News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Government of Canada Renews its Investment in CANARIE: $105M for 5 year Mandate
CANARIE
CANARIE, a vital component of Canada’s national digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation, recently announced $105 million in new funding for the period 2015 – 2020, following the presentation of the Government of Canada’s Economic Action Plan 2015 in the House of Commons. Ubiquitous digital technologies and an accelerating rate of data creation have made advanced digital infrastructure and tools essential for Canadians who use them to create new knowledge, processes and businesses. This funding decision acknowledges the continually changing landscape in research, education and innovation and the need for ongoing investments to ensure Canada remains competitive.
New Toronto Board of Trade Accelerator Program Launched – TAP GTA
Toronto Board of Trade (TBT)
Fueled by the rich variety of expertise offered by the Board’s Enterprise Member companies and Canada’s trade and investment promotion stakeholders, TAP GTA is a multi-year program that will provide a trade development platform for SMEs to build export plans and access partners who can help you build your business. The Toronto region already has the building blocks for global success: a critical mass of traded clusters like human health sciences and financial services; a skilled and diverse workforce with connections to global markets; and Canada’s lead aviation and logistics hub. The opportunity to tap into global growth markets is enormous and the potential for the region is even greater. TAP GTA Trade Summit is designed to get the Toronto region back on the export expansion path.
NIST and NSF Partner to Launch Industry-University to Provide Input on National Advanced Manufacturing Research and Development Priorities
NIST
The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that they will establish a consortium to provide private‐sector input on national advanced manufacturing research and development priorities. NSF has released a solicitation, calling for applications from organizations to administer the consortium through a cooperative agreement. The consortium is being established in response to one of the primary recommendations published in Accelerating U.S. Advanced Manufacturing, an October 2014 report from the President’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, part of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The report recommended the establishment of a “continuous channel for the federal government to access private-sector insights in crafting the national technology strategies and to ensure ongoing coordination of public and private investments.”
Editor's Pick
Creating Digital Opportunity Partnership Second Annual Conference Paper and Presentations
A full collection of the papers and presentations from the second annual CDO Partnership meeting, including presentations from academic, industry, government and association partners, are now available on the CDO web site.
Innovation Policy
Scientific Advice for Policy Making: The Role and Responsibility of Expert Bodies and Individual Scientists
OECD
The scientific community is increasingly being called upon to provide evidence and advice to government policy-makers across a range of issues, from short-term public health emergencies through to longer-term challenges, such as population aging or climate change. Such advice can be a valuable, or even essential, input to sound policy-making but its impact depends on how it is formulated and communicated as well as how it is perceived by its target policy audience and by other interested parties. The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies and moves towards more participative democratic decision-making have put additional pressure on science to help provide answers and solutions, whilst also opening up the academic enterprise to closer surveillance and criticism. What used to be ‘private’ debates between different scientific viewpoints over areas of uncertainty have now become public disputes that can be exploited by different stakeholders to confirm or deny entrenched positions. Science is truly at the centre of many important policy issues and scientists are increasingly visible and, in many cases, increasingly vulnerable, in policy-making processes.
Educate to Innovate: Factors that Influence Innovation
Arden Bement Jr, et al., National Academies Press
Robust innovation in the United States is key to a strong and competitive industry and workforce. Efforts to improve the capacity of individuals and organizations to innovate must be a high national priority to ensure that the United States remains a leader in the global economy. How is the United States preparing its students and workers to innovate and excel? What skills and attributes need to be nurtured? The aim of the Educate to Innovate project is to expand and improve the innovative capacity of individuals and organizations by identifying critical skills, attributes, and best practices – indeed, cultures – for nurturing them. The project findings will enable educators in industry and at all levels of academia to cultivate the next generation of American innovators and thus ensure that the U.S. workforce remains highly competitive in the face of rapid technological changes. Educate to Innovate summarizes the keynote and plenary presentations from a workshop convened in October 2013. The workshop brought together innovators and leaders from various fields to share insights on innovation and its education. This report continues on to describe the specific skills, experiences, and environments that contribute to the success of innovators, and suggests next steps based on discussion from the workshop.
