News from the IPL
EVENTS
Canada's Quantum Internet: Prospects and Perils
Quantum information science harnesses the strange properties of quantum physics to perform new kinds of communication and computation. A future internet that uses quantum networks and quantum computers has the potential to enable many new applications for governments and civil society. Canada has emerged as a leader in quantum information science, and academic and commercial labs are actively experimenting with quantum networks. Yet with any great technological promise there is also danger. Architects of the classical internet did not anticipate the crises of disinformation, cybersecurity, and surveillance that plague global networks. As we look toward a possible future quantum internet, what risks and challenges should we anticipate? How can Canada best position itself to take advantage of its own potential for innovation in quantum technology? This panel brings together experts to discuss the political, economic, and scientific implications of quantum communications, for Canada and the world.
Speakers:
- Francesco Bova, Associate Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
- Anne Broadbent, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa
- Jon Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
- Christoph Simon, Professor and Associate Head, Research, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary
April 27th & 28th
Canadian Science Policy Centre,
The federal government plans to release the budget for 2021 on April 19. CSPC is hosting a Symposium for a comprehensive analysis of the budget, and the reactions of various sectors. IPL Co-director David Wolfe will be speaking on a panel alongside Irene Sterian and Robert Asselin. This event also features a keynote address by David Watters, President and CEO of Global Advantage Consulting, titled “The Impact of Budget 2021 on the Performance of Canada’s National R&D/Innovation Ecosystem.”
Book Launch: Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World
April 21, 2-3pm
Dan Breznitz, Co-Director Innovation Policy Lab
For the last few decades, the dominant growth model has been to focus on technological innovation. Yet, while a small number of cities and regions have benefited, many other communities have struggled. In his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, Dan Breznitz sets out to challenge this model and sets out how these communities might succeed. He argues that by understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, cities and regions can foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. Join us on April 21, as Dan Breznitz sits down to discuss his new book with The Economists’ US Technology Editor, Ludwig Siegele. Innovation in Real Places is currently available as an ebook and will be available at local bookstores, as well as from Indigo and Amazon, on April 17.
RESEARCH
“It’s Not That Hard to Pick Winners”: How Growth and National Context Shape Scale-up Entrepreneurs’ Assessments of Innovation Policy Mixes
Steven Denney, Travis Southin and David Wolfe
Cross-national research shows that large firms, especially those in digitally intensive sectors, exhibit significantly greater market power, higher levels of productivity, and greater innovation capacity. But the challenge of supporting the current generation of scale-ups, the group from which the next generation of large firms is likely to emerge, is not the same for all countries. Companies operating in small and open trading economies face structural barriers that those in larger countries do not, specifically with respect to access to capital, markets, and uneven competition. Canada provides an apt case for investigation, as it is a small, export-oriented, and slower growing economy. It has a comparatively strong start-up ecosystem and a federal government committed to supporting high-growth firms and the creation of more large firms, especially those in knowledge-economy sectors. Despite favourable start-up conditions, relatively few Canadian firms reach scale-up or high-growth status. The failure suggests there has been a substantial disconnect between the innovation policy support provided by successive governments and the domestic technology industry, but begs the question of what is missing? Drawing on interviews with entrepreneurs from Canadian technology scale-ups, complemented by interviews with technology start-ups and key industry actors, this paper find that scale-up entrepreneurs’ policy preferences are rooted in their experiences encountering specific barriers to growth: including lack of access to patient capital, a small internal market, a ‘branch plant’ industrial structure, a neutral innovation policy mix, and fierce competition with larger foreign technology firms. Scale-up entrepreneurs prefer a more active role for federal policy support in the form of demand-side, direct, and targeted innovation instruments. The findings presented in this paper provide a more nuanced understanding of the innovation policy landscape and the preferences of technology scale-up firms.
PRESS
David Wolfe, Special to the Financial Post
This article by IPL Co-director David Wolfe asserts that Climate change, environmental sustainability and public health concerns are now the critical lenses through which all potential innovations must be filtered.
The Innovation Imperative: Why Canada needs to harness the power of the platform economy
Shauna Brail, Special to the Financial Post
This article by IPL Senior Associate argues that if we want to avoid being the equivalent of a branch plant economy for platform firms, we need to act.
Steven Denney and David Wolfe Special to Financial Post
This article by IPL Co-Director David Wolfe and IPL Post Doctoral Fellow Steven Denney lays out the economic case for focusing innovation supports on Scale-ups. The article notes that these firms are well positioned to advance through the recovery and be a main source of net job growth
Dan Breznitz and Dan Munro, Special to Financial Post
This article by IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz and IPL Director of Policy Projects Dan Munro articulates why bridging the digital divide is so central to unlocking Canada’s innovation potential. The article argues that that Canada cannot afford to leave our most promising future entrepreneurs and Einsteins behind.
Editor's Pick
Taking Stock of Canada’s Superclusters
John Knubley, Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
In this recently released report, former Deputy Minister of ISED John Knubley, the minister responsible for the creation and launch of the Superclusters, makes an argument for evaluating their success on a longer time horizon that is commensurate with the scale of their ambition. This report offers a timely reflection on how each Supercluster has evolved and progressed, challenges encountered and lessons learned, where they could go next, and what role they might play in Canada’s “build back better” agenda after COVID-19.
Cities & Regions
Pierre-Alexandre Balland & Ron Boschma, Regional Studies
This paper aims to identify the future Industry 4.0 technology (I4T) centres of knowledge production in Europe. The authors expect I4Ts to thrive in regions where they can draw on local capabilities in I4T-related technologies. It uses patent data to identify I4T-related technologies and finds that I4Ts are positioned in the periphery of the knowledge space. The study shows that European regions with a high potential in terms of I4T-related technologies are more likely to diversify successfully in new I4Ts. The study finds huge differences across regions: some show high, but most regions show weak I4T potential.
Statistics
R&D Tax Incentives: Canada, 2020
OECD
This page summarizes recently updated country profile data on R&D tax incentives in Canada. The post includes information on trends in the generosity of R&D tax support over time as well as 2018 data for direct government funding of business R&D and tax incentives for R&D. This country profile is part of the 2020 edition of the OECD R&D tax incentive country profiles. These extended profiles provide the most up-to-date internationally comparable information – qualitative and quantitative – on the design and cost of R&D tax relief provisions used by countries to create incentives for business R&D. Drawing on the latest indicators of government tax relief for R&D from the OECD R&D Tax Incentives database, updated in March 2021, they highlight recent and long-term trends in the role of R&D tax incentives in the innovation policy mix across OECD countries and partner economies.
Innovation Policy
Catapult Network Review: How the UK’s Catapults can strengthen research and development capacity
UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
In January 2020, the Prime Minister announced that the Government would examine how the UK’s Catapults can strengthen research and development (R&D) capacity in local areas and how they can improve productivity and contribute to greater prosperity across the UK. Following the Prime Minister’s announcement, this review set out to establish: What impacts Catapults are having on their sectors, policy and local areas; whether performance management currently best drives impact; and how Catapults can improve productivity and prosperity across the UK.
Position paper: Creating the DataSpace Industrie 4.0
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI)
This position paper from Germany’s Plattform Industrie 4.0 outlines the proposal to create a DataSpace to support Industry 4.0 digital manufacturing. In the era of the digital economy, data-based value generation will depend on global data spaces that safeguard and guarantee data sovereignty, data security and data integrity. DataSpace Industrie 4.0 is a data space that accelerates future value creation in industrial manufacturing and production.
Innovation and new opportunity front and center in the American Jobs Plan
Mark Skinner, SSTI
This post summarizes the Biden Administration’s recently released American Jobs Plan.The post summarizes the AJP’s major themes and key aspects, including research and development, technology-based economic development, manufacturing, clean energy, clean water, clean tech deployment, workforce and higher education.
The Innovation Adoption Program (IAP) 2021 Federal Budget Proposal
TECHNATION
This post summarizes the 2021 federal budget proposal by TECHNATION, the technology sector industry association formerly known as ITAC. The report is proposing a national program that leverages the Government’s purchasing power to drive economic recovery for Canada’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The post argues that a national Innovation Adoption Program should be included as a key pillar of the Government of Canada’s economic recovery plan. Federal purchasing was estimated at $23 billion in 2017 –making the federal government a powerful customer with the ability to shift markets, and launch, grow, or save businesses. However, TECHNATION asserts that Canada’s most promising technology start–ups and growth companies do not bid for the more than $6.8 billion spent annually on technology projects, because processes are too long, costly, complex, and onerous for their business.
Policy Digest
The design and implementation of mission-oriented innovation policies
Philippe Larrue, OECD
This paper analyses ‘mission-oriented innovation policies’ (MOIPs), a new type of systemic intervention that a growing number of countries has implemented in order to tackle mounting societal challenges. MOIPs are defined as a co-ordinated package of policy and regulatory measures tailored specifically to mobilize science, technology and innovation in order to address well-defined objectives related to a societal challenge, in a defined time frame. These policies aim to alleviate some of the most prevalent weaknesses within many national systems of innovation, notably the lack of holistic strategic orientation and policy co-ordination, and fragmented policy mixes. This report draws on the MOIP Online Toolkit (https://stip.oecd.org/stip/moip), a comprehensive knowledge platform on mission-oriented innovation policies.
Based on 20 MOIP initiative case studies and 4 MOIP country case studies, this report systemically formalize and categorize mission oriented practices and patterns along the three dimensions of strategic orientation, policy co-ordination and policy implementation. While there is no single ‘silver bullet’ to be simply replicated, the following results can be put forward:
- Most MOIPs follow an open and non-prescriptive approach whereby they ‘pick problems, not solutions’. However, as the organizations promoting and leading this approach are mainly from the science and technology policy fields, few of them consider social innovation.
- Few of MOIP initiatives have set objectives that have the expected mission characteristics: clear, bold and inspirational, with wide societal relevance, ambitious but realistic, targeted, measurable, time-bound and solution neutral.
- Missions are generally not set at the inception of MOIP initiatives, but are a result of very gradual and inclusive process, through which the scope of objectives is progressively narrowed down from broad challenges and missions to objectives set in projects.
- Almost all MOIP initiatives mix societal and economic objectives. This can generate some mismatch in terms of the geographic scope of the policy intervention needed to fulfill these different objectives.•All MOIPs are steered and governed through elaborated multi-level governance structure, e.g. ‘nested’, multi-polar and cross-ministerial / cross-agency governance structure.
- The implementation of a portfolio approach within MOIPS allows a coordinated exploration of the different options to a given challenge. •There are very few evaluations of MOIPs to date and almost all of them still rely on traditional (non-systemic) evaluation tools and methods. •Although they are difficult to estimate, MOIPs involve additional costs, mainly related to their dedicated strategic, programming and operational governance bodies. However, there have been only a few evaluations that could shed light on the costs and benefits of MOIPs;
- No MOIP initiative was started from scratch; they all build on previous policies implemented in the country. They result from a gradual process with dedicated effort to make the existing policies better oriented and coordinated, either ‘from the inside’ (e.g. improvement of a scheme to make it more challenge-oriented and cross-sectoral) or ‘from the outside’ (most often by adding a governance layer to coordinate various existing interventions);
- The design of MOIPs is significantly influenced by the specificities of the national institutional setting in which they are embedded. MOIPs are the result of a gradual and country-specific process. National ‘MOIP trajectories’ unfold and move forward through experimentation, negotiation and learning in an evolutionary way, building on existing policy settings and instruments
- Several countries that have experimented MOIPs are now confronted with the difficulty to scale them up and integrate them in the broader strategic and policy framework. This requires not only a capacity to learn from these experiments and reflect this knowledge into existing or new initiatives (reflexivity), but also a high level political commitment
Links to recent IPL webinars
Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship in Canada
This is a recording of the March 23rd 2021 webinar focused on the importance of IP protection for entrepreneurship, the intellectual property environment in Canada, and existing support for firms. Panelists discussed issues relating to their firm’s ability to secure IP especially as it relates to IP education and the role of government in supporting IP protection. Speakers: Seray Çiçek, Ryan Hubbard, Graeme Moffat, Moderator: Shiri Breznitz
Canada’s future skills strategy: Workforce development for inclusive innovation
This is a recording of the January 19th 2021 webinar discussing the Future Skills Council report, released in November 2020, which recommends equitable and competitive labour market strategies in response to disruptive technological, economic, social and environmental events. It aims to provide a roadmap to a stronger, more resilient future for Canada. In this webinar, panelists discuss the report’s key action areas and pathways to successful implementation. Speakers: Rachel Wernick, Denise Amyot, Dan Munro, & David Ticoll.
Inclusive Innovation: COVID and After
This is a recording of the December 10th 2020 webinar discussing the importance of inclusive innovation; policies needed to bring it about; opportunities and prospects for doing so in the era of COVID-19; and new initiatives for measuring and tracking progress – including GDP 2.0 and the Innovation Policy Lab’s Inclusive Innovation Monitor. Speakers: Dan Breznitz, Susan Helper, Daniel Munro, & Anjum Sultana
Urban Leadership & Innovation During Times of Crisis
This is a recording of the Dec 3rd 2020 webinar discussing how urban leaders are the frontlines of crisis response, from the COVID-19 the pandemic and its associated economic, social and fiscal challenges to the growing protests over racial and economic justice and the looming reality of climate change. This session highlights the way urban leaders can best respond to build more inclusive, just and resilient cities and generate the policy innovations that can shape enduring change. Speakers: Richard Florida, Anita McGahan, Shauna Brail, & Supriya Dwivedi
Canada’s Innovation Imperative
This is a recording of the November 9, 2020 event. Innovation contributes to regional and national prosperity and is a well-established economic concept. To succeed in building capacity and strength in this technical realm, government policies must be deliberate, systematic and rooted in expertise. Data shows that Canada missed the shift from the tangible to intangible economy. Moving forward, how can we make sure Canada builds competitive advantage through policy that leverages innovation for tomorrow’s economy? Speakers: Jim Balsillie, Dan Breznitz, Meagan Simpson (moderator).
This is a recording of the November 12, 2020 event. Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins outlines how the COVID-19 crisis has damaged economic potential and discusses what will be needed to thrive in the post-pandemic world. Speakers: Carolyn Wilkins, Michael Sabia, Shauna Brail (moderator).
Policymaking Under Uncertainty
This is a recording of the Oct. 14th, 2020 event focused on Policymaking Under Uncertainty. Policymaking is a challenging endeavour under the best of times, as politicians and bureaucrats seek to juggle the need for rapid and innovative interventions on the one hand with democratic accountability on the other. Speakers: Uri Gabai, Darius Ornston, Sylvia Schwaag Serger, and Dan Breznitz.
This is a recording of the Jul 16th, 2020 event focused on exploring the short and long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Panelists included Catherine Beaudry, Ben Spigel, Tara Vinodrai, and David Wolfe.
Will COVID-19 Bring Us Together or Blow Us Apart? The Global Security Implications of the Pandemic
This is a recording of the July 7th, 2020 event focused on the national and international security implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Janice Stein discusses the historical security lessons of previous pandemics and depressions, Jon Lindsay considers emerging military and strategic dangers exacerbated by COVID-19, and Ron Deibert discusses the cybersecurity and surveillance threats associated with the unprecedented relocation of life online.
This is a recording of the June 11, 2020 event focused on how will COVID-19 shape the future of our cities. Join experts Anita McGahan, Shauna Brail (School of Cities), and Nathalie des Rosiers (Massey College), Richard Florida (School of Cities Professor) as they discuss cities after COVID with Marcia Young, host of CBC’s World Report.
This is a recording of the June 11, 2020 event focused on the impact of COVID-19 on higher education. Speakers: Shiri Breznitz, Heike Mayer, Donald Siegel and Elvira Uyarra.
The Future of (Decent?) Work After COVID-19
This is a recording of the May 26, 2020 Munk School / Innovation Policy Lab / CIFAR event focused on the future of work after COVID-19. Speakers: Dan Breznitz, Zabeen Hirji and Peter Warrian.
This is a recording of the May 11th 2020 event focused on “what will the world look like in the wake of COVID-19?” Speakers: Shauna Brail, Anita McGahan, Tara Vinodrai and Shiri Breznitz.
COVID-19 and the World’s Grand Challenges
This is a recording of the May 8th 2020 event focused on “what impact will COVID-19 have on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?” Speakers: Anita McGahan, Joseph Wong and Karlee Silver.
How is COVID-19 affecting global supply chains?
This is a recording of the April 29th 2020 event focused on “how is COVID-19 affecting supply chains in Canada and around the globe?” Speakers: Dan Breznitz, Shauna Brail and Steven Denney.
Events
May 10-13, 2021 | May 10 – Pre-conference Summer School
Virtual conference
The Partnership for the Organization of Innovation (4POINT0) is organizing the first ‘‘Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems” (P4IE) international conference on 10-13 May 2020. Organized around eight highly relevant tracks, the conference offers participants the opportunity to discuss the impact of various technologies, practices, processes and policies, on innovation ecosystems, and the best means by which to design collaborative environments. The goal of the conference is to explore ways to strengthen Canada’s innovation through innovation ecosystems.
Co-creating Economic Recovery: New Models for Innovation Support
June 1-4, 2021
Registration for the 20th annual Research Money conference is now open! The virtual conference, "Co-creating Economic Recovery: New Models for Innovation Support" will be held June 1-4, 2021. Visit the conference website to learn more about the program and register. Register before April 30th, 2021 to take advantage spring pricing.
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe