News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dan Breznitz awarded Balsillie Prize for Public Policy
IPL Co-director and University of Toronto University Professor Dan Breznitz has been awarded the Balsille Prize for Public Policy by the Writers’ Trust of Canada for his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, published by Oxford University Press.
David Wolfe nominated to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies
IPL Co-director David Wolfe was recently nominated to serve on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies. The role of the Scientific Advisory Committee is to advise the CCA’s Board on assessment topics, expert panel composition, and peer review.
RESEARCH
Nathan Lemphers, Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann, & David A. Wolfe, Energy Research & Social Science
In the media, Norway, California, and Québec are widely acknowledged as innovative leaders in transportation electrification. Yet, what does leadership mean and how did these jurisdictions achieve it? We contend that leadership reflects both intentional forethought through early, experimental and innovative policy to promote electric vehicles and the on-the-ground successful outcomes of these policies. All three jurisdictions have embarked on different leadership paths. We argue that these differences are a function of how electromobility policy entrepreneurs engaged unique pre-existing local assets and activated similar political mechanisms of normalization, coalition building and capacity building. When policy actors harness mutually reinforcing political and industrial dynamics, electric vehicle policies can scale up. Eventually, these dynamics may lead to new industrial path development and the decarbonization of the transportation sector.
Into the Scale-up-verse: Exploring the landscape of Canada’s high-performing firms
Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
Scale-ups, or high-growth firms, are responsible for the vast majority of productivity growth in Canada, making them an immensely powerful tool in the pursuit of Canada’s long-term economic stability and prosperity. However, only 1 in 100 young firms reach scale-up status within their first ten years. How can we harness, support, and amplify the power of scale-ups and their contributions to the Canadian economy? A collaboration between the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, this new study, Into the Scale-up-verse, takes the first step toward better equipping policymakers to support the success of Canadian firms by unpacking the complexity and nuance in Canada’s diverse scale-up universe. The research was initiated and funded by Delvinia in partnership with Mitacs and the IPL, and conducted jointly with BII&E. The report analyzes the most recent and detailed data set concerning Canadian business dynamics to provide a novel and comprehensive guide for those in a position—such as academic researchers, industry players, and government policymakers—to design supportive economic policy and facilitate productive conversations about Canada’s scale-ups.
What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz leads a forum in a new edited volume focused on how local economic development might foster long-term, inclusive prosperity. Dan argues that in today’s world of globally fragmented production and dominating high-tech clusters, efforts to duplicate silicon valley don’t raise all boats. To generate local, inclusive prosperity, cities must think beyond tech accelerators and science parks and instead embrace a wider range of innovation strategies. This forum is part of a new Boston Review book titled Public Purpose: Industrial Policy’s Comeback and Government’s Role in Shared Prosperity. The book’s other forum is led by economist Mariana Mazzucato and articulates an industrial policy agenda organized around ambitious, cross-sector “missions,” designed around important national goals. The authors in this volume collectively argue for “putting public purpose at the center of our politics and policy.” Excerpts from the authors participating in Mariana Mazzucato’s forum are available online here.
Editor's Pick
A Framework and Databases for Measuring Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
Evan Johnson, Iman Hemmatian, Lauren Lanahan, & Amol Joshi, Research Policy
Scholarly literature on the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has increased sharply over the past five years. The surge in interest has also heightened the demand for robust empirical measures that capture the complexity of dynamic relationships among ecosystem constituents. The authors offer a framework for measurement that places collaborative relationships among entrepreneurs, firms, government agencies, and research institutions at the center of the ecosystem concept. They further emphasize the four roles of the federal government as a catalyst, coordinator, certifier, and customer in shaping these relationships. Despite the central importance of these firm-government interactions, there is surprisingly little research on suitable methodologies and appropriate data for systematically and reliably incorporating them into measures of ecosystem health. The study aims to address this gap in the literature by first developing a conceptual framework for measuring entrepreneurial ecosystems and then describing an array of accompanying databases that provide rich and detailed information on firms and their relationships with government organizations, accelerators, and research institutions. A major advantage of the approach is that all the underlying databases are drawn from non-confidential, publicly available sources that are transparently disclosed and regularly updated. This greatly expands the potential community of scholars, managers, and policymakers that may independently use these databases to test theories, make decisions, and formulate policies related to innovation and entrepreneurship.
