The IPL newsletter: Volume 20, Issue 419

INTERVIEW 

Robert Luke is Vice-President, Research & Innovation, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD University. Robert is also a Senior Associate in the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Interview performed by Travis Southin and Zissis Hadjis on December 4, 2019.

In a sentence or two, describe your area of research. Why is it important and interesting to you? Why did you decide to pursue it?
My research focuses on human centred and participatory design methods as applied to technology development and integration. I am most interested in human-centered knowledge media design, working at the intersections of education and information science to produce useful and useable technology to support education, health, and innovation systems.

Are there any updates from your work or current projects that you can share?
Over the past two decades or so I’ve worked at the interface of private-public R&D in the University, research hospital and college/Technology Access Centre contexts. This has informed current research on Public+Private Partnerships for Research and Development – what I call P3RD. I am working at the moment on understanding how best to design supports to enable more effective P3RD, including collaborative R&D models enabled by technology platforms. This uses mechanisms such as Technology/Solutions Readiness Levels and change management practices to support innovation. I am also currently leading the creation of a consortium of Universities and Technology Access Centres to conduct collaborative and cooperative R&D in concert with industry partners. This is intended to help support the commercialization of university basic research as well as to support industry to tap into expertise in public research performing organizations. The development of the technology platform is a direct output of my work in P3RD, and leverages a (very) early prototype system I built back in 2012.

What impact do you hope your research can have?
My research is primarily focused on what is called Experimental Development. I am less concerned about who has done what than I am about who can do what. This is less about creating new technologies (though I do work on that as well from time to time), and more about enabling technologies/systems/processes to be put into use using careful analysis and human centred and participatory design methodologies. It is my hope that my research continues to have impact. I am proud of having helped take many new technologies, products and services into markets in Canada and globally. And I am more proud of the fact that I have enabled close to 8000 students over the course of my career acquire innovation literacy as a core competency.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing your area of research? What do you think the innovation landscape will look like in 5 or 10 years?
I think the lack of familiarity with anything over Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 in Canada is definitely a challenge. For example there’s a common refrain that market research isn’t “real” research, but I think that this kind for research is important because it’s helping translate research into tangible things. I think there are more and more people realizing, certainly at the policy level, that basic research is important and necessary, but that we have not invested in the “transit of intellectual property” from basic research, through applied research and experimental development into market fruition. Within the next decade we will see more collaborative models that support commercializing the ideas developed in our world leading basic research labs by leveraging other public research performers across the continuum of R&D.

What was the best book (or article) you’ve read recently? Why?
Tough one. It’s a toss-up between “Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong” by Luis Perez-Breva and “Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation” by Daniel Siegel. The first is an excellent textbook of sorts that outlines highly effective methods for the practice of innovation. The second is just an excellent book for understanding the mind. It uses a basis of brain science to unpack the ways in which we operate, and how we can learn better strategies to be a better person.

What advice would you give a new graduate student studying innovation?
Think about the ends of policy. And then think about the people who enact it. Innovation is and has been a buzzword, but it is real and is done by real people. Try to think about how you can contribute to making innovation more inclusive for more people. That and find something you are interested in – you will be diving deep into the issues for at least four years.

OECD Launches AI Policy Observatory

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
On February 27th the OECD officially launched the OECD AI Policy Observatory. The initiative is designed as “a platform to share and shape public policies for responsible, trustworthy and beneficial AI.” OECD.AI “aims to help countries and others shape policy and institutional frameworks for the development of trustworthy AI that benefits society as a whole, guided by the OECD AI Principles.”  The homepage includes information on the OECD AI Principles, Policy Areas, Trends & Data, and Countries & Initiatives. Also included is a webcast of the February 27th launch event in Paris, France.

NIST Seeking Pathways for Including Non-federal Manufacturing Centers in National Network

SSTI
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking to expand the network of Manufacturing USA centers for innovation, providing pathways for participation from external industry organizations, according to a recent notice in the Federal Register. These “alliance institutes” will not be federally funded, but will essentially function in the same capacity as the federally-funded institutes. However, alliance institutes will still be eligible to receive public service grants — allowing them to provide workforce development services, small- and medium-sized manufacturer outreach, and conduct other typical Manufacturing USA activities. NIST is also looking for public input on alternative funding ideas and opportunities which alliance institutes could access.

Data Driven: Report and Recommendations

Business Council of Canada
Following the release of an issues paper on data policy in the early summer of 2019, the BCC established an advisory panel of technology executives and former regulators led by The Honourable James Moore, former federal Minister of Industry. The advisory panel led consultations with “dozens of leading Canadian companies across the country in a wide variety of industries”, which ultimately led to this report’s 24 policy recommendations, organized by three broad priorities: 1) Protecting Canadians; 2) Supporting a competitive marketplace; and 3) Building data infrastructure. The BCC notes that “this report is the culmination of several years of policy work with the goal of developing a made-in-Canada framework that strikes an appropriate balance between market forces and regulation.”

2020-21 Departmental Plan

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
This recently released report articulates the 2020-21 departmental plan for Canada’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.  The report contains detailed information on the department’s planned results and resources for each of its core responsibilities, which are organized under the themes of 1) People, Skills and Communities; 2) Science, Technology, Research and Commercialization; and 3) Companies, Investment and Growth. The report also includes figures on actual, forecast and planned spending for each of ISED’s core responsibilities.

Laggard Firms, Technology Diffusion and its Structural and Policy Determinants

Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris, Chiara Criscuolo and Rudy Verlhac, OECD
While a growing body of literature studies the distinction between top performing firms and the rest of the productivity distribution, “very little is known about the characteristics of firms that operate at the very bottom of the distribution.”  These ‘laggard firms’ are defined as firms belonging to the bottom 40% of the productivity distribution in each country, industry and year.” This report uses the novel OECD MultiProd dataset, which is based on the full population of firms (or a representative re-weighted sample). 

Analyzing the main characteristics of laggard firms and their contribution to aggregate productivity, this report highlights four main results:

• Laggards are on average smaller and younger than median firms, and represent a significant share(about 30%) of total employment.

• The composition of the group reflects firm dynamics and is related to business dynamism through firm entry and exit.

• Increasing the productivity of laggards to the level of the median firm (i.e., by about 60%) could,on average, increase aggregate productivity by roughly 6%.

• The productivity growth of laggards is on average higher than in the rest of the distribution. In line with neo-Schumpeterian growth theory, the report confirms the expected positive relationship between laggards’ distance to the (national) frontier and their productivity growth, and additionally shows that this catch-up effect is more pronounced for younger firms.

The report articulates the following obstacles to the diffusion of technology and knowledge: the lack of skills, the cost of investment in both ICT and complementary intangible assets, as well as the lack of absorptive capacity. The authors then note that the following policies may be efficient in removing these barriers and in lifting the bottom of the productivity distribution:

Skills policies

• Low levels of skill mismatch are linked to a higher speed of catch-up, while a higher share of under-qualified workers are linked to a slower catch-up. Empirical evidence suggests that lifelong learning – through training of working adults or through active labour market programs – has the potential to increase the speed of catch-up, especially in industries that are more digital or skill intensive.

Financing policies

• The report also suggests that more favourable financial conditions for SMEs, as reflected in the higher share of outstanding loans to SMEs and lower interest rate spreads between large and small firms, may help laggards catch up faster in more digital and skill intensive industries. This in turn indicates that relaxing financial constraints may help overcome the financial barriers to technology adoption.

Innovation policies

• Direct government support to business expenditures on R&D is associated with faster catch-up. The authors note that as direct funding of R&D projects through grants, subsidies or procurements may effectively raise firms’ absorptive capacity, these might be more effective policies for firms with a growth potential to access support, rather than R&D tax credits.

The report also outlines a framework for a policy mix to promote productivity of laggard firms organized around supply-side and demand-side instruments:

Demand-side policies focusing on potential adopters

• Raise awareness about new technologies and develop firms’ absorptive and investment capacity via
  awareness raising schemes, collaboration and networks, labour mobility, and trade and GVC participation

• Developing firms’ absorptive and investment capacity via the education system, training policies (especially for low-skilled), financial support, R&D support, ICT infrastructures, and data access

• Favouring positive return to adoption and reducing risks and uncertainties via competition policies,  entrepreneurship policies, insolvency regimes, normalisation and standardisation procedures, and addressing market failures (networks effects,technological lock-in)

Supply-side policies that stimulate innovation and the development of suitable and affordable technologies

• Fostering production and sharing of knowledge via public research, science-industry linkages,  collaboration, open innovation, and comprehensive strategies for the development of GPTs

• Enabling experimentation and bringing innovations to the market via R&D support, entrepreneurship policies, financial support, IP system, ICT infrastructures, data access, test beds and regulatory sandboxes, and open innovation

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 Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.