News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
New Way Forward for Canada’s Science Agenda
Government of Canada
Approximately 500 researchers, academics, business leaders and policy-makers attending the 7th Canadian Science Policy Conference heard the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, outline her mandate and vision. In her remarks, the Minister underscored that the government values scientists and will base decisions on sound scientific knowledge. She also confirmed the government’s intention to create a new Office of the Chief Scientist, which will be a key part in ensuring that federal science is freely communicated to the public.
SSTI: New Survey Finds Bipartisan Support for Innovation Initiative Designed to Bolster U.S. Economy
SSTI Weekly Digest
Overwhelming majorities of voters across the nation and in key swing states support a comprehensive initiative designed to parlay the United States’ strong research base into greater economic prosperity and a higher quality of life for all. These findings come from a new survey conducted for the Innovation Advocacy Council, an initiative of SSTI, by the bipartisan team of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting. After learning about the new Innovative Science & Technology for Economic Prosperity (iSTEP) initiative, 89 percent of voters say they would support the effort, which would convert scientific and medical research into new businesses and jobs, bringing the benefits of the innovation economy to the American people. Support is higher among likely voters who live in presidential election battleground states (92 percent). The iSTEP initiative garners strong support across party lines, reaching 91 percent among Democrats and 86 percent among Republicans.
Mission Innovation: Partnership to Accelerate the Clean Energy Revolution
November 30, 2015, in Paris, France, issued on behalf of the Governments of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America: Accelerating widespread clean energy innovation is an indispensable part of an effective, long-term global response to our shared climate challenge; necessary to provide affordable and reliable energy for everyone and to promote economic growth; and critical for energy security. While important progress has been made in cost reduction and deployment of clean energy technologies, the pace of innovation and the scale of transformation and dissemination remains significantly short of what is needed. For these reasons, participating countries have come together to launch Mission Innovation to reinvigorate and accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation with the objective to make clean energy widely affordable. Additional countries will be encouraged to join in the future.
Editor's Pick
Driving Changes: Automated Vehicles in Toronto
David Ticoll, Innovation Policy Lab (IPL)
City leaders, researchers and technologists increasingly agree that as vehicle automation transforms public, commercial, and consumer transportation, they will reshape urban life. While the Government of Ontario has just released rules for testing automated vehicles, other leading countries and cities have been preparing for this future for several years. It is neither too soon nor too late for Toronto to be a global leader in this transformation. The purpose of this report is to equip City of Toronto decision makers with the information they need to identify and evaluate short and medium term policy, planning, and investment options that pertain to the onset of vehicle automation.
Innovation Policy
Big Data and the Intelligence Economy
Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC)
This report examines the economic and labour market impact of big data adoption in Canada, linking it to the broader Internet of Things (IOT) economy, which is expected to add trillions to global GDP. The report provides a detailed breakdown of Canada’s big data market, business models, job trends and emerging occupations. Big Data has been described as the “new commodity” for the 21st century digital economy, due to its immense, untapped value. Its adoption is seen as critical for organizations that are looking to extract knowledge from massive data sets in order to streamline connectivity, reveal insights about consumer trends and develop more profitable business models. As a result, 43,700 Canadians are employed directly and indirectly as a result of big data adoption. This is expected to reach 56,000 by 2020. Having distinct competition with other advanced industrialized economies, Canadian companies must ensure their success by staying up to date with digital technologies. This requires upgrading business processes, digital skills and technology management expertise. To make Canada a more competitive player in the global big data market, industry, policymakers and post-secondary institutions must come together to overcome adoption challenges and skills shortages by treating big data as the evolution of business analytics.
Connecting Data: Driving Productivity and Innovation
Royal Academy of Engineering
How can the UK create a ‘data-enabled’ economy through the use of data analytics (more colloquially ‘big data’), supported by data science and advanced data connectivity? This was the question at the heart of a series of sector-specific stakeholder workshops run by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Improved use of data analytics offers a critical tool for addressing the UK’s nagging productivity deficit of 17% relative to the average of the G7 economies that was highlighted in HM Treasury’s Command Paper published in July 2015. The paper stressed the government’s commitment to raising UK productivity by encouraging long-term investment and promoting a dynamic and innovative economy. The workshops sought to identify the key foundations of a data-enabled economy and where investment would be needed.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
CITIE: City Initiatives for Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Nordic Analysis
Nesta
The CITIE Nordic Report is the second in the CITIE series, which looks at how cities around the world are supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. The report finds that Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo show “a consistently strong level of high performance” in developing and implementing the policies required to underpin a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. They are out-pacing their European neighbours in policy leadership by a significant margin, and also out-performing North American cities across many key policy roles. The analysis of the Nordic capital cities against the CITIE framework shows a consistently strong level of high performance, and demonstrates that smaller-scale cities are just as capable as larger cities of developing the policy and ecosystems to support innovation and a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite smaller and less dense city populations, the quality of relationships can be just as important in enabling a strong policy environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Bold Choices for Ontario
The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity
Quarterly Reports provide commentary on Ontario’s current economic performance and policy initiatives being undertaken and considered. This edition provides updates on key economic indicators for Ontario, including: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), job growth, unemployment, inflation, and exports. The Ontario government was very active in Fall 2015, and it discusses how new policy initiatives – namely the new provincial pension program, Premier Wynne’s trade missions to China, the partial sell-off of Hydro One, and the recent infrastructure developments – will impact Ontario’s economy.
Development of High-Speed Networks and the Role of Municipal Networks
Bengt G Mölleryd, OECD
All OECD countries recognize the benefits that stem from high speed broadband networks and have made tremendous progress in recent years in fostering their deployment. Nonetheless, many challenges remain in terms of how to enhance and expand these networks to meet the growing demands of an increasingly digital economy and society. Although private investments have been the overwhelming source of finance for high speed networks in OECD countries, municipal networks have been used in a number of OECD countries to fill gaps or provide substantial areas of service in a region, city or smaller town and surrounding locations. This report examines some of the experience with these municipal broadband networks in selected OECD countries. Municipal networks are defined here as high speed networks that have been fully or partially facilitated, built, operated or financed by local governments, public bodies, utilities, organizations, or co-operatives that have some type of public involvement. The models and experience of these networks have varied from being highly successful to not meeting expectations. In some cases, they have provided welcome competition by offering an alternative infrastructure and have opened the market for retail Internet service providers by separating the basic infrastructure from services. In other cases, they have enabled the use of shared infrastructure. Some have built on a long tradition of municipalities providing services from entities owned by them, such as the provision of utility services like energy, water, gas, or cable television. Some have involved public private partnerships, others have been privatized following initial public ownership and some are community driven.
Statistics & Indicators
Education at a Glance 2015 Indicators
OECD
This report is the authoritative source for accurate information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; the financial and human resources invested in education; access, participation and progression in education; and the learning environment and organisation of schools. The 2015 edition introduces more detailed analysis of participation in early childhood and tertiary levels of education. The report also examines first generation tertiary-educated adults’ educational and social mobility, labour market outcomes for recent graduates, and participation in employer-sponsored formal and/or non-formal education. Readiness to use information and communication technology for problem solving in teaching and learning is also examined. The publication provides indicators on the impact of skills on employment and earnings, gender differences in education and employment, and teacher and school leader appraisal systems. The report covers all 34 OECD countries and a number of partner countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, and for the first time, Costa Rica and Lithuania).
NSF Info Brief: R&D
National Science Foundation (NSF)
NSF data on federal budget authority for R&D confirms that spending growth has stalled in the U.S. Total authority in fiscal year 2015 for R&D and R&D plant was about $132 billion. This represents a $1 billion (0.7 percent) increase over FY2014, and a $3.7 billion (2.8 percent) increase over FY13. Despite that moderate growth, large declines in spending between FY11 and FY13 mean that U.S. R&D investment remains well behind spending projections from the 2000s. In constant 2009 dollars, R&D spending decreased 13.9 percent between FY06 and FY15.
Small City Economic Dynamism Index
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Small cities are like nerve centers connecting the regional economy. They are the hearts of their respective counties and metropolitan areas as well as hubs of employment, retail, health care, and education for people living in surrounding rural areas. Many small cities are growing and attracting new investments, but unemployment, poverty, vacant buildings, and economic distress are pronounced in some small metros. This Small City Economic Dynamism Index was created to help policymakers and practitioners gain more nuanced perspectives. The index ranks 244 small U.S. cities across 14 indicators of economic dynamism in four categories: demographics, economics, human capital, and infrastructure.
Policy Digest
California’s Innovation-Based Economy: Policies to Maintain and Enhance It
The Milken Institute
Innovation is critical to the creation of high-quality, high-wage, sustainable jobs and economic growth, which, in turn, support a rising tax base in California and around the world. California’s policymakers can’t afford complacency in evaluating the dynamism of its innovation economy or in reviewing policies needed to buttress it. To maintain its leadership in innovation, California must provide a competitive business environment in which prospective and existing companies can conduct research.
In the global race for innovation, California enjoys advantages that other states and nations envy. These include leadership in diverse technology and knowledge-based industries, strong research institutions that provide unrivaled human capital and valuable intellectual property, an entrepreneurial culture aided by a deep pool of immigrant entrepreneurs, and the early-stage risk capital to bring innovations to market.
However, California also suffers from the widely held perception that it is inhospitable to businesses in terms of tax policy, regulatory regime, and other costs of doing business. This perception, along with competing incentives offered by other states and nations, means that California cannot rest if it wants to maintain its innovation supremacy and minimize the number of businesses choosing to locate or expand research operations elsewhere.
