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 Invests in Canadian Business Innovation
The Canadian government recently announced an $80 million investment over three years to help accelerate the adoption of information and communications technologies by small and medium-sized businesses. The pilot initiative demonstrates Government support for the digital economy by promoting the adoption and use of digital technologies to foster innovation and productivity and to create jobs and long-term economic growth. The Digital Technology Adoption Pilot Program will assist Canada’s overall productivity and create market growth and opportunity. This Budget 2011 investment in support of Canada’s Digital Economy Strategy is the latest in a series of legislative and program initiatives, reflecting the Government’s emphasis on the digital economy. It provides a framework to encourage the private sector to adopt new technologies, and to develop the digital workforce of tomorrow.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge
Since the start of the Great Recession in late 2007, the biggest concern on the minds of most Americans is the job market. With unemployment stubbornly stuck at around 9 percent, and with the global economic picture threatening more difficult times ahead, the biggest question is what we can do in the public and private sectors to spur job creation. The Economic Development Administration’s Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge is one federal program providing its own compelling answer. This new program attempts to do what works—leveraging existing resources to do more with less. The program brings together three previously unrelated programs in separate agencies to make available approximately $37 million in joint grants for coordinated economic development, small business, and workforce-training investments in 20 regions around the country.
Editor's Pick
Robert Atkinson et al., ITIF
Federal policymakers are consumed by a debate over how to reduce the nation’s budget deficit, which some argue is critically important to the nation’s economic future. As the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform noted in its final report, “America cannot be great if we go broke. Our economy will not grow and our country will not be able to compete without a plan to get this crushing debt burden off our back.” Yet an oftentimes myopic focus on the budget deficit has obscured the fact that America actually faces three deficits—the budget deficit, the trade deficit, and the investment deficit—that, if left unchecked, could total over $41 trillion in the next 10 years. Reducing all three deficits, not just the budget deficit, is critical to future economic prosperity.
Innovation Policy
David Crane
Award-winning Canadian journalist David Crane has been advocating for many years for improved Canadian productivity as well as private sector innovation as keys to Canada’s future competitiveness and prosperity. Crane attended the Innovation Nation symposium, hosted by the Perimeter Institute and organized by BMO Financial Group and Policy Options/IRPP. This article contains his summary and sense of the proceedings.
John Van Reenen
In the wake of the Great Recession, the UK is hardly alone in looking for sources of economic growth. Economists and many other commentators agree that technological innovation must be at the heart of longrun growth. It is also widely understood that left to itself the market is unlikely to provide enough incentives for innovation. So can there be a role for public policy in stimulating innovation? Is it driven by fundamental factors, such asculture and luck, which are beyond the ability of governments to influence except in the most minor ways? Recent research has challenged the fatalistic attitude that innovation is not amenable to government action. One direct way to influence innovation is through the tax system, in particular by offering a tax break for business spending on R&D.
CANARIE Economic Benefits Report
Nordicity & Bytown Consulting
Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network (CANARIE) produced this study on the economic benefits generated by the organization since its creation in 1993. It found that every dollar of investment in the Canadian researhc and education sector through CANARIE generated $2.85 in economic benefits in the form of GDP for the Canadian economy. The purpose of this analysis is to quantify the economic impact of the organization as a research and education network and as a funding body.
Boiling Point? The Skills Gap in US Manufacturing
Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute
A strong manufacturing base has been fundamental to the economic success and effectiveness of the U.S., and there is little evidence of that changing. That’s one reason why, year after year, studies continue to show that Americans remain stalwart in their support of a strong manufacturing industry. A recent study of public opinions of manufacturing found that throughout one of the most turbulent periods in U.S. economic history, public views on the importance of manufacturing both in terms of its role in the U.S. economy and its function as a job creation engine have remained strong. Moreover, the manufacturing industry continues to be widely recognized as an indicator of the health of the U.S. economy. This Skills Gap report is the first of a series of studies that will examine these issues and more. This report seeks to address the questions posed above and provides an overview of the issues facing manufacturers today. Subsequent studies will focus on specific issues such as training and education, talent management, and community collaboration.
Competition and Innovation-Driven Inclusive Growth
Mark Dutz, Ionnis Kessides, Stephen O’Connell and Robert D. Willig
This paper investigates the strength of innovation-driven employment growth, the role of competition in stimulating and facilitating it, and whether it is inclusive. In a sample of more than 26,000 manufacturing establishments across 71 countries (both OECD and developing), the authors find that firms that innovate in products or processes, or that have attained higher total factor productivity, exhibit higher employment growth than non-innovative firms. The strength of firms’ innovation-driven employment growth is significantly positively associated with the share of the firms’ workforce that is unskilled, debunking the conventional wisdom that innovation-driven growth is not inclusive in that it is focused on jobs characterized by higher levels of qualification. They also find that young firms have higher propensities for product or process innovation in countries with better Doing Business ranks (both overall and ranks for constituent components focused on credit availability and property registration). Firms generally innovate more and show greater employment growth if they are exposed to more information (through internet use and membership in business organizations) and are exporters. The empirical results support the policy propositions that innovation is a powerful driver of employment growth, that innovation-driven growth is inclusive in its creation of unskilled jobs, and that the underlying innovations are fostered by a pro-competitive business environment providing ready access to information, financing, export opportunities, and other essential business services that facilitate the entry and expansion of young firms.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Prospects for Ontario’s Prosperity – Annual Report
The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity
Over the past ten years, poor productivity and lagging innovation have persisted in the Ontario economy. As a result, the average Ontarian has lower living standards than counterparts in other advanced economies. Yet there is more reason for optimism than a decade ago, as the provincial and federal governments have improved the policy environment for advancing prosperity. The challenge in the decade ahead will be for business leaders to take advantage of this and invest more in innovation. This report reaffirms that Ontario’s economy is one of the world’s most successful when compared to similar regions outside North America. Ontario’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita ranks 6th among a peer group of 13 prosperous international regions. But among a set of 16 similar North American jurisdictions, Ontario continues to trail. The Task Force reports that Ontario’s GDP per capita – a measure of the value created by workers and firms in Ontario from the human, physical, and natural resources in the province – lagged the median of the 16 North American jurisdictions by $7,700 or 14.2 percent in 2010, up from the 2009 gap of $7,100 in constant dollars (2010). This gap represents lost prosperity, which negatively affects Ontarians at all income levels. The prosperity gap is the result of being laggards in innovation and productivity. While the province leads most other regions around the world in competitiveness and prosperity, this is largely because Ontarians work more, not because they are more innovative and productive – or work smarter.
Statistics & Indicators
Innovation Union Competitiveness Report 2011
European Commission
The European Union (EU) released its first competitiveness report on all 27 EU member nations and six associated countries. Tthe report monitors progress towards EU and national R&D headline targets and provide economic evidence and analysis to underpin the development of EU and national innovation policies. Twelve key findings are highlighted within the report, among them: The EU is slowly advancing towards its 3% R&D target; Despite the economic crisis hitting business R&D investments hard, many European countries are maintaining or increasing their levels of public R&D funding; Europe is losing ground in the exploitation of research results; European small- and medium-sized business are innovative but do not grow sufficiently; and, Europe has a strong potential in technological inventions for societal challenges and new global growth areas (e.g., green technologies). The report also provides recommendations related to each of the 12 findings that may address the deficiencies highlighted (e.g., the move towards a more cost-efficient intellectual property and protection management system to stimulate technology transfer.) and build upon existing strengths (e.g., even under sever austerity measures, member nations should safeguard spending in R&D, innovation and education.).
Policy Digest
Top Ten Policies for the Innovative State
Scott Doron, Southern Technology Council
Innovai on is the only way out of the current economic malaise. Innovai on has always sparked economic advancement: new knowledge and processes, new connections and insights. The first technology was a rock used as a hammer; the latest, to pick among many, is the iPad. Agreement about the value of innovation is not in question; methods of achieving innovation, however, very much are. To help states assess their innovation environment, members of the Southern Technology Council created a set of policies for the establishment of the innovative state. Members completed surveys and met to discuss the merits of each recommendation, followed by voting to determine winners. The final recommendations and examples tilt towards creating companies and strengthening research, falling across five domains: Funding; Research; Regulations and Taxes; Workforce and Leadership.
- Establish funds in targeted industries to seed new companies.
In Missouri TechLaunch, pre-seed funding is awarded to entrepreneurial start-ups for intellectual property development and evaluation, including in-depth market analysis, competitive analysis, proof of concept, and prototype design and development. Tennessee’s Technology Maturation Fund helps scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs realize the commercial potential of innovative technologies. The fund moves promising technologies from the lab to the proof-of-concept or prototype stage to attract additional investor support or secure third-party licensing deals - Provide funds to hire world-class researchers for the state’s universities in disciplines tied to targeted industries.
Kentucky’s Bucks for Brains program matches university funds to at ract top researchers and has invested over $350 million within the state. - Establish tax credits or grants for private sector R&D, especially when conducted by small businesses and partnered with state universities or federal laboratories
The West Virginia Research Foundation Fund provided $35 million for West Virginia University and $15 million for Marshall University to fund research. The schools have seven years to raise private matching funds to draw on the money. - Make incentives available for university research to create companies from academic pursuits.
The Oklahoma Technology Commercializai on Center works with companies, inventors, researchers and entrepreneurs to spur company creation. Activities include business consulting, access to capital, and technology assessment. - Provide state tax credit for angel and venture capital investments.
The Arkansas Equity Investment Inceni ve Program is a discretionary incentive targeted toward new, technology-based businesses that pay wages in excess of the state or county average. With the Louisiana Angel Investment Tax Credit, investors receive refundable Louisiana income or corporation franchise tax credits up to 35 percent of the money invested in a business certified by the state’s economic development organization. - Establish a task force to create optimal taxes, regulations, and incentives for entrepreneurs and company creation.
The North Carolina Research Triangle Economic Development Legislai ve Aci on Agenda suggests “a comprehensive review of the regulatory environment to ideni fy areas that impede or slow job growth and business success” in order to “facilitate and expedite job growth. - Provide incentives to promote math and science-oriented college students into STEM teaching careers.
The goal of the Engineering Academy Initiative for Alabama (EAIA) is to increase the number of high school graduates selecting engineering as a career. EAIA accomplishes this by providing high school students with curriculum and processes for advanced pre-engineering college mathematics and sciences. - Increase career awareness and assistance for trade vocations important to science and technology companies.
South Carolina K-16 Education Partners has established two pathways to impact the education of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) cluster engineers, technicians, and other STEM professionals. The pathways facilitate the development of both engineers and engineering technicians through the implementation of two parallel K-16 Rigorous Programs of Study. - Create a joint house/senate committee on science and technology to advise the legislature on technology issues.
The Virginia Joint Commission on Technology and Science studies all aspects of S&T issues to advise on the development of technology and science policies and legislation. - Fund a state organization, with a muli -year funding mechanism, to create innovation-based jobs and companies.
The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) operates as an independent not-for-profit entity governed by leaders from industry and academia. GRA has leveraged $525 million in state funding into $2.6 billion of additional federal and private investment. The mission of the Mississippi Technology Alliance is to drive innovation and technology-based economic development. The Alliance’s activities include innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital formation.
Events
INNOVATION 2011: Canada’s R&D Partnership Conference
Montreal, 20-22 November, 2011
INNOVATION 2011 is a networking and professional development conference that draws from the global community of technology transfer and industry engagement practitioners from academia, industry and government as well as venture investors and other managers of Canada’s intellectual assets. Partnerships with local, regional and national industry associations and others will enrich the program significantly. In addition to professional development, opportunities for networking, marketing and building relationships with key individuals and organizations in Canada’s Innovation Ecosystem are key cornerstones of the Conference.
Contested Regions: Territorial Politics and Policy
London, UK, 25 November, 2011
There has been discussion through the last two decades about the role of the region as a primary spatial scale at which political and economic agendas are contested and resolved. Disputes have often centred on complex constructions of identity, sovereignty, borders, legitimacy and democracy. We are now seeing a growing appreciation of an alternative set of territorial politics, one which is leading researchers to focus on new forms of disparity and disputes such as the implications of changing patterns of migration, emergence of new states, promotion of inter‐governmentality and regional collaboration by the European Commission as well as challenges to existing models of democracy and representation through a growth in localism. Globalization also appears to be fuelling claims of the resurgence of cities as drivers of competitiveness resulting in challenges to existing urban economic infrastructures and urban regional governance. The pace of change has left these pivotal societal and political‐economic formations reliant on increasingly outdated and inadequate institutional structures, infrastructures, territorialities, statutory frameworks and supports. And herein rests the tension: as the demand for more ‘appropriate’, widely understood to mean more flexible, networked and smart forms of urban and regional planning and governance arrangements increases, new loci and/or expressions of territorial cooperation and conflict are emerging. This conference on Contested Regions presents an opportunity to discuss and debate these important issues, to establish the need and nature of future research imperatives in this field, and to address the concerns, and challenges confronting practitioners and policymakers.