Cities & Regions
Regional innovation and the retention of foreign direct investment: a place-based approach
Ryan W. Tang & Andrew Beer, Regional Studies
The relationship between regional innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been extensively examined, but the impact of regional innovation on FDI retention has received scant attention. Drawing on the logic of place-based approaches, the paper investigates this impact by conducting survival analyses on data collected across 31 provinces of China. The authors find that regional technician supply (RTS) and regional intellectual property flexibility (RIPF) help regions retain foreign ventures. However, RTS is less likely to retain the foreign investments of multinational enterprises with large research and development expenditure, while RIPF is more likely to retain them. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
Statistics
Business innovation and growth support, 2019
Statistics Canada
The Canadian federal government manages programs that offer Business Innovation and Growth Support (BIGS) through its departments and agencies. These government programs provide financial and service-based support for innovation and growth to for-profit businesses and not-for-profit organizations such as government organizations and educational institutions. The BIGS data supports program evaluation, assists with statistical analysis on the impact of innovation programs and provides a better understanding of the characteristics of the enterprises receiving support. In 2019, similarly to 2018, small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for the vast majority of BIGS beneficiaries. Enterprises having annual revenues of $2 million or more received over two-thirds of the total value of federal support.
Spending on research and development in the higher education sector, 2019/2020
Statistics Canada
Research and development (R&D) expenditures in the higher education sector in Canada increased 4.6% from 2018/2019 to $15.8 billion in 2019/2020. This was the 10th consecutive annual gain. R&D spending rose across all funding sectors in 2019/2020, though the increase in spending for each sector was less than what occurred in the preceding year. The largest amount of funding for higher education R&D came internally from the higher education sector itself. Their R&D funding increased by $303.0 million (+4.1%), a small decline from the $312.4 million increase that occurred in 2018/2019 (+4.4%). The federal government sector, the next largest funder of higher education, R&D experienced a similar change, with spending rising by $202.7 million in 2019/2020 (+5.7%), which is down slightly from the $255.7 million increase realized in 2018/2019 (+7.7%).
Researchers ask: Can Canada keep up in the race for R&D leadership?
Richard L. Hudson, Science|Business
This article summarizes recent policy commitments in the context of Canada’s performance in R&D spending. The author notes that from a peak of 2.02% of gross domestic product in 2001, Canadian spending on R&D tumbled to a low of 1.59% in 2019, as successive governments redirected funding to other national priorities. In 2020 the percentage climbed to 1.7% of GDP, as three years of Trudeau’s expanded R&D budgets started registering. But that ranks Canada just on a par with the underperforming UK, and well below the 3.19% of Germany, 3.07% of the US, or 2.23% of China, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Innovation Policy
New DOE clean energy office to oversee $20B in investments, new tech developments
SSTI
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the establishment of a new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations that will support projects in areas including clean hydrogen, carbon capture, grid-scale energy storage, small modular reactors, and more. The recently-signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $21.5 billion in funding for the office’s administration and projects through 2026. In a press release making the announcement, Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said the new office will “move clean energy technologies out of the lab and into local and regional economies across the country, proving the value of technologies that can deliver for communities, businesses, and markets.”
Four Principles for Orchestrating Innovation Ecosystems
Jack Orlik, OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation
Last year marked the launch of the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation’s (OPSI) collaboration with the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) to explore how innovation ecosystems can be steered and enhanced through the application of anticipatory innovation governance approaches. Towards the end of 2021, OPSI hosted an online event as part of OPSI’s H2020 work which brought experts from Latvia, Finland and the UK together with global practitioners to discuss the challenges and opportunities of establishing anticipatory innovation ecosystems. The event revealed four principles for ecosystem orchestration: 1) Coordination in innovation ecosystems must be orchestrated, not imposed; 2) Potential ecosystem partners must be met on their terms; 3) Trust is the cornerstone of successful innovation ecosystems; and 4) Evidence-based adaptation is key to maintaining direction.