California must view itself as both part of a national system of innovation and a separate, distinct collection of regional innovation ecosystems. The state is dependent on federal policies that affect the location decisions of firms and entrepreneurs engaging in innovative activities. For example, U.S. national corporate tax rates, depreciation schedules, and research and development (R&D) tax credits, among others, influence these location choices.
However, policies at both the federal and state level are used to determine where R&D investments will be made, and thus where successful innovations occur and spur economic growth. A firm looking at placing innovative assets or expanding current operations in California examines the combined national and states pecific policies. While California can’t directly affect innovation policies at the national level, it can reduce the cost of capital and make itself more attractive through the use of aggressive state R&D tax credits or by funding research at its universities.
Recommendations
While officials can’t alter California’s high cost of doing business and onerous regulatory regime in the immediate future, other actions are possible. California has a history of incorrectly assuming—during periods of technology-based expansion similar to what the state is experiencing today—that its innovation economy architecture is solid. For example, during the second half of the 1990s, as the dot-com boom was underway and tax receipts from capital gains and stock options were surging, California policymakers didn’t fully comprehend the boom’s ephemeral underpinnings. Again, just before the Great Recession, when tax receipts boomed again, the technology sector seemed poised to continue its advance.
California should take bold steps to maintain and enhance its capacity for innovation and the conversion of it into commercial applications, thereby allowing firms to create high-quality jobs in the state and benefiting from the large multiplier effect associated with them. While it’s true that California has long been a high-tax, high-cost place to do business, the imperative for innovation in the state can’t be overstated.
The Legislature must consider additional policies that will provide fertile ground for existing and prospective businesses and universities to conduct research. We believe that the policy prescriptions outlined in this report are an excellent place to start. Some might consider policies such as doubling the R&D tax credit as an unfair tax giveaway. If so, we submit that such an inducement is well worth the cost. The additional research and high-paying jobs that firms and entrepreneurs create would boost economic performance in the Golden State.
Events
DRUID Academy Conference 2016
Bordeaux, France, 13-15 January, 2016
The conference is open for all PhD students working within the broad field of economics and management of innovation, entrepreneurship and organizations. 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 encourage all PhD students to submit their research to the conference. Do not hesitate to apply even if you have not been in contact with DRUID previously.
Regional Studies Association Annual Conference 2016 – Building Bridges: Cities and Regions in a Transnational World
Graz, Austria, 3-6 April, 2016
Throughout history, cities and regions have been cornerstones of economic, social and cultural institution building and centres of communication and trade across borders of empires and nations. In a globalized world dominated by multi-level governance and declining economic and political significance of the nation-state, cities and regions are becoming ever more so important in building bridges across nations, supra-national unions, and even continents. These challenges surpass the usual aspects of integration: it is not sufficient to reduce barriers for the mobility of labour, goods, services and capital, to create a homogeneous competitive environment, and a solid monetary system. What is needed in addition are more elements of a new regionalism, which is based on non-hierarchical relationships, on self-government, and on the creation of flexible alliances leading to inter-regional transnational cooperation. The development of a region is affected by its competitive and complementary relationships with other increasingly distant regions. These relationships have to be embedded in an overall structure of relations which encompass the purely economic ones and have strong social, cultural, legal and political dimensions. The objective of the conference is to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue about the future of a transnational world of urban and regional cooperation. We welcome submissions from researchers, policy makers and practitioners working in all areas of regional analysis.
The Organization, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research
Torino, Italy, 9-10 May, 2016
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. As in previous years, we aim to attract contributions from both junior and senior scholars; a minimum number of slots are reserved for junior researchers (PhD students or postdoc scholars who obtained their PhD in 2013 or later). Up to 18 papers will be selected from open submissions on the basis of peer review. The workshop aims at including papers form various streams of research developed in recent years in and around the area of public and private scientific research.
Regional Studies Association 2nd North American Conference: Cities and Regions: Managing Growth and Change
Atlanta, Georgia, 16-17 June, 2016
In the wake of the global financial crisis, cities have searched for new policies and practices capable of addressing major shifts in socio-economic relations at the urban and regional scale. These divergent and differentiated efforts have led to the intensification of underlying problems in some cities and a return to growth in others. Regional policies, particularly in the North American context, responded to economic challenges by adopting new technologies and new institutional and organizational forms to manage growth and change at the city scale. The result is a complex and uneven landscape of public and private actors delivering financial services, scaling-up supply chains, coordinating firm networks, diffusing process and material innovations, and organizing new forms of civic representation and participation. This conference provides a platform for researchers to address the effects of these policy, organizational, and institutional innovations and their impact on work, identity, governance, production networks, infrastructure investments, technology diffusion, and ultimately place. The conference will focus on the policy implications of emerging forms of governance and policy delivery relative to uneven development and inequality in a post-crisis era of ongoing market liberalization, financialization, and global competition.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.