures connect directly to The Lost Commons: Human Relevance Under Siege. When machines can retrieve information and generate alternatives at extraordinary speed, possessing information is no longer enough. Human value increasingly lies in what we do with knowledge: exercising judgment, accepting responsibility, learning from experience and deciding which objectives are worth pursuing.

AI can identify options, but people and their institutions remain responsible for deciding whose interests should be served, what risks are acceptable and what consequences society is prepared to bear. Human experience, trust and judgment are therefore economic assets rather than leftovers from a pre-digital age.

Change before crisis chooses for us. Canada does not lack assets. It has energy, resources, educated people, research capacity, entrepreneurial SMEs and strong institutions. The challenge is connecting and mobilizing them quickly enough. Accounting needs to recognize modern sources of value. Finance needs to consider capability as well as collateral. Businesses need to treat AI as organizational change rather than merely a software purchase. Data-centre development needs to consider power, water, infrastructure, sovereignty and community benefit.

Most importantly, Canada needs places where businesses, researchers, workers, investors, governments and citizens can examine competing interests without treating disagreement as disloyalty. That is why a commons still matters. It does not eliminate conflict; it provides a place where conflict can become learning rather than paralysis.

Our task is to convert warning into preparation. If Canada recognizes modern value, invests in human capability, builds infrastructure on transparent terms, addresses legitimate grievances and learns from experience, disruption can become an opportunity for renewal. Otherwise, change will still come, but increasingly on terms we did not choose. The future economy will not wait, and the question is whether Canada will manage the transition while it still has the opportunity to shape it.