News from the IPL
RESEARCH
Book Launch: Information Technology & Military Power by Jon R. Lindsay
This links to a recording of the recent book launch by IPL affiliated faculty Jon R. Lindsay. Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay’s Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy.
SPEAKERS: Brian Cantwell Smith (discussant), Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human, Faculty of Information; Ron Deibert (moderator), Director, Citizen Lab and Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Department of Political Science.
EVENTS
The Future of Foreign Investment in Canada
May 26, 2021 4:30-6:00PM
For much of the country’s history, foreign investment has been integral to Canada’s economic growth and to the prosperity of its people. As an open economy, Canada has clearly benefited from international capital investment. Recently, however, major events like Covid-19, and the changing nature of technology in the global economy have called into question the assumptions underlying foreign investment around the world. In this seminar, leading Canadian and international experts will share their insights on evolving strategic competition for resources, IP, talent, and taxation, their impact on Canada’s prosperity and national security, and their changing nature in an economy driven by intangible assets and strategic competition between states, including proposed changes to Canadian rules on foreign investment.
SPEAKERS: Dan Breznitz, Speaker, Professor, Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; Co-Director, CIFAR Program on Innovation, Equity & the Future of Prosperity; Susan M. Hutton, Speaker, Partner, Competition and Foreign Investment Group, Stikeman Elliott LLP; Jim Balsillie, Speaker, Retired Chairman and Co-CEO of RIM, Chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators; Peter Loewen, Moderator, Associate Director, Global Engagement; Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Graeme Moffat, Moderator, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, System 2 Neurotechnology; Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
June 2-3, 2021
The Urban Leadership eXchange is a certificate of completion offered by the IMIx Executive Program in collaboration with the Master of Urban Innovation program at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute for Management & Innovation. Led by distinguished University of Toronto faculty, this two half-day program held on June 2nd and 3rd will bring together leading researchers and practitioners to help participants promote positive economic and social change through urban innovation. The goal of the ULX program is to help professionals across the Greater Toronto region to better understand the relationship between cities and innovation. Each ULX session pairs a U of T faculty member with a thought leader to explore urban innovation through one of three lenses: cities as centres of the innovation economy, as sites of technological innovation, or as sources of policy innovation.
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
Francis Demers, Statistics Canada
The federal government offers business innovation and growth support through program streams managed by its departments and agencies. In 2017, enterprises in the manufacturing sector accounted for almost one-quarter of the beneficiaries of this support and received almost one-third of the total value of support (Statistics Canada, 2020). The objective of this analysis is to assess the impact of federal growth and innovation support on the employment and revenue of beneficiary enterprises in the manufacturing sector between 2007 and 2017. This analysis suggests that enterprises that received federal support for growth and innovation experienced stronger employment and revenue growth relative to non-beneficiary enterprises. Over the three years following receipt of support, employment growth for beneficiary enterprises averaged 1.8% per year while, on average, enterprises that did not receive support experienced employment declines. Over the same period, the average annual revenue growth of beneficiary enterprises was higher than that of non-beneficiary enterprises by 4.6 percentage points.
Cities & Regions
Sam Tavassolia, Martin Obschonka & David B. Audretsch, Research Policy
Impactful, growth-oriented entrepreneurship is a major research and policy focus. Building on arguments put forward by Jane Jacobs more than 50 years ago, the article proposes that local knowledge spillovers in a city are enhanced by human agency in that city (e.g. local psychological openness). This effect is critically amplified by the catalyst function of a favourable structural city environment that not only connects these agentic people (via urban density), but also facilitates the production and flow of new knowledge for these connected agentic people (via a diverse industry mix). This three-way interaction effect was confirmed in our empirical investigation of quality entrepreneurship across the MSAs (cities) in the US, using a large-scale data set of the psychological profiles of millions of people. Local openness shows a robust positive effect on the level of quality entrepreneurship. This effect is further strengthened by a favourable structural city environment (i.e. high density and diversity) by up to 35%. Reviving Jacobs’ people focus, the results indicate that the best performing cities in terms of knowledge spillovers and economic performance are those that are not only home to, and attract, agentic people, but also empower these people by means of a physical and industrial city landscape that enables them to act in more innovative and entrepreneurial ways, as envisioned by Jacobs.
Statistics
Enterprises (ultimate beneficiary) with business innovation and growth support by industry and year
Statistics Canada
This recently updated data includes the number of enterprises and the value of support to enterprises broken down into various industries of the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) for the time period 2007-01-01 to 2018-01-01. The data is drawn from the Business Innovation and Growth Support database. Other related data was simultaneously updated, including Enterprises (ultimate beneficiary) with business innovation and growth support by revenue size and year, and Enterprises (ultimate beneficiary) with business innovation and growth support by employment size and year .
Artificial intelligence companies, goods and services: A trademark-based analysis
Shohei Nakazato and Mariagrazia Squicciarin, OECD
This work proposes an experimental methodology to identify and measure artificial intelligence (AI)-related trademarks. It aims to shed light on the extent to which (new) companies and products appearing on the market rely on, exploit or propose AI-related goods and services, and to help identify the companies and organizations that are active in the AI space. The paper finds evidence that AI-related goods and services have expanded in consumer markets in recent years. Companies and other economic agents appear to register AI-related trademarks primarily to protect computer-related products and/or services, especially software, audio-visual devices and for analytical purposes. Important trademark activities related to AI also emerge in the education space, with AI-related keywords being frequently associated with educational services as well as classes, publications, workshops and online material.
Innovation Policy
Policies for a climate-neutral industry: Lessons from the Netherlands
Brilé Anderson, Emile Cammeraat, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Luisa Dressler, Nicolas Gonne, Guy Lalanne, Joaquim Martins Guilhoto and Konstantinos Theodoropoulos, OECD
This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the policy instruments adopted by the Netherlands to reach carbon neutrality in its manufacturing sector by 2050. The analysis illustrates the strength of combining a strong commitment to raising carbon prices with ambitious technology support, uncovers the pervasiveness of competitiveness provisions, and highlights the trade-off between short-term emissions cuts and longer-term technology shift. The Netherlands’ carbon levy sets an ambitious price trajectory to 2030, but is tempered by extensive preferential treatment to energy-intensive users, yielding a highly unequal carbon price across firms and sectors. The country’s technology support focuses on the cost-effective deployment of low-carbon options, which ensures least-cost decarbonization in the short run but favours relatively mature technologies. The paper offers recommendations for policy adjustments to reach the country’s carbon neutrality objective, including the gradual removal of exemptions, enhanced support for emerging technologies and greater visibility over future infrastructure plans
“Building Back Better” Requires Building In Digital
Robert D. Atkinson, ITIF
This post discusses the need to include digital infrastructure in efforts to ‘build back better’ after the COVID-10 pandemic. The post stresses that “any national infrastructure package should include 21st century digital infrastructure—not only investments in core digital infrastructure, such as broadband and government IT systems, but also hybrid-digital upgrades to existing physical infrastructure to improve its performance.”
Analyzing artificial intelligence plans in 34 countries
Samar Fatima, Kevin C. Desouza, Gregory S. Dawson, and James S. Denford, Brookings Institute
This post summarizes a recent paper exploring details about what accounts for the variation in countries’ AI plans. This builds on a previous post mapping “How different countries view artificial intelligence”, where the authors presented a snapshot of governments’ planning for AI, based on their analysis of 34 national strategic AI plans. The most recent paper analyzes provide information about the planned use of AI within each country and what this information signals about the priorities of countries for AI. For example, some plans mention the use of AI for weaponization while others condemn AI-enabled wars; some capture details on ethical framework design, while others give few or no clues about how AI governance is ensured.
Policy Digest
Regional policy and R&D: evidence, experiments and expectations
Sarah Chaytor, Grace Gottlieb and Graeme Reid, Higher Education Policy Institute
This report by researchers at University College London focuses on the role of research funding in tackling regional inequalities in the UK. The report begins with the observation that “too many earlier attempts to use R&D investment for ‘levelling up’ have started with big ambitions but not survived long enough to deliver economic benefit” and that “the purpose of regional R&D investment needs greater clarity.” Specifically, the report aims to: put the challenges facing the UK into a wider context; recognize a range of methods of analyzing regional funding distributions; explore the role of collaboration alongside competition; and hopefully, encourage policymakers to persist with the search for solutions to the long-standing problem of regional disparities.
Summary of Findings
International comparisons: Geographic concentration is a characteristic of research globally rather than an idiosyncrasy of the UK. The level of regional concentration in the UK is somewhat less than in other major research nations.
Dilemma of the denominator: There is no uniquely authoritative measure of research concentration. The picture of regional concentration of UK R&D funding varies according to the metric used.
The granularity effect: The picture of R&D concentration also varies with the granularity of the data. Comparisons between regions mask significant variation in funding within regions.
Underfunding of research: Research in universities is funded below the full cost of performing the research. This means increasing research funding in a region leads to greater research deficits
Policy recommendations for more resilient regional R&D initiatives:
The authors recommended adopting a clear vision and metrics for success; ensuring regional metrics capture the impact of research; supporting partnerships between diverse universities; stronger local leadership and accountability within a national framework; and ensuring financial sustainability for university research. The authors elaborate on these recommendations as follows:
A. Set out measurable objectives: The specific target for R&D funding in the UK to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027 created a clear focal point for R&D policy and highlighted the challenges of policy delivery.Similarly, a clear vision and regional metrics for success – for both the levelling up agenda and the role of R&D within it – could advance the regional R&D agenda. Government and stakeholders should have measurable goals, region by region, for the changes they expect to deliver through regional R&D.
B. Focus on impact: Regional metrics should focus on the impact of research. While research investment (the input) is easy to measure, it is a poor proxy for the impacts that successful R&D investment have on economies and societies at regional and local levels.
C. Build greater strengths through partnerships: There is substantial scope to raise the impact of research by joining up capacity both within and across regions, to level up research impact at intra- and inter-regional levels. For example, funders could provide additional support for collaborations between established centres of research and strong institutions in less research-intensive regions.This would have the compound effect of i) incentivizing funding bids from less research-intensive regions and ii) connecting research from across the UK more closely to local needs in less research-intensive regions.
D. Create strong civic partners at regional and local levels: The very purpose of regional policy is to better reflect the interests of regions. R&D initiatives should be no exception.This requires R&D initiatives that are led regionally rather than delivered to regions by central government. That in turn requires regional and local bodies to acquire the capacity to lead R&D initiatives and to become politically and financially accountable for their outcomes within a framework that is set at a national level.
E. Integrate regional, national and global interests: However, strong relationships between national and regional R&D are essential to avoid needless duplication of capabilities between regions and to ensure that regional interventions are held to the same global standards of performance as national funding schemes.
F. Ensure financial sustainability for university research: In the current financial model for research in UK universities, research funding covers 71% of the cost of research with universities providing the remaining 29%. Increasing the level of funding also increases the amount of money universities must contribute themselves to research. This would put greater financial pressure on the regions that the Government wishes to support thorough additional R&D investment. Conversely, improving the sustainability of funding – by funders increasing fEC rates and UKRI shifting the balance in favour of QR funding – would enable stronger regional R&D
Links to recent IPL webinars
Canada’s Quantum Internet: Prospects and Perils
This is a recording of the April 20, 2021 webinar that 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; & Dan Patterson (moderator), Technology Reporter, CBS News
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.
Events
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.
October 18-20, 2021, Copenhagen, Denmark
Since 1996, DRUID has become one of the world’s premier academic conferences on innovation and the dynamics of structural, institutional and geographic change. DRUID is proud to invite senior and junior scholars to participate and contribute with a paper to DRUID21, hosted by Copenhagen Business School. Presenting distinguished plenary speakers, a range of parallel paper sessions, and an attractive social program, the conference aims at mapping theoretical, empirical and methodological advances, contributing novel insights, and help identifying scholarly positions, divisions, and common grounds in current scientific controversies within the field. Please note that due to the global COVID-19 health crisis, DRUID21 is scheduled to take place in October, rather than its usual time in June. The conference will only take place if travel and health regulations permit.
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe