News from the IPL
INTRODUCTION
This newsletter is published by The Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and sponsored by the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The views and ideas expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Ontario Government.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Government of Canada Launches National Consultations on a Digital Economy Strategy
The Government of Canada recently unveiled a national consultation aimed at building consensus among governments, the private sector, academia and the Canadian public in developing a digital economy strategy for Canada. The commitment to developing the strategy was outlined in both the government’s Speech from the Throne and Budget 2010 and is aimed at positioning Canada for leadership in the global digital economy. The consultation seeks feedback from all interested parties on priorities and targets as Canada moves toward improving innovation and creativity, adopting new technologies and achieving the shared goal of making Canada a global leader in the digital economy.
Government of Canada and British Columbia Help Launch Technology Commercialization Program
A joint investment by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia will support the Alacrity Foundation in delivering a new student entrepreneurship initiative aimed at strengthening technology commercialization in the province. The Government of Canada and Province of British Columbia through the BC Innovation Council are delivering the $2,472,600 investment through the Western Economic Partnership Agreement. The University of Victoria and MITACS Accelerate Program will also contribute an additional $440,000 in support. B.C. based teams of post-secondary students and recent graduates will work to carry out information and communication technology (ICT) product development and commercialization projects. Participants will receive invaluable training and hands-on mentoring opportunities throughout the program’s duration.
Editor's Pick
Government of Canada
In the March 3, 2010 Speech from the Throne the Government of Canada committed to “launch a digital
economy strategy to drive the adoption of new technology across the economy. To encourage new ideas and
protect the rights of Canadians whose research, development and artistic creativity contribute to Canada’s prosperity, our Government will also strengthen laws governing intellectual property and copyright.” This commitment was reinforced in Budget 2010 where the Government of Canada committed to “develop a Digital Economy Strategy that will enable the ICT sector to create new products and services, accelerate the adoption of digital technologies, and contribute to improved cyber security practices by industry and consumers.” The purpose of this paper is to seek advice that will shape a multi-year digital economy strategy for Canada. The world is going digital, and the evidence is all around us.
Innovation Policy
Sparking Economic Growth: How Federally Funded University Research Creates New Companies and Jobs
The Science Coalition
This report illustrates some of the economic benefits the United States reaps when companies are created as a result of discoveries in federally funded university laboratories. While there are countless companies that have made use, to varying degrees, of the fruits of academic research, the roots of the 100 companies featured in this report can be directly traced to seminal research conducted at a university and sponsored by a federal agency. Were it not for the federally supported research, these companies—their products and services, and the jobs and economic growth that have resulted — likely would not exist.
Life Sciences: Key Sector Report
The Scottish Government
Despite considerable strengths in life sciences and the associated research base in Scotland, the economic downturn and adverse credit climate may make it more difficult for companies to secure finance for investment and research – particularly as long term and high risk investment is often required within the sector. Concern has been raised by those in the industry that the global financial crisis could delay the discovery and production of many new medicines as access to finance becomes more difficult. In addition to the impact on basic research performed in biotechnology companies, there are concerns that the development of medicines by pharmaceutical companies will also be affected by access to credit and the global economic downturn. This report provides an overview of the current state of the Scottish life sciences sector and outlines challenges and opportunities. It assesses the effectiveness of government interactions and interventions in this sector and provides international policy lessons and trends.
Government Involvement in the Venture Capital Industry: International Comparisons
Gilles Durufle, Canada’s Venture Capital and Private Equity Association
Most industrialized countries are questioning and trying to improve the levels and the channels of their support for the financing of innovation and, more specifically, to the venture capital industry. As a background paper, the purpose of this report is to review the various forms of recent government involvement in the venture capital industry across a sampling of leading industrialized industries and highlight some key trends which could be relevant to the Canadian situation.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Zack Taylor and Marcy Burchfield, The NEPTIS Foundation
This report compares three Canadian metropolitan areas: Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver. The project is an innovative collaboration between the fields of remote sensing (the use of satellite imagery), spatial analysis and statistics, and policy analysis. The approach represents a new way to evaluate the results of planning policies and governance structures across different jurisdictions. The study found that there is a high degree of correspondence between long-term planning goals and urban development patterns in each metropolitan area. Each city pursued a different approach to planning urban growth, and that these different approaches have shaped and channelled that growth in distinctive ways. The report concludes that planning policies are more likely to be effective if they are pursued over the long term and buttressed by a sense of shared objectives and supportive institutions, and that provincial governments play a central role in shaping the institutional environments within which regional planning operates.
The Future of Interurban Passenger Transport: Bringing Citizens Closer Together
OECD
Economic growth, trade and the concentration of population in large cities will intensify demand for interurban transport services. Concurrently, the need to manage environmental impacts effectively will increase. How successful we are in coping with demand will depend on our ability to innovate, to manage congestion, and to improve the quality of transport services. Technological and regulatory innovation will shape the future of transport.These conference proceedings bring together ideas from leading transport researchers from around the world related to the future for interurban passenger transport. A first set of papers investigates what drives demand for interurban passenger transport and infers how it may evolve in the future. The remaining papers investigate transport policy issues that emerge as key challenges: when to invest in high-speed rail, how to regulate to ensure efficient operation, how to assign infrastructure to different types of users, and how to control transport’s environmental footprint by managing modal split and improving modal performance
Jacobo Garcia Villarreal, OECD
This report is part of the OECD-Mexico initiative “Strengthening of Economic Competition and Regulatory Improvement for Competitiveness”. It summarizes the findings of several case studies on best practices to promote regulatory reform and entrepreneurship at the sub-national level. It has benefited from the participation of three Mexican states (Baja California, Jalisco, and Puebla), as well as of three provinces from other countries, British Columbia (Canada), Catalonia (Spain), and Piedmonte (Italy). By including both, Mexican and international experiences, this report derives practical lessons for sub-national governments to improve their regulatory quality and create dynamic business environments.
A Silent Cry for Leadership: Organizing for Leading (in) Clusters
Jorg Sydow, Frank Lerch, Chris Huxham and Paul Hibbert, TCI
Leadership research so far has neglected regional clusters as a particular context, while research on networks and clusters has hardly studied leadership issues. This paper fills this dual gap in the abundant research on leadership on the one hand and on networks/clusters on the other by investigating leadership in four prominent photonics clusters in England, Scotland, Germany and the United States. Apart from giving an insight into the variety and patterns of leadership practices observed in these clusters, the paper addresses the dilemma that regional innovation systems such as clusters usually have a critical need of some kind of leadership, but that neither individual nor organizational actors wish to be led.This dilemma or paradox can only be ‘managed’ by organizing for leading (in) clusters in a way that takes into account the tensions and contradictions surrounding leadership of and in clusters. The argument is based upon the idea of leading as reflexive structuration that has far-reaching implications for leadership research not only in this and other macro contexts but also in more traditional contexts.
Statistics & Indicators
New Business Clustering in US Counties, 1990-2006
Lawrence A. Plummer & Wyckoff Consulting for SBA Office of Advocacy
The prescription for regions to position their economies strategically by supporting entrepreneurial activity in particular sectors is, of course, far from easy or simple to put into practice. In the absence of specific evidence, this paper maps county-level establishment birth data from 1990 to 2006 to explore where, and to what extent, new firms concentrate geographically. It uses econometric methods to determine the county-level factors of new firm formation. Summary statistics reveal some interesting geographic aspects of entrepreneurship by county and industry.
How Firms Innovate: R&D, non-R&D, and Technology Adoption
Can Huang, Anthony Arundel and Hugo Hallanders, UNU-MERIT
Non-R&D innovation is a common economic phenomenon, though R&D has been the central focus of policy making and scholarly research in the field of innovation. An analysis of the third European Community Innovation Survey (CIS-3) results for 15 countries finds that almost half of innovative European firms did not perform R&D in-house. Firms with weak in-house innovative capabilities and which source information from suppliers and competitors tend to innovate through non-R&D activities. In contrast, firms that engage in product innovation, find clients, universities and research institutions an important information source for innovation, or
apply for patents or use other appropriation methods are more likely to perform R&D. However, non-R&D performers do not form a consistent block, with several notable differences between firms that use three different methods of innovating without performing R&D. Many of these determinants also influence the share of total innovation expenditures that are spent on non-R&D innovation activities. Furthermore, an analysis of the determinants of the share of each firm’s total innovation expenditures for non-R&D activities shows that the factors that influence how innovation expenditures are distributed is generally consistent across sectors and European countries.
Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity: 1996-2009
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment, 2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years – even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999-2000 technology boom. According to this report, a leading indicator of new-business creation in the United States, the number of new businesses created during the 2007–2009 recession years increased steadily year to year. In 2009, the 340 out of 100,000 adults who started businesses each month represent a 4 percent increase over 2008, or 27,000 more starts per month than in 2008 and 60,000 more starts per month than in 2007.
Policy Digest
The State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation
The Brookings Institution
This report is a signature effort of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program that portrays the demographic and social trends shaping the nation’s essential economic and societal units—its large metropolitan areas—and discusses what they imply for public policies to secure prosperity for these places and their populations.
A New Decade of Reckoning, from the Macro to the Metro:
Some commentators have begun to refer to the 2000s as “the lost decade,” largely on the basis of the lack of job and economic growth nationally during that time. But the decade was lost in another sense, too; the nation lost time and opportunity to respond to the challenges and prospects of its new demographic realities.
The nation now stands on the precipice of a “decade of reckoning.” Questions around how to support communities with rapidly aging populations, how to meet family and labor market needs through immigration, and how to help lower-paid workers support themselves and their families simply cannot go unaddressed for another decade without risking our collective standard of living and the quality of our democracy. Tackling these and other challenges will require coherent, purposeful leadership in the coming years.
National conversations tend to overlook the fact that these new realities affect not only “macro” conditions such as the federal budget and the U.S. labor market. They are also experienced in places—mostly in our nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Therefore, a federal policy agenda must confront aspects of particular concern for the metropolitan communities on the front lines of these trends, including:
- Accommodating more efficient growth, by putting a price on carbon to account for the external costs of fossil fuel combustion, encouraging greater coordination between housing and transportation planning, and reducing the deductibility of mortgage interest to discourage over-consumption
of housing; - Integrating and incorporating diverse populations, through comprehensive immigration reform that protects our borders and provides a fair pathway to legal status, federal support for programs and practices that facilitate immigrant incorporation, and a national Office of New Americans to elevate and coordinate makeshift local integration efforts;
- Enhancing community affordability and vitality for seniors, including meeting rising demands for affordable housing integrated with services, protecting seniors’ home equity through enhanced oversight of mortgage products, and requiring the expenditure of federal transportation and housing funds to take into account the specific needs of older populations;
- Accelerating higher educational attainment, by continuing to focus on enhancing teacher quality for students in need and promoting effective interventions in low-performing schools, and rewarding and supporting institutions and students not just for enrollment in higher education, but also persistence toward and completion of degrees;
- Reducing income inequality, by restoring and growing the productive capacity of the nation’s auto communities, pursuing enhanced labor
standards enforcement, and renewing/expanding tax credits that support lower-income working families like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.
National policy makers have the unique obligation to address aspects of the five new realities that affect all metropolitan areas, or are simply beyond metropolitan areas’ own capacity to tackle. As this report demonstrates, however, different challenges assume varying levels of prominence in different types of metropolitan areas. Leaders at the state, regional, and local levels must now more than ever understand and respond purposefully to the demographic, social, and economic changes most affecting their places.
- Border Growth and Mid-Sized Magnet metro areas must seek greater economic balance in the wake of the housing crash. Smart infrastructure investments in these metro areas could promote growth of alternative energy production and distribution, international travel and tourism, and linkages with larger nearby centers of global commerce. Their leaders must also be fierce champions for the continued viability of 2- and 4-year higher education institutions, which offer the best hope for ensuring that their large and growing young, minority populations can share in the fruits of future economic growth;
- Diverse Giant and Next Frontier metro areas should adopt the most innovative practices for accelerating the civic and labor market integration of their larger immigrant and “second generation” populations. They should also set out “roadmaps” for addressing future local and regional population needs in an environmentally sustainable, fiscally efficient manner that create and preserve affordable options for low- and middle-income families;
- New Heartland metro areas, with migration rates likely to remain somewhat lower in the near term, should focus on growing a more educated pipeline of workers from within their own borders. Attracting younger middle-class families back to urban and inner-suburban public school systems, and forging closer partnerships between regional economic development and university officials, could help build the next middle class in these regions;
- Skilled Anchor and Industrial Core metro areas, while economically distinct, share certain demographic attributes and associated challenges. Slowing the tide of decentralization by building outward from anchor institutions and overhauling urban land use, keeping older skilled workers connected to labor market opportunities, and integrating housing and social services for urban and suburban senior populations should be priorities for their leaders.
Finally, new demographic realities must be met with new governance arrangements. Especially in light of the deep fiscal crisis facing states and local governments, the lines between cities and suburbs—and the long, fruitless history of battles and mistrust between them—must be transcended, in all types of metropolitan areas. Local leaders must forge regional solutions to newly shared regional challenges, such as linking the supply and demand sides of the labor market to benefit disadvantaged workers. They must undertake greater collaboration in the delivery of services, or outright combine outdated, inefficient local government units such as school districts. And they must act like metropolitan areas in dealing with their states, consolidating their influence on common issues that affect the well-being of their populations.