U.S Manufacturing in International Perspective
Marc Levinson, Congressional Research Services
The health of the U.S. manufacturing sector has long been of great concern to Congress. The decline in manufacturing employment since the start of the 21st century has stimulated particular congressional interest. The Obama Administration has undertaken a variety of related initiatives, and Members have introduced hundreds of bills intended to support domestic manufacturing activity in various ways. The proponents of such measures frequently contend that the United States is by various measures falling behind other countries in manufacturing, and they argue that this relative decline can be mitigated or reversed by government policy. This report is designed to inform the debate over the health of U.S. manufacturing through a series of charts and tables that depict the position of the United States relative to other countries according to various metrics. Understanding which trends in manufacturing reflect factors that may be unique to the United States and which are related to broader changes in technology or consumer preferences may be helpful in formulating policies intended to aid firms or workers engaged in manufacturing activity. This report does not describe or discuss specific policy options.
Innovation for Grand Challenges: An Economic Geography Perspective
Lars Coenen et al., CIRCLE
Grand challenges such as climate change, aging societies and food security feature prominently on the agenda of policymakers at all scales, from the EU down to local and regional authorities. These are challenges that require the input and collaboration of a diverse set of societal stakeholders to combine different sources of knowledge in new and useful ways – a process that has occupied the minds of economic geographers looking at innovation in recent decades. Work in economic geography has informed innovation policies that tackle infrastructural, capabilities, network and institutional failures that may be found in different types of regions. How can these insights improve researchers’ and policymakers’ understanding of the potential for innovation policies to address grand challenges? In this paper we review these insights and then identify areas that push economic geographers to go beyond their previous focus and interests, notably by considering innovation policy in light of transformational rather than mere structural failures.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Research Clusters: How Public Subsidies Matter
Marie-Laure Carbon-Dhersin and Emmanuelle Tagourdeau
This paper investigates the factors underlying the emergence of Research Cluster (RC), i.e. cooperation (or coordination of research efforts) through spatial proximity between public and private research teams. A ’public lab’ and a ’private lab’ interact in a two-stage game to decide on ’location’ and ’research effort’. A high level of public subsidies associated to a low asymmetry in the ’valorization capability’ between both labs is necessary for the formation of a cluster. The authors find that RC performs better than non-cooperation in terms of research efforts in a ’public lab’ (but not in a ’private lab’) and output gains that can be appropriated by each lab.
Technology Transfer and Commercialization in Greater Philadelphia
CEO Council for Growth
The report examines how Greater Philadelphia compares with other regions in the country, provides Key recommendations to advance the region’s commercialization potential, and explores what opportunities are available for future success. This report advances an overarching goal that in the next 10 years, the region’s research institutions will birth 10 companies that grow to a liquidity event (e.g. acquisition or initial public offering) of $100 million or more. Four actions are also recommended to help the region realize its commercialization potential.
Statistics & Indicators
Metro Monitor – March 2015
The Brookings Institution
The Metro Monitor tracks the performance of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas on four indicators: jobs, unemployment, output (gross product), and house prices. The analysis of these indicators is focused on change during three time periods: the recession, the recovery, and the combination of the two (recession + recovery). The determination of each time period is place- and indicator-specific, with the recession for a given indicator being defined by the period from its metro-specific “peak” to its “trough” and the recovery being defined by the period from its “trough” to the fourth quarter of 2014.
Policy Digest
Advanced to Advantageous: The Case for New England’s Manufacturing Revolution
New England Council and Deloitte
This report dispels the notion that manufacturing is declining in the region, assesses the region’s strengths and advantages, identifies future opportunities for collaboration and investment in advanced manufacturing, and provides a roadmap for increased economic growth and global competitiveness. The report, which updates and expands upon a 2010 NEC-Deloitte study, was released at an event at Bank of America in downtown Boston. It makes the case that the New England region is poised to experience a manufacturing revolution due to a combination of existing advantages and the replication and widespread adoption of a number of progressive programs and initiatives that the report terms “islands of excellence.” The report identifies areas where New England is setting the pace in advanced manufacturing – industry clusters such as aerospace and defense and medical devices and biotechnology, as well as capability clusters like software and artificial intelligence and advanced materials – and discusses a number of game changing disruptive technologies, like additive manufacturing and the Internet of Things (IoT), that will increasingly help position the region to be a leader in advanced manufacturing’s “next wave” of innovation.
The report calls for the creation of a “program office” in each state to help coordinate and oversee the implementation of its recommendations, and work in concert with other New England states to facilitate stronger collaboration between stakeholders across the region. Among the report’s key recommendations:
1. Secure a federally funded advanced manufacturing center in New England by demonstrating regional cohesion and improving intrastate partnerships between government, educators, and industry. The National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) is an initiative launched by the Obama Administration in 2013 to fund a series of advanced manufacturing hubs across the country. New England should work collectively and collaboratively as a region to apply for one of these institutes.
2. Rebrand the industry and “make it” a better brand by shifting the public’s perception of manufacturing from dirty and dangerous to exciting and safe. This more accurately reflects the reality of today’s “new” advanced manufacturing. By involving students in the “maker movement” from an early age – and engaging their parents, educators, and guidance counselors – regional leaders can help change outdated views of manufacturing and attract more interest in manufacturing careers.
3. Expand industry partnership and apprenticeship opportunities so that students are increasingly matched with open industry positions and trained in critical skills necessary for a career in advanced manufacturing.
Events
Big City, Big Ideas: Data Innovation and City Governance – How London (UK) and Toronto are Responding to the Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Technologies
Toronto, 4 May, 2015
Worldwide, city governments are increasingly playing an active role in supporting economic growth. At the same time, they are under pressure to respond more quickly and individually to the needs of citizens. Rapid developments in digital innovation and in the availability and application of large-scale data sets create opportunities both for new economic activities and jobs, and for new and cheaper ways of delivering city services. They also hold out possibilities for new ways that governments can engage with citizens, while at the same time raising concerns about data privacy. In his talk, Mark Kleinman will look at how these issues are being addressed in both London (UK) and Toronto, two cities with strong ‘knowledge economy’ characteristics which are also growing rapidly.
The Organization, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research
Torino, Italy, 11-12 May, 2015
LEI & BRICK with financial support from the Collegio Carlo Alberto are organizing their annual workshop on “The Organization, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research”. The aim of the workshop is to bring together a small group of scholars interested in the analysis of the production and diffusion of scientific research from an economics, historical, organizational, and policy perspective. The deadline for paper submission is January 31, 2015.
Intelligent Community Forum Summit 2015
Toronto, 8-12 June, 2015
The ICF Summit is an international gathering of mayors, chief administrative officers, chief information officers and economic development officers from cities, states and regions around the world. It is a unique opportunity to learn from the world’s most dynamic communities how to use information and communications technology to build prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities. The 2015 Summit will take place in Toronto, one of the world’s top cities not only for business investment and economic competitiveness but for livability as well – and ICF’s 2014 Intelligent Community of the Year. Attendees will benefit from an expanded program that explores the projects, strategies and institutions of this major metropolitan area as well the cities and technology centers that surround it.
The Global City, Past and Present
St. Andrews, Scotland, 14-15 May, 2015
This first Call for Papers invites submissions from scholars of all humanities and social science disciplines working on the issue of “Space” in the early modern colonial city and its modern descendants. At the intersection of empires, cultures, and economies, urban spaces and structures were, and continue to be, shaped by the cities’ global connections. Through an exploration of all aspects of the urban built environment, the workshop will start a conversation between scholars working on the spatial characteristics of those cities that first rose to prominence in the early modern imperial world.
Tech Leadership Conference: What Worked Yesterday is Obsolete Tomorrow
Kitchener, 28 May, 2015
Tech and society change quickly. The best business ideas can be outdated in months. To stay on top today takes visioneering: the process of building a dream into a workable application. Communitech’s Tech Leadership Conference is the largest annual all-day gathering of tech decision makers in Waterloo Region. It’s about creating market expectations and establishing the region as the best place on the planet for tech companies to start, grow and succeed. On May 28, gain insights from renowned keynotes and take part in sessions led by industry experts.
The Chicago Forum on Global Cities
Chicago, 27-29 May, 2015
Global cities rise above the rest. They have the scope, ambition, and clout to shape not just the world’s economy but its ideas, its culture, its policies, and its future. They set the standards and make the rules. Big and connected, they transcend national frontiers and disrupt international agendas. They are magnets for business, people, money, and innovation. And yet global pathologies—terrorism, inequality, climate change—hit global cities first and hardest. Powerful and resourceful, global cities are the key actors in driving political, social, and economic policies and solving critical world challenges. This conference will bring together global city leaders of the four pillars vital to urban life—business, education, arts and culture, civics—for a multidisciplinary discussion on how they can collaborate to make their cities more economically vital, socially inclusive, and environmentally livable. The future of global cities will be defined by the mayors and maestros, the scholars and CEOs, who will attend and participate in this unique global forum in a unique global city.
DRUID 15 – The Relevance of Innovation
Rome, Italy, 15-17 June, 2015
Since 1995 DRUID has become one of the world’s premier academic conferences on innovation and the dynamics of structural and geographic change. Presenting distinguished plenary speakers, a range of parallel paper sessions, and a highly attractive social program, the conference aims at mapping theoretical, empirical and methodological advances, and contributing novel insights.
ZEW/MaCCI Conference on the Economics of Innovation and Patenting
Mannheim, Germany, 2-3 July, 2015
This conference aims at stimulating discussion between international researchers conducting related empirical, and theoretical analysis. In addition, the conference will focus on policy implications of recent research. Theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions from all areas of the economics of innovation and patenting are welcome. The conference is sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
11th Regional Policy Conference of the Technopolicy Network – Internationalization of Technology Clusters
Moscow, Russia, 7-9 September, 2015
The 7th of September will be spent well to get to know the surrounding of Zelenograd, and the participants of the conference through a social tour to the Technounity cluster of the city. Zelenograd was built in 1958 as a reflection of the California Silicon Valley and is also known as Soviet/Russian Silicon Valley. It was already one of the most influential centres of electronics, microelectronics and computer industry in the Soviet Union and still plays a similar role in modern Russia. Nowadays the city is the headquarters of its microelectronic solutions department. On the 8th and 9th of September, participants will have two days of activating sessions, with a focus on cluster management and regional development policies. Also, the conference will introduce a keynote speakers who will be leading experts on the subjects of internationalization, technology clusters, and innovation.
Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy
Atlanta, Georgia, 17-19 September, 2015
The Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy provides a showcase for the highest quality scholarship addressing the multidimensional challenges and interrelated characteristics of science and innovation policy and processes. The conference attracts over 300 researchers from more than 35 countries and includes a series of plenary talks; parallel paper sessions to discuss ongoing research; and a young researcher poster competition. Next year’s session will explore the research front addressing the broad range of issues central to the structure, function, performance and outcomes of the science and innovation enterprises.
4th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity and Economy
Florence, Italy, 8-10 October, 2015
During the past decades myriad links between culture, creativity and economic practice have become major topics of interdisciplinary study. This colloquium aims to bring together leading edge scholars from across the social sciences to critically examine the intersections between these spheres and symbolic and culturally embedded values in particular, and how they are pervaded by and pervade the global economy. Our aim is to create a space for vibrant critical discussion about how ‘creativity’, cultural meanings, cultural phenomena, cultural workers and organizations are not only valuable to the market but increasingly drivers and framers of the systems of value and taste that economic actors attempt to capture and trade upon. Though culture and creativity have always been central to human civilization there is increasingly a need to understand culture and creativity as central agencies and motifs in the current stage of globalized capitalism, in the digital and knowledge economy, and in the development of human values, communities, regions and cities.
Subscriptions & Comments
Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will find it of value. We look forward to collaborating with you on this initiative. If you would like to comment on, or contribute to, the content, subscribe or unsubscribe, please contact us at ipl.munkschool@utoronto.ca.
This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.