Multi-level Governance and Partnership in EU Cohesion Policy
Vienna, Austria, 29-30 November, 2011
The first workshop will tackle the issues of multi-level governance and partnership in EU cohesion policy. The imposition of multi-level and horizontal cooperation in implementation of cohesion funding challenged the established patterns of interaction between the levels of government and the actors involved in regional policy delivery. The partnership principle has also been praised for its positive impact in terms of improvement of administrative capacity and favouring learning across organizational boundaries. In addition, effective multi-level governance mechanisms and horizontal partnership are also considered as crucial for purposeful and strategic use of the Structural Funds. Thus, EU cohesion policy is expected to become more results-oriented in 2014-2020 thanks to, among other measures, an emphasis on a place-based approach, a concept closely linked with multi-level governance and partnership. However, there are major barriers for the functioning of multi-level governance, such as reluctance of some national governments to allow the sub-national actors to play a more important role; or lack of capacity at the regional level to actively take part in shaping and implementation of EU cohesion policy, particularly in countries with centralized and hierarchical administration systems. Likewise, as the ex-post evaluations of 2000-2006 period and the academic research to date suggest, the application of horizontal partnership varies considerably across the Member States and can remain superficial and ‘formal.’
Innovation in a Sustainable Supply Chain: A Global Challenge
Montreal, 5-6 December, 2011
Aéro Montréal, the Québec Aerospace Cluster, in collaboration with CRIAQ, is organizing the third forum entirely dedicated to aerospace innovation. More than 500 participants and renowned speakers from the aerospace industry from Québec, Canada and abroad. The program includes conferences, workshops, B2B technology meetings and innovation exhibits.
The Strategic Management of Places
San Diego, CA, 12-13 December, 2011
his Conference will bring together thought leaders on the policies that cities, regions, states and communities can pursue to improve their economic performance. In particular, the conference will focus on thestrategic management of a place. A place can be a city, region, state, or even a greater geographic and political unit. We are drawing on the experience and insights of highly accomplished leaders spanning a broad spectrum of disciplines in academia, a wide range of contexts in business, and diverse range of public policy leadership roles in a series of panels to identify what matters in shaping the economic performance of a place, why it matters, and how policy can influence those outcomes.
CALL FOR PAPERS – DRUID Academy Conference 2012
Cambridge, UK, 19-21 January, 2012
The conference is open for all PhD students working within the broad field of economics, entrepreneurship and management of innovation and organizational change. We invite papers aiming at enhancing our understanding of the dynamics of technological, structural and institutional change at the level of firms, industries, regions and nations. DRUID is the node for an open international network – new partners are most welcome (we of course encourage DRUID Academy PhD students and students previously connected DRUID conferences to submit an abstract as well). Do not hesitate to apply even if you have not been in contact with DRUID previously.
Saint-Etienne, France, 26-28 January, 2012
Public and corporate actors are faced with pressing questions concerning innovation policy and the return of R&D investment. To answer these questions, new perspectives are necessary to overthrow received wisdom. This first European seminar on “Geography of Innovation” invites scholars from all disciplines to present their work on local and global processes of innovation, on the interaction between science, technology and policy, on clusters, entrepreneurship and competitiveness, and on green growth and sustainability. To further our understanding of innovation processes, the seminar intends to bring together a variety of disciplines including economic geography, regional science, economics of innovation, network theory and management science. We further welcome new contributions to the establishment of (European) databases as well as new analytical tools, including spatial econometrics, network analysis, (interactive) visualization, bibliometrics and policy evaluation tools.
The Governance of Innovation and Socio-Technical Systems: Theorizing and Explaining Change
Copenhagen, Denmark, 1-2 March, 2012
‘Governance’ is a notion that has gained increasing currency the past years in the field of (sectoral) innovation systems and socio-technical systems’ studies. Generally speaking, it refers to the ability of a society to solve collective action problems in issues that involve science, technology and innovation. However, there continues to be a considerable level of indeterminacy in the literature. Firstly, because the empirical literature on systems exhibits multiple understanding of change, and hence about how governance processes take place. This diversity has not been properly spelled out, obscuring the way in which change is linked to specific forms of (effective) governance. And secondly, because these empirical studies tend to use the notion ‘governance’ in rather loose conceptual terms and sometimes even only implicitly. This tends to underestimate or ignore the coordination aspect embedded in any form of systemic change. For these two reasons, the actual explanatory capacity of the notion ‘governance’ when studying systems’ change remains limited. This workshop aims at addressing this gap in the literature, asking how do agents and institutions coordinate in the process of generating change in complex socio-technical and (sectoral) innovation systems.
CALL FOR PAPERS – 2012 Conference on Entrepreneurial Universities 
Muenster, German, 25-27 April, 2012
The conference will be a European discussion forum for researchers and practitioners on Entrepreneurial Universities, where theory and practice are equally emphasised in the programme. We are now calling for presentation papers, workshops and posters on the themes of the conference. We would like to encourage you to submit abstracts of conceptually or empirically focused proposals. All papers will be double-blind reviewed and published in the conference proceedings.
Karlsruhe, Germany, 12-13 June, 2012
The Lund Declaration, which was handed to the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union by 400 prominent researchers and politicians in 2009, states that “European research must focus on the Grand Challenges of our time moving beyond current rigid thematic approaches. This calls for a new deal among European institutions and Member States, in which European and national instruments are well aligned and cooperation builds on transparency and trust.” The declaration thus asks EU institutions to play a crucial role in bringing the relevant public and private actors together, and helping to build more cooperation and trust in order to address the overarching policy objectives.This declaration has taken up and reinforced a development in the past few years in which governments and the European Union have adopted a new strategic rhetoric for their research and innovation policy priorities which addresses the major societal challenges of our time. This is evolving into the third major policy rationale besides economic growth and competitiveness. It is not yet clear whether and how any transformative effects from this new mission-oriented approach can already be identified. The conference aims to attract papers that discuss possible transformative effects at different levels, i.e. on the actors performing research, innovation processes, scientific fields and technological sectors, the institutional funding and research landscape, society, the demand and user/beneficiary side, research and innovation policy and financing, and national and European political framework conditions. It also invites contributions that critically discuss methodological issues, conceptual developments and novel normative challenges around innovation and R&D policy triggered by the – alleged – mission oriented turn.
CALL FOR PAPERS – Entrepreneurship and Innovation Networks
Faro, Portugal, 14-16 June, 2012
Following the tradition established by the previous symposia, starting in 1998, the symposium is designed to bring together leading-edge views of senior academic scholars and mix them with the critical and creative views of postdocs and PhD students engaged in their thesis work. We welcome researchers from various fields, such as economic geography, economic history, entrepreneurship,
international business, management, political science, regional economics, small business economics, sociology and urban and regional planning. The objectives of the fifteenth Uddevalla Symposium 2012 are: i) to provide a unique opportunity for scholars including senior and junior researchers to discuss path-breaking concepts, ideas, frameworks and theories in plenary key-note sessions and parallel competitive paper sessions, and ii) to facilitate the development and synthesis of important contributions into cohesive and integrated collections for potential publication. Therefore, unpublished complete papers are invited for presentation and feedback from other scholars. A selected list of these papers will be subjected to review and development for publication in scholarly venue.
CALL FOR PAPERS – XXIII ISPIM Conference: Action for Innovation: Innovating from Experience
Barcelona, Spain, 17- 20 June, 2012
The plea for innovation is universal. Managers and politicians have understood that innovation is needed on an everyday-basis to strengthen the competitiveness of organisations, regions and countries. Innovation, however, requires more than good ideas and intentions. Leadership, foresight, courage, investment, inspiration and perspiration are needed to turn intentions and ideas into effective action. Even with these elements in place, not every initiative is successful. However, every action and each experience provide new insights into the causes of failed and successful innovation. Successful innovators, be they individuals, organisations, intermediaries or policy makers, must therefore overcome the paradox of building on experience, and yet breaking away from the status quo, with a permanent innovation mindset. These challenges of “Action for Innovation” are the core focus of this conference.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.