The pace of change and complexity of U.S. society only seems to multiply with each passing decade. Now, as the nation and its major metropolitan areas reach a series of critical demographic junctures, forging a constructive path forward to the “next society” is as much about helping communities manage the velocity of that transformation as it is about responding to its specific character. Failure to maximize shared responses to the inevitable challenges of change, and common ownership of the solutions, will only serve to sow the seeds of intergenerational, interracial, and inter-ethnic conflict. Understanding—from the ground up—who Americans are, and who they are becoming, is a critical step toward building constructive bridges before they become impassable divides.
Events
BioEnergy Conference & Exhibition 2010
Prince George, BC, 8-10 June, 2010
The International BioEnergy Conference and Exhibition is the Canadian leader in the global dialogue on bioenergy. Our sponsors, speakers, exhibitors and delegates are key influencers and opinion shapers from around the world on the new technologies and processes that will bring about a global change in the way we perceive and use energy. With the addition of the BC Bioenergy Network as Conference Co-Host, the tradition of leadership and excellence will continue in 2010. We are also happy to announce that the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade will once again co-host the 2nd International Partnerships Forum and Business to Business Meetings. And 2010 will also mark the introduction of a parallel conference on Emerging Clean Technologies.
Opening Up Innovation: Strategy, Organization and Innovation
London, 16-18 June, 2010
The DRUID Summer Conference 2010 intends to explore new theoretical, empirical and methodological advances in industrial dynamics, contributing novel insights and stimulating a lively debate about how economic systems and organizations evolve. The conference will include an exciting programme of plenary debates where internationally leading scholars take stands on contemporary issues within the overall conference theme. Both senior and junior scholars are invited to participate and contribute to the conference with a paper.
Aalborg, Denmark, 21-24 June, 2010
Schumpeter 2010 serves as an opportunity for both established scholars and young researchers to present research that has a Schumpeterian perspective. The major topic of the conference is “Innovation, Organisation, Sustainability and Crises”. But the conference more generally embraces micro-studies of the innovation, routine and selection as well as studies of the macro-problems of Schumpeterian growth and development as a process of “creative destruction”. The broad range of issues implies that both economists, business economists, and other social scientists can contribute to the conference and that evidence may be provided by statistical and historical methods as well as other methods.
Experience the Creative Economy
Toronto, 22-24 June, 2010
This is a unique conference which allows scholars new in their careers to experience notions of the creative economy in a small and focused setting. This conference will bring together up to 25 individuals with similar research interests to share their work, receive feedback, foster the development of effective research methods and to establish an ongoing framework of collaborative learning and mutual exchange for years to come.
Partnerships in S&T Policy Research
Waterville Valley, NH, 8-13 August, 2010
The 2010 Gordon Conference on Science and Technology Policy will focus on a wide range of research at the intersection of science, technology, policy and society. The 2010 Conference will focus in particular on further developing partnerships between North American and European researchers. Invited speakers represent a variety of scientific disciplines in the policy sciences, social and natural sciences as well as the humanities. The Conference will bring together a collection of investigators who are at the forefront of their field, and will provide opportunities for junior scientists and graduate students to present their work in poster format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, provides an avenue for scholars from different disciplines to brainstorm and promotes cross-disciplinary collaborations in the various research areas represented.
Toronto, 30 September, 2010
Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area ICT cluster, comes together for a celebration of technology as an engine of economic growth at the Allstream Centre at Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto. We live in a new world without borders. Two out of every three people in the world own a mobile communications device….and Toronto is leading the way to this borderless future. Technicity brings together technology leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and representatives of the region’s economic development agencies for a day of panel discussions, displays and an evening to remember, to celebrate, to brainstorm, network and create economic opportunity. It also serves as an opportunity to leverage our talent pool, infrastructure, and geographic location
to broaden the base of our already powerful ICT cluster.Technicity will highlight breaking technologies such as wireless data connectivity that will make up in next-generation cars to predictive analytics that is the next-generation for business intelligence.
Triple Helix in the Development of Cities of Knowledge, Expanding Communities and Connecting Regions
Madrid, Spain, 20-22 Oct, 2010
Innovation is understood as a resultant of a complex and dynamic process related to interactions between University, Industry and Government, in a spiral of endless transitions. The Triple Helix approach, developed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff, is based on the perspective of University as a leader of the relationship with Industry and Government, to generate new knowledge, innovation and economic development. The main theme of our conference is “Triple Helix in the Development of Cities of Knowledge, Expanding Communities and Connecting Regions”.
Entrepreneurship and Community: 26th Annual CCSBE Conference
Calgary, 28-30 October, 2010
The theme this year is Entrepreneurship and Community. We are seeking to explore the multifaceted impact entrepreneurs and small businesses have on their communities through their new ventures, business and community outreach. There is growing recognition by policy makers, members of society, business leaders and youth, that creative approaches are needed to address environmental, economic, and societal issues. The conference program highlights the research, educational methods, and community practices pertaining to venture sustainability and social entrepreneurship. In support of the theme we have attracted an array of plenary and guest speakers, and developed workshops which will contribute to the dialogue.
Reshaping Europe: Addressing Societal Challenges Through Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Liege, Belgium, 27-29 October, 2010
Over the past couple of years, Europe, and the rest of the world, has faced an unprecedented crisis affecting all sectors of the economy. The crisis and the recovery that is now taking place in most Member States provide experiences that can be used to reshape Europe and to ensure that it is stronger and better prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. The Europe 2020 Strategy is designed to improve the business environment. It is vital that this environment offers the framework conditions to turn ideas into products and services more quickly and easily, whilst addressing environmental concerns and making efficient use of resources. At this important turning point, the Europe INNOVA conference will provide a timely opportunity to determine how innovation policy and innovation support can help Europe and its enterprises, both large and small, to best face these challenges.The conference will unite the Europe INNOVA Community with key innovation stakeholders from the worlds of politics, academia and business. Together they will discuss three approaches that are crucial if Europe is to respond to the societal challenges with which it is currently confronted.
Making Innovation Work for Society: Linking, Leveraging and Learning GLOBELICS 8th Annual Conference
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1-3 November, 2010
Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (GLOBELICS) is an international network of scholars who apply the concept of “learning, innovation, and competence building system” (LICS) as their framework and are dedicated to the strengthening of LICS in developing countries, emerging economies and societies in transition. The research aims at locating unique systemic features as well as generic good practices to enlighten policy making relating to innovation, competence building, international competitiveness, regional development, labour market and human capital development. In an increasingly global and knowledge‐based competition, management strategies need to be based upon an understanding of these framework conditions and the public policies which seek to regulate the environment.
CALL FOR PAPERS: The Entrepreneurial University and thte Academic Enterprise
Washington, DC, 12-13 November, 2010
The theme of the 2010 conference is The Entrepreneurial University and the Academic Enterprise. Conference presentations should focus on the potential commonalities and/or conflicts of interests among government, university, and industry participants in technology transfer. The sessions will emphasize also the assessment of technology transfer activities, especially how to examine the objectives and processes of technology transfer activities (beyond the immediate needs of the participants), including both formal and informal transfer mechanisms (Link, Siegel & Bozeman, 2007; Abreu et al, 2008). Special focus will be placed on papers which evaluate the aspects of academicuniversity research relationships beyond their immediate outputs (Georghiou & Roessner, 2000; Vonortas & Spivack, 2005, Carayannis and Provance, 2007), including intellectual property issues (Feller & Feldman, 2009), modes of commercialization (Kenney & Patton, 2009), and economic impact (Roberts & Easley, 2009).
Knowledge Cities World Summit 2010 
Melbourn, Australia, 16-19 November, 2010
‘Knowledge’ is a resource, which relies on the past for a better future. In the 21st century, more than ever before, cities around the world rely on the knowledge of their citizens, their institutions, their firms and enterprises. Knowledge assists in attracting investment, qualified labour, students and researchers. Knowledge also creates local life spaces and professional milieus, which offer quality of life to the citizens who are seeking to cope with the challenges of modern life in a competitive world. This conference will offer a range of innovative presentation formats aimed at facilitating interaction and accessibility for all members of the Knowledge Summit community. The Summit will attract a range of multidisciplinary participants including: practitioners, managers, decision and policy makers of non-government organisations, technology solution developers, innovators, urban planners, urban designers and developers, academics, researchers and postgraduate students.
Calgary, 25-26 November, 2010
The companies worst hit in western Canada during the recession tended to be those with undifferentiated products with many competitors, where price competition became severe. By contrast, the companies who did reasonably well tended to have unique products and fewer competitors. InnoWest 2010 tells the story of some of these companies, and how innovation helped them to live through the recession relatively unscathed, and position themselves for growth in the recovery. InnoWest 2010 will not focus on the very large companies [such as Suncor] or on very small companies [for example, a 10 employee company] but will focus on the large middle ground where the bulk of Canada’s GDP is generated. Keynote speakers include Sir Terry Matthews.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.