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
Civic Engagement and Economic Development in Canadian Cities
Toronto, April 27, 2011
This one-day conference presented by the RBC Chair in Public and Economic Policy and the RBC Chair in Applied Social Work at the University of Toronto addresses civic engagement and economic development in Canadian cities. President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, Gord Nixon is the keynote speaker and will reflect on the theme of civic leadership. Other speakers include Doug Henton, Chairman and CEO of Collaborative Economics Inc. speaking on regional stewards and economic innovation. Neil Bradford, Associate Professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario will address the social dynamics of economic governance in Canadian city-regions. Caroline Andrew, Professor at the School of Political Studies and Director of the Centre for Governance at the University of Ottawa will address civic governance and social inclusion in Ottawa. Finally, David Wolfe, Professor of political science and RBC Chair in Public and Economic Policy at the University of Toronto will speak about civic engagement and leadership in Toronto’s future. Registration.
Government of Canada Invests in Research Partnerships in Areas of Imporatnce to Canadian Communities
Researchers at universities across Canada, in conjunction with community organizations, will look at key issues affecting Canadians and through their research offer concrete solutions to societal concerns. The Canadian governments recently announced funding over five years totaling $8,993,254 for nine large-scale research projects that will bring communities and universities together to build knowledge in areas that impact Canadians.
Ontario Digital Media Creates 16,000 Jobs
Ontario is fast becoming a major player in the interactive gaming world with incentives for companies to create their products in the province. In 2010, Ontario supported 341 digital media projects, leading to over $175 million in production and development activity. Ontario is committed to building an innovation-focused economy through postsecondary education and technology with partnerships like the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre. New digital media technologies spur development in video games, movie making and web applications and help create jobs for Ontario graduates. Supporting research and innovation is part of Ontario’s plan for high skill jobs and economic growth.
21 Economic Development Organization’s (EDOs) from across the US are working today to create new jobs in their regions by participating in the U.S. Trade & Investment Program to HANNOVER MESSE 2011, the world’s largest industrial technology showcase. The purpose of the program is to promote the Obama administration’s National Export Initiative (NEI) as well as to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the U.S. By leading regional business clusters abroad, the Department of Commerce is aiding communities in promoting their regions as ideal locations to do business.
ERC Fund Aims to Speed Tech Commercialization
The European Research Council (ERC) has launched a new funding initiative under the title “Proof of Concept” which aims to stimulate innovation by providing funding to researchers already holding an ERC grant, and supporting their outstanding research projects at the frontiers of knowledge. This funding will aim to bridge the gap between their research and the earliest stage of a marketable innovation. ERC grant holders will therefore be given the opportunity to apply for additional funding to establish the innovation potential of ideas arising from their ERC-funded frontier research projects. This targeted new initiative will capture the maximum value from frontier research by getting good ideas to market.
Editor's Pick
Who Cares About 15 Million Urban Voters?
Martin Prosperity Institute
What do 15.3 million voters, $17.5 billion in personal income, $910 billion in GDP, and over 74% of all new jobs created in the past year have in common? Each of these figures refers to the influences of Canada’s metropolitan regions and collectively signify the crucial role that our urban regions play. This report shows that metropolitan areas are home to 68% of the nation’s population, 90% of our immigrants, and 96% of Canada’s visible minority population (and 67% of the eligible voters). Canada has always, with some sense of pride, identified itself as one of the “most urbanized” nations in the world. That urbanization has created many benefits and lots of opportunities. Its continued growth and success disproportionately depend on the vitality and resilience of all its cities and metropolitan regions. One need not look very far in a rapidly urbanizing world to see that any advantage Canada may have gained from its urbanized population is rapidly diminishing. More needs to be done to keep central cities and their surrounding suburbs healthy and prosperous. It is not just a question of more spending and greater funding for infrastructure. Although important, cities more urgently need some attention and recognition of their significance. Unless policy makers recognize the value generated by urban areas and actively work to amplify that value, Canada will be committing itself to slower growth and reduced prosperity for all.
Innovation Policy
Ron Freedman, Impact Group
If there is one fact of innovation policy that every analyst can agree on, it is that Canada suffers a “Business Expenditures on R&D (BERD) Intensity Gap” with the rest of the OECD; specifically, a gap between the amounts that Canadian business spends on R&D as a proportion of GDP, compare with its counterparts in other OECD countries. This is deemed to be a major national economic shortcoming. The BERD intensity gap – and what Canada needs to do to eliminate it – is by now an article of faith for federal and provincial government innovation policies and programs. This paper provides an analysis of the magnitude and relevance of these measures of BERD intensity its implication for public policy.
Partnership for Public Service
Whenever the US faces a “mission impossible,” the American public looks to the government to solve the problem. Whether it’s a financial collapse, terrorist attack, oil spill or a crumbling education system, the government is expected to find solutions and deliver results. The government is also expected to reliably perform “day-to-day” tasks such as delivering the mail, screening airline passengers and fulfilling Social Security payments, effectively and efficiently, crisis or no crisis. To satisfy these pressures, many federal leaders are embracing innovation tools, including crowd-sourcing, competitions and prizes, as ways of unleashing employee creativity. The move is long overdue and greatly needed. This report identifies the opportunities and barriers to government innovation; identifies best practices for promoting a culture of innovation in government; and outlines an approach to creating a more innovative government.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
The Federal in Supporting Urban Manufacturing
Nisha Mistry and Joan Byron, The Brookings Institution
As the US works to recover from the Great Recession, the idea of revitalizing the country’s beleaguered manufacturing sector has gained significant traction among political leaders and policy experts. It’s essential to understand just how radically the nature, scale, and spatial characteristics of the sector have changed over the past several decades—and how these changes should inform the federal policies and programs that affect its growth and development. This paper identifies specific ways that federal government should work with state and local leaders to better support small-scale, urban manufacturing, and to do so within a thoughtful framework for urban economic development. Activities can be implemented without little added cost to an already overstretched budget and without major operational changes. Rather, they require that existing funding be more clearly focused and that priorities be articulated and coordinated across federal agencies. Accompanying the paper are case studies that examine urban manufacturing trends, challenges, and policy responses in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Seattle, and New York City.
Cities, Skills and Regional Change
Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, and Kristina Tobio, NBER
One approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships, such as Zipf’s or Gibrat’s Law. An alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies. This paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the U.S. and finds that few, if any, growth relationships remain constant, including Gibrat’s Law. Education does a reasonable job of explaining urban resilience in recent decades, but does not seem to predict county growth a century ago. After reviewing this evidence, the paper presents and estimates a simple model of regional change, where education increases the level of entrepreneurship. Human capital spillovers occur at the city level because skilled workers produce more product varieties and thereby increase labor demand. The authors find that skills are associated with growth in productivity or entrepreneurship, not with growth in quality of life, at least outside of the West. They also find that skills seem to have depressed housing supply growth in the West, but not in other regions, which supports the view that educated residents in that region have fought for tougher land-use controls. They also present evidence that skills have had a disproportionately large impact on unemployment during the current recession.
Metropolitan Business Plans: A New Approach to Economic Growth
Mark Muro and Robert Weissbourd, The Brookings Institution
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, America needs to move toward a more productive next economy that will be increasingly export-oriented, lower-carbon, and innovation-driven—as well as opportunity rich. At the same time, leading U.S. metropolitan areas—which drive the national economy—are mounting increasingly strategic, locally developed, and sophisticated initiatives to move in that direction themselves. And so the nation needs to take a new approach to economic development. Federal, state, and philanthropic actors all need to approach metros not as problems requiring programmatic handouts but as compelling investment opportunities for driving national prosperity. In keeping with that, the “metropolitan business planning” concept described in this brief proposes one approach for reorienting such interactions.
Statistics & Indicators
Outlook for Human Resources in the ICT Labour Market, 2011-2016
Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC)
Canada’s ICT sector, representing the country’s information, communications and technology employment base, is facing alarming skills and labour shortages in the next five years. This report underscores that in most regions in Canada and for most ICT occupations, demand will far exceed supply. Employers will encounter systemic shortages when recruiting for ICT jobs that require five or more years’ experience. The severity of these shortages will increase when employers are seeking to recruit ICT people with leading edge skills such as marketing, accounting and finance competencies.
The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011: Transformations 2.0
Soumitra Dutta and Irene Mia, INSEAD/World Economic Forum
Sweden and Singapore continue to top the rankings confirming the leadership of the Nordic countries and the Asian Tiger economies in adopting and implementing ICT advances for increased growth and development. Finland jumps to third place, while Switzerland and the United States are steady in fourth and fifth place respectively. The 10th anniversary edition of the report focuses on ICT’s power to transform society in the next decade through modernization and innovation. With a record coverage of 138 economies worldwide, the report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) featured in the report examines how prepared countries are to use ICT effectively on three dimensions: the general business, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; the readiness of the three key societal actors – individuals, businesses and governments – to use and benefit from ICT; and their actual usage of available ICT.
Martin Prosperity Institute
This article examines whether a metropolitan environment that is conducive to creative employment is also conducive to entrepreneurship (which can be seen as a creative act). Statistics and econometric analysis enable the assertion that a regional creative class is positively associated with the growth in the number of establishments in that region and the components of that growth. Further, the size of the creative workforce in a region is positively and significantly associated with the total establishment growth in a region, the number of new opened establishments and the expansion of existing establishments. While the overall results show a positive relationship between regional creative class employment and levels of entrepreneurship, a more detailed analysis show that entrepreneurship has a statistically significant positive relationship with regional employment in management and arts, design, and media employment. It has a statistically significant negative relationship with regional employment in computers & mathematics and architecture & engineering.
Policy Digest
The Race for Global Leadership in Innovation: An Analysis of National R&D Strategies
Toronto Region Research Alliance
This report reviews nine countries and Africa to better understand the international strategic drivers for investments into research and innovation at the country level. This analysis reveals five distinctive approaches that governments use to frame their national strategies. The report examines Canada’s R&D initiatives in order to place these strategies in the context of the global race for innovation leadership.
Regardless of their state of development, nations are clearly making large investments in world-class research centers, education, commercialization, and entrepreneurship. The innovation snapshots presented in this paper show that there are several approaches to national innovation frameworks. While countries in the ‘stay ahead’ category are targeting R&D areas to maintain leadership positions in S&T, other nations with ambitious targets for future S&T competitiveness in the emerging Asian market are spending substantially to modernize their innovation infrastructure to get ahead. India and many countries on the African continent, on the other hand, are battling entrenched problems associated with widespread poverty, disease, and crumbling infrastructure.
Their governments see investments in S&T as a potential remedy to points of national pain. Some strategies are framed to exploit a country’s existing R&D strengths and bolster the industry and academic base in those areas. A number of national S&T plans fit into the prosperity category whose main objectives are not only to stay ahead of the pack but maintain the state of wealth and make the economy more resilient to economic recessions.
R&D Tops Most Innovation Agendas – Societies worldwide are demanding solutions to pressing problems: climate change, health, disease eradication, food, water, and national security. Although the extent of each problem may vary from country to country, governments are spending to find S&T-based solutions to the same underlying issues. Inevitably, nations find themselves in a race to discover cures for cancer, create revolutionary energy storage and water treatment technologies, advance personalized medicine, and secure cyberspace to safeguard personal and national identity. In virtually all academic and industrial settings, scientists and engineers are vying to develop the next breakthrough technology that could spawn entirely new industries or transform existing ones. R&D now tops most national economic agendas and nations are racing to garner majority share of global innovation. There are certainly connections between a nation’s present innovation strategy, its state of economic development, history, and past innovation policies. In fact, the interplay between these factors offers opportunities for interesting future research and study.
Policy Implications for Canada – The Toronto Region Research Alliance hopes that this snapshot of S&T strategies around the globe will contribute to a meaningful discussion of Canada’s future innovation ambitions. TRRA is seeking input on the issues examined in this paper. Based on the current Canadian S&T strategy, the authors invite the reader to comment on how Canada’s role can be understood within the context of the five categories that have shaped the discussion here. If Canada were to frame its science and technology policy around one of the five themes, here are examples of possible outcomes.
Canada is currently ranked ninth in the world in terms of gross expenditures on R&D. For instance, a Canadian innovation strategy looking to stay ahead, would have to maintain a lead over the nations presently in the number ten to fifteen positions: Russia, Brazil, Italy, Taiwan, Spain, and Australia. If Canada were aiming to get ahead, this would involve significant investments to catch up to those in leadership positions. The leap from ninth to fifth place would require R&D spending to double to nearly $50 billion. An innovation strategy looking instead to exploit Canada’s existing strengths may focus R&D efforts on historically strong industries such as natural resources, agri-food, or financial services. Under the theme ‘alleviating points of pain’, the innovation strategy could address unique Canadian challenges including climate change in the Arctic, health care for an ageing multicultural population, and depletion of natural resources. Lastly, if Canada were to frame its policy around prosperity, the national strategy would maintain a balanced approach with investments in both core and emerging segments, in applied and discovery research, and education of future innovation leaders.
Given such realities as the size of the Canadian economy, population and make-up of the business sector, which approach should Canada embrace? Please forward your thoughts and opinions to: info@trra.ca
Events
Regional Development and Policy – Challenges, Choices and Recipients
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 17-20 April, 2011
The challenges for regional development are intensifying. Long-term factors shaping the prospects for cities and regions include the effects of climate change and new demands on energy, water and food systems. Cities also face significant demographic shifts. Rapid technological changes – captured in the notion of an emerging Knowledge Economy – will also affect cities and regions. Moreover, we are witnessing significant changes in international political economy – encapsulated by the term globalization – but increasingly understood as incorporating the rise of new economic powers, such as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and, above all, China). The immediate context for thinking about these questions in many parts of the world is the aftermath of a severe economic crisis and a new politics of austerity. Local, regional, national and international actors continue to search for new policy solutions at a time when traditional forms of governance are being tested and new forms of regional politics are emerging. In many parts of the world regional disparities are growing as more economic activity becomes concentrated in global city regions, posing questions about the future of cities and regions beyond the metropolis. In these austere times, some voices question the need for regional policy itself and public policy debates increasingly focus on these dilemmas.
Civic Engagement and Economic Development in Canadian Cities 
Toronto, April 27, 2011
This one-day conference presented by the RBC Chair in Public and Economic Policy and the RBC Chair in Applied Social Work at the University of Toronto addresses civic engagement and economic development in Canadian cities. President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, Gord Nixon is the keynote speaker and will reflect on the theme of civic leadership. Other speakers include Doug Henton, Chairman and CEO of Collaborative Economics Inc. speaking on regional stewards and economic innovation. Neil Bradford, Associate Professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario will address the social dynamics of economic governance in Canadian city-regions. Caroline Andrew, Professor at the School of Political Studies and Director of the Centre for Governance at the University of Ottawa will address civic governance and social inclusion in Ottawa. Finally, David Wolfe, Professor of political science and RBC Chair in Public and Economic Policy at the University of Toronto will speak about civic engagement and leadership in Toronto’s future. Registration.
Congestion Rising – Understanding the Consequences of the New Geography of Office Employment
Toronto, 29 April, 2011
The Toronto region has enjoyed unprecedented employment growth throughout the first decade of the 21st Century that has seen the creation of 32 million square feet of new office – most of which is located in the 905. A combination of disruptive differentials in tax rates between 416 and 905, stark differences across the region in terms of land use policy, and decades of under-investment in public transit have created a new geography of office location. The cumulative result of these trends is growing congestion on the region’s highways, an issue that is already resonating among corporate decision-makers. There is a growing concern that current plans to invest in higher order transit are unlikely to make a significant dent in this problem – more than 50% (100 million sq ft) of the region’s office space is beyond the reach of higher order transit – and will stay that way even after new transit has been built. What can be done to support the continued strength of the financial services sector, slow employment sprawl, make suburban office clusters more inviting and pedestrian-friendly? Is the future competitiveness of the GTA office market at risk, and if so, what can be done and who should take responsibility for tackling the problem?
Public Administration, Technology and Innovation
Tallinn, Estonia, 6-7 May, 2011
Technological developments of the last decades have brought the co-evolutionary linkages between technology and public sector institutions into the center of both economics and public administration research. Technologies can, arguably, make public administration more effective, efficient, transparent and more accountable; but they can also cause problems with privacy, sustainability, legality, and equality, to name just a few examples. Recent public sector austerity measures (and attempts at lean government in general) may thwart socio-political efforts to foster technological innovation; but they can at the same time lead to greater willingness of governments to adopt new technologies and management principles based, directly or indirectly, on technological innovations. The challenge to public administration research is not only to trace and understand these linkages, but to find working solutions to these apparent trade-offs, and even to investigate the nature and permutations of the techno-administrative interface generally. We are inviting papers dealing with theoretical or empirical topics looking at either side of the co-evolution perspective of technological and institutional development; the role of public administration in technological progress and innovation; and the role of technology and innovation in the trajectories of public administration.
Open Spaces for Changing Science and Society – New England Workshop on Science and Social Change
Woods Hole, MA, 15-18 May, 2011
Applications are sought from teachers and researchers who are interested in moving beyond their current disciplinary and academic boundaries to explore concepts and practices that help us work in the arena bordered on one side by critical interpretation of the directions taken by scientific and technological research and application and on the other side by organizing social movements so as to influence those directions. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to submit a manuscript or sketch related to the workshop topic that would be read by others before the workshop and be subject to focused discussion during the workshop. There is also room for participants to develop–either before or during the workshop–activities or interactive presentations to engage the other participants.
Ontario Centres of Excellence: Discovery 11
Toronto, 18-19 May, 2011
Discovery is Canada’s leading innovation-to-commercialization conference. Hosted by the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Discovery brings together key players from industry, academia, government, the investment community as well as entrepreneurs and students to pursue collaboration opportunities. Garnering close to 2,500 attendees and more than 325 exhibitors, Discovery is a showcase of leading-edge technologies, best practices and research from sectors such as health, manufacturing, digital media and cleantech, including energy, environment and water. Renowned keynote speakers and panels ignite discussion, knowledge-sharing and new perspectives. Networking opportunities feature key influencers from government, academia, industry and leading sectors. Discovery facilitates the exchange of ideas and encourages new ways to collaborate and push the boundaries of research and innovation through to demonstration and development. Creating a strong innovation economy is key to Ontario’s futur
ICIM 2011: International Conference on Innovation and Management
Tokyo, Japan, 25-27 May, 2011
The International Conference on Innovation and Management aims to bring together academic scientists, leading engineers, industry researchers and scholar students to exchange and share their experiences and research results about all aspects of Innovation and Management, and discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted.
Innovation, Strategy and Structure: Organizations, Institutions, Systems and Regions
Copenhagen, Denmark, 15-17 June, 2011
DRUID 2011 intends to map theoretical, empirical and methodological advances, contribute with novel insights and stimulate a lively debate about how technologies, economic systems and organizations evolve and co-evolve. The conference will include targeted plenary debates where internationally merited scholars take stands on contemporary issues within the overall conference theme.
Regional Studies Association – Third Global Conference on Economic Geography
Seoul, Korea, 28 June – July 2, 2011
In the wake of the economic downturn of 2007-, the debate about the causes of the crisis and recession has focused upon the unbalanced nature of its economic models and geographies. Explanations have been concerned with the imbalances in international trade and currency flows, sectoral structures between especially financial and other services and manufacturing, the relative sizes and roles of the public and private sectors, the composition of demand between consumption and production as well as its domestic or external orientation, and its socially and spatially uneven geographies. Following this diagnosis of the problems, debate about recovery has focused upon the idea of ‘rebalancing’ as a means of rebuilding new economic models that somehow correct the problematic and disruptive imbalances that generated the crisis. ‘Rebalancing’ has become an international concern for high-income economies such as Australia, UK and Japan, middle-income economies such as Portugal and South Korea as well as emerging economies such as Brazil and China. Yet it is not clear what ‘rebalancing’ might mean, whether and how it can be achieved and how it relates to currently dominant ‘new economic geographical’ models promoting greater spatial agglomeration and concentration of economic activities. These sessions will engage this debate on rebalancing regional and national economies.
Experience the Creative Economy
Toronto, 21 June, 2011
Experience the Creative Economy 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.
CALL FOR PAPERS – Building Capacity for Scientific Innovation and Outcomes
Atlanta, GA, 15-17 September, 2011
The ability of science and innovation systems to deliver depends on continually improving capacity. Yet, capacity is multidimensional and has interrelated characteristics and related challenges. The Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2011 will explore the research base that addresses the broad range of capacity related issues central to the structure, function, performance and outcomes of the science and innovation enterprises. The conference will include a variety of sessions: plenaries to discuss critical questions, contributed paper sessions and a young researcher poster competition.
Lund, Sweden, 13-14 October, 2011
The conference offers two days of plenaries, presentations and intense discussions on preconditions and strategies for regional innovation policy and regional development in Europe. It is organized around five key themes: (1) Preconditions for sustainable development (economically, socially and environmentally) in European regions: (2) the role of universities in the promotion of regional development; (3) sectoral specificities (resource based and cultural/creative industries) and their impacts on regional competitiveness; (4) Southern European regions and their strategies to grow out of the global economic crisis; (5) the growth of emerging economies in Asia and Latin America and consequences for European regions.
Culture, Place and Identity at the Heart of Regional Development
St, John’s, 13-15 October, 2011
This conference will examine the relationship between the arts, cultural heritage and regional development in islands and in rural and remote regions. It will bring together representatives from academia, government, the arts community, the cultural heritage community, the knowledge economy, the tourism industry, and organizations dealing with regional development. It will examine global trends in tourism, technology and demographics, and will feature global best practices in cultural tourism.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.