Policy Digest
Buying Better: Leveraging federal procurement to drive demand for Canadian cleantech
Smart Prosperity Institute
With the objective of understanding ways in which federal procurement practices can be adapted to increase cleantech procurement, this report evaluates the rules and regulations, policy actors, and processes that define Canada’s federal procurement ecosystem. This analysis reveals certain systems-level characteristics of the federal procurement system, and identifies specific practice-level, process-centric bottlenecks inhibiting federal cleantech procurement. This report focuses on how the processes surrounding federal procurement can be optimized, and considers practical ways in which existing federal procurement systems and administrative capacities can be adapted to increase procurement of cleantech and environmentally preferable goods and services. Additionally, the policy solutions featured in this report are not aimed at achieving mass systems change or overhauling the entire procurement system. Instead, this report looks at what changes or policy tweaks can be implemented right away to overcome bottlenecks inhibiting change within federal cleantech procurement purchasing processes in time to support Canada’s 2030 climate targets.
Recommendation 1: Extend current government pilot support programs to offer commercialization assistance to cleantech companies.
The federal government has some programs in place to help cleantech companies prototype and test their innovations. Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC), for example, currently buys pre-commercial goods and services and tests them in a real-world setting. However, even when a pilot has successfully been executed and the need is established, there is no direct or standard pathway to commercial contracting for these companies. ISC was explicitly meant to be modelled after the United States’ Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. By incorporating commercialization support as standard practice and setting aside resources to the same, ISC will be better placed to replicate SBIR’s success.
Recommendation 2: Create a buyers group open to adopting cleantech post pilot testing
A buyers group, akin to the Coordinated Access National (CAN) Health Network, can bridge the gap between piloting and commercialization that cleantech companies face. The buyers group should be composed of federal departments and agencies wanting to solve a problem with a cleantech solution, but also interested in testing the technology before committing to a commercial contract. This would create an integrated market of buyers who have the budget and the intention to procure innovative technologies, would allow individual departments share the risk of innovative procurement, and would expedite the procurement process. A potential starting point for the buyers group to identify problems that could be remedied with cleantech solutions would be the 23 line items Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) has identified as accounting for close to 58% of its total carbon footprint.
Recommendation 3: Timely revision of bid language through feedback channels between federal departments that run cleantech piloting programs and procuring departments
A dedicated team which would act as the innovation knowledge center could assist in the timely revision of bid language. The innovation knowledge center would collaborate with ISC, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), and other federal actors to learn about cleantech that are available, with an emphasis on technologies with clear use cases that have already had a successful pilot phase with the government (this mandate could later be expanded). It would then translate these learnings into readily usable bid terms and technical specifications to attract innovative cleantech products. Such a circular feedback process will help de-risk innovative procurement by setting up a system whereby procurement officers have the support they need and have access to technical specifications and bid terms to procure clean technologies that have already been successfully piloted in a federal body. It balances the need to be careful with how taxpayer dollars are spent, and the imperative to use procurement as a strategic tool for advancing clean innovation and economic growth.
Recommendation 4: Help cleantech SMEs build capacity to participate in federal procurement
A range of supports including guidance materials, helpdesks, training, bootcamps, and facilitating participation in fairs and events will help provide practical and actionable information on procurement to cleantech companies. These could be delivered through different mediums including through mobile applications, videos, and could be modular, so that cleantech SMEs can pick and choose programs based on what is most relevant to them. Some of these services are currently being provided by Procurement Assistance Canada (PAC), which offers seminars to help SMEs find government procurement opportunities. However, it is worth thinking through how PAC’s support services can be modernized. PAC’s mandate could also be expanded to offer specialized services for innovative SMEs. Companies who specialize in innovation, such as those that develop cleantech, have distinct needs. Cleantech companies’ product offerings often consist of products that do not yet fit in established product categories. Given the economic and strategic relevance of cleantech for Canada, specialized and customized training and advisory services, possibly delivered as concierge services, is justified.
Recommendation 5: Increase industry-focused educational efforts to help cleantech companies better understand government’s procurement needs and processes
There is a lack of training opportunities focused on understanding the complexities of federal procurement, especially for cleantech companies. Organizing formal or informal educational forums such as webinars, workshops, seminars, and cohort/contact/mentor-based learning will help cleantech companies understand the federal government as a customer. Industry organizations, start-up accelerators and incubators, who perceive government as an important buyer for their members, are well placed to help cleantech companies understand their buyer – i.e., the federal government – and think through how their technology and value proposition fits with the buyer’s needs. Additionally, industry organizations can work with PAC, which regularly hosts educational webinars and workshops to help SMEs access public procurement opportunities, to either market these resources to their members or organize PAC sessions specifically aimed at cleantech companies.
Links to recent IPL webinars
From Science to Entrepreneurship
This is a recording of the Nov. 15th, 2021 webinar. There is a plethora of research on university commercialization and technology transfer. However, there is less of a discussion on the skillset and technical capabilities that allow a scientist to become an entrepreneur. In this webinar we will focus on these skills and programs that induce entrepreneurship. Moving from the scientist’s lab, to entrepreneurship courses, to forming a startup, to growing the firm within an incubator or accelerator.
Speakers:
- Fabiano Armellini, Associate Professor Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal
- Shiri M. Breznitz, Director, Master of Global Affairs Program; Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
- Elicia Maine, W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Academic Director, Invention to Innovation (i2I); Special Advisor on Innovation to the VPRI, Simon Fraser University
- Sophie Veilleux, Professor, Department of Management of the Faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval
- Sarah Lubik (moderator), Director of Entrepreneurship; Co-Champion, Technology Entrepreneurship@SFU Lecturer, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University
Canada’s Quantum Internet: Prospects and Perils
This is a recording of the April 20, 2021 webinar that together experts to discuss the political, economic, and scientific implications of quantum communications, for Canada and the world .Speakers: Francesco Bova, Associate Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Anne Broadbent, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa; Jon Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Christoph Simon, Professor and Associate Head, Research, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary; & Dan Patterson (moderator), Technology Reporter, CBS News
Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship in Canada
This is a recording of the March 23rd 2021 webinar focused on the importance of IP protection for entrepreneurship, the intellectual property environment in Canada, and existing support for firms. Panelists discussed issues relating to their firm’s ability to secure IP especially as it relates to IP education and the role of government in supporting IP protection. Speakers: Seray Çiçek, Ryan Hubbard, Graeme Moffat, Moderator: Shiri Breznitz
Events
January 19, 2022, Digital Conference, 12.00 – 13.30 London (UK)
This event is part of the GEOPL series. The guest speaker is Dr. Mikel Landabaso, Director Growth & Innovation, Joint Research Centre at the European Commission.
Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference 2022
January 17-21, 2022, Digital Conference
The 2022 Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference is asking for a wide range of participants from across many disciplines and fields to submit ideas for panels, demonstrations, initiatives, and projects that work towards transformations for sustainability and a just transition. The ‘Call for Initiatives’ is open now until 4 September 2021 and encourage Expressions of Interest (EoI) from a wide set of contributors across research, civil society, business and policy. This is a short extension so please get your EOI in as soon as possible. The theme is “BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE ON TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION POLICY.” The aim of the sessions is to be a symphony of approaches and collaborations to mix-up the conference dynamic and offer a chance to experiment with building knowledge infrastructures and exchanges across sectors and disciplines to activate transformational system change to solve our Earth crisis. The TIP Conference 2022 is organised and funded by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI) with the participation of Globelics and Africalics members and with the involvement of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) members.
P4IE 2022 International Conference Measuring Metrics that Matter
May 9-11 2022, Ottawa and Online
How to best design innovation indicators for the future? You are invited to contribute to this challenging question during our second international conference on “Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems” (P4IE). The hybrid conference will be held online and in-person at Ottawa. You can actively participate by submitting an academic, industry or public policy paper. Topics includes, but are not limited to: New/Real-time innovation indicators; Sustainable, Inclusive, Responsible (SIR) innovation indicators; Measuring the performance of innovation ecosystems; and Science-to-innovation SIR innovation indicators. Submissions of academic extended abstracts due by December 13, 2021 (acceptance notification by February 15). Submissions of policy papers due by January 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by February 14). Submissions of industrial papers due by February 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by March 14).
Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022
June 7-10, Dublin, Ireland
Under the umbrella topic “Territorial Development”, Trinity College Dublin & University College Dublin invites you to participate in the sixth Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022 to be held in Dublin, Ireland. The conference is organized into 13 session themes – see list below which also provides a link to the detailed theme description. All session theme leaders welcome submissions to their respective themes via the submission portal. In addition, there is also a long list of Special Sessions that are associated with these themes – see list further below which again provides a link for a detailed description for each of these. All Special Session organizers welcome submissions again via the submission portal.
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe