News from the IPL
RESEARCH
Dan Breznitz’s Innovation In Real Places Shortlisted for Balsillie Prize for Public Policy
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz’s recent book is nominated for the annual Balsillie Prize for Public Policy, which recognizes books that advance and influence policy debates of relevance to Canadians.
Public Purpose: Industrial Policy’s Comeback and Government’s Role in Shared Prosperity
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz leads a forum in this new edited volume focused on how local economic development might foster long-term, inclusive prosperity. The book’s other forum is led by economist Mariana Mazzucato and articulates an industrial policy agenda organized around ambitious, cross-sector “missions,” designed around important national goals. The authors in this volume collectively argue for “putting public purpose at the center of our politics and policy.” Excerpts from the authors participating in Mariana Mazzucato’s forum are available online here.
Canada as a Learning Economy: Education & Training in an Age of Intelligent Machines Policy Challenges & Policy Responses
Tracey M. White and David A. Wolfe
This SSHRC funded Knowledge Synthesis Report was prepared by U of T Political Science PhD Candidate Tracey White and IPL Co-Director David A. Wolfe. Literature analyzed here illuminates the nature of adult education, learning and skills development and forms of work organization as factors in Canada’s innovation performance. In the World Economic Forum’s 2017-18 Global Competitiveness Survey Canada ranked 23rd on its ‘capacity for innovation’ metric. If this country is to have a prosperous, innovative economy then the skills and ingenuity of its people matter. Skills development opportunities for Canadians beyond the formal pre-career education systems are inadequate to meet the demands of a rapidly digitizing economy. It is increasingly clear that Canada’s fragmented approach to adult education is an impediment to labour market flexibility and social mobility on which the digital economy depends. Canada’s labour market institutions were developed to meet the needs of an industrial economy. The moment has arrived to re-imagine them to support Canada as a learning economy. This report reviews the approach of the Danish innovation system to provide an alternative example. It urges Canadian policymakers to make development of human resources a higher priority by reinvigorating labour market governance arrangements and realigning incentives to meet the needs of a digital economy.
How Stories Shape Regional Development: Collective Narratives and High-Technology Entrepreneurship in Waterloo, Canada
Darius Ornston, IPL Affiliated Faculty
The Waterloo region in Canada has emerged as an unlikely competitor in high-technology markets, challenging theories based on path dependency, population density, anchor firms, and military spending. While theorists and residents attribute the rise of high-technology entrepreneurship to cooperation, evidence of collaboration is sparse. This article resolves this puzzle by explaining how ideas can coordinate action in loosely coupled systems. Dense, cross-cutting civic networks may not have supported task-specific cooperation, but they facilitated the construction and diffusion of collective narratives. Conventionally understood to leverage locational assets, the Waterloo case demonstrates how storytelling can also soften geographic constraints. Success stories inspired entrepreneurs by re-conceptualizing what was possible, peer-to-peer mentoring helped firms to navigate local constraints, and external marketing enabled the region to access resources it could not mobilize internally. By documenting the importance of storytelling as a form of collective action, the Waterloo case illuminates a broader array of strategies available to local change agents and smaller regions.
Editor's Pick
Boundary-spanning in public value co-creation through the lens of multilevel governance
Charles Conteh & Brittany Harding, Public Management Review
The prospects and challenges of boundary-spanning public value co-creation are one of the quintessential features of public management in the current age of complexity. This paper argues that boundary-spanning takes on a heightened salience in multilevel jurisdictions where actors must not only navigate the horizontal contours of inter-organizational relations but also vertical tiers of jurisdiction in pursuit of joint action. Drawing insights from the multilevel governance literature, and using Canada’s recent Innovation Superclusters Initiative as case study, the paper sheds some light on how public managers and policy entrepreneurs navigate strategically across boundaries in federal and other multitiered systems.
Cities & Regions
Benchmarking the Creative Technology Ecosystem in British Columbia
Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) & DigiBC
This paper utilizes extensive research to offer a first-of-its kind analysis of the creative technology sector in British Columbia. Leveraging in-depth primary research consisting of interviews with experts from industry and post-secondary institutions across the province, this report highlights the creative technology sector as a central driver of economic growth and employment in British Columbia.
Pathways of regional transformation and Industry 4.0
Lisa De Propris & David Bailey, Regional Studies
This paper explores the impact of technological changes brought in by the Fourth Industrial Revolution on local systems of industrial specialization. To do so, the authors connect the Evolutionary Economic Geography literature on regional diversification with the literature on systems change, notably the multilevel perspective (MLP) framework, expanding the latter with a place-based dimension enabling the application of technological transition to regional economies. Here, a local system’s ability to transform rests on three capabilities: innovation capabilities, docking capabilities and translational capabilities. Building on these, the paper identifies four transformative paths: an endogenous transformative path; a hyper-transformative path; an importation transformative path; and a regional obsolescence path. It stresses that local systems are not locked into a particular pathway, with implications for place-based industrial policy.
Statistics
The potential impact of AI on UK employment and the demand for skills
UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
This research provides estimates of the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies on the UK labour market. The technical capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies, such as robots, drones and autonomous vehicles, have progressed substantially in the last decade. New applications of AI are transforming whole sectors of the economy via increased productivity and innovation. These technologies have the potential to boost the economy significantly, perhaps by as much as 10 per cent of GDP in the UK by 2030. There are also concerns that these technologies could displace large numbers of human workers from their jobs over the coming decade. This research is targeted on 2 main questions: whether AI and related technologies will follow this historical pattern of triggering significant structural, labour market change; and how large the disruption from AI to labour markets will be, and what form it will take.
Innovation Policy
A Canadian DARPA will need an enabling ecosystem to succeed
Camille Boulet, Research Money
Boulet notes that while “using the power of public spending, not just at the project level but more fully at the acquisition stages, is a core element of DARPA’s success…Canadian defence procurement remains amongst the most perennial of program challenges.” To address this, Boulet calls for “a more fulsome consideration of the ecosystem….and an enabling culture as well.” The author notes that three key elements of the DARPA model include ambitious goals, temporary project teams and independence. On the latter, Boulet emphasizes that “If any statement embodies the polarization between what characterizes the current ecosystem culture and drivers of success for the DARPA model, it is the following: ‘Decisions should not be made by committee. Breakthroughs do not lend themselves to consensus.’”
Emerging Industrial Policy Approaches in the United States
William Bonvillian, ITIF
This report summarizes and contextualizes the U.S. federal government’s new industrial policy approaches, which are being implemented “at a scale not tried before.” This article notes that “this effort has been driven politically, largely on a bipartisan basis, by concern over China’s extensive industrial policy system, which has enabled it to surpass the United States as the world’s leading industrial power.” The report places these new policy approaches into a historical context both in the postwar and in a series of subsequent periods, reviews the definitional and economic debates over industrial policy, catalogues and summarizes the current main thrusts of the new industrial policy efforts, describes the major elements, as well as gaps in these approaches, and reviews the new mechanisms and supporting infrastructure needed to make them operational.
Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth
The State of AI Report analyses the most interesting developments in AI. It aims to trigger an informed conversation about the state of AI and its implication for the future. The Report is produced by AI investors Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth.
Policy Digest
Evidence for the UK Innovation Strategy
UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Following the July 2021 publication of the UK Innovation Strategy, this evidence paper provides an overview of a non-exhaustive range of factors that influence the pace and direction of innovation.
Pillar 1 focuses on ‘unleashing business’ through addressing gaps around early-stage
investments in innovation, coordination between institutional investors and venture capital, and
challenges in the scale-up of innovative UK businesses. This pillar also focuses on how regulations, standards, the IP system and other framework conditions have a significant impact on innovation.
Pillar 2 notes that businesses increasingly report a lack of qualified people, particularly digital management and STEM skills. The pillar stresses that investments in people and talent is crucial to unlocking new areas of innovation activities.
Pillar 3 is focused on supporting the adoption and diffusion of new ideas, knowledge and processes across all regions of the economy. The UK holds three of the most science and technology intensive clusters in the world in Cambridge, Oxford and London. The report notes that a strategy of “investing [in clusters and firms] in places with existing and emerging strengths in the factors needed for R&D, would benefit both regional and UK-wide productivity.”
Pillar 4 set out how mission-based policy and identifying technological advantages, underpinned by analysis, can achieve outcomes that support UK economic growth and prosperity, and tackle major societal challenges. Following publication of the UK Innovation Strategy, BEIS will “identify a suite of
ambitious and inspiring missions determined by the new [Prime Minister-chaired] National Science and Technology Council.”
The development of government-led missions should be co-developed with industry and in line with support for developing ‘comparative advantage in key ‘technology families.’ To this end, two independent analytical ranking and prioritisation exercises were undertaken in support of the UK Innovation Strategy and are published alongside this paper:
- Identifying leading UK technology families: Horizon scanning insights, building on more
than a decade of prior emerging technology identification activities by Innovate UK,
identified specific technological advances from over 400 monitored technologies and
mapped across to seven technology families. - Identifying potential UK comparative advantage in technologies: Starting from a range of
horizon scanning exercises, an initial longlist of technologies was filtered down from
around 300 to 25, using a ranking exercise developed by BEIS and UKRI to identify and
compare the commercialisation potential of specific technologies.
These prioritization processes produced the following list of 7 ‘technology’ families: advanced materials and manufacturing; energy and environment technologies; electronics, photonics, and quantum; AI, digital, and advanced computing; robotics and smart machines; engineering biology; and bioinformatics and genomics.
The paper stresses that “the UK cannot out-compete international leaders such as the US and China on spend (shown through AI equity investments) or volume of research outputs (patents and bibliometrics) but should target activities in technologies with UK market potential to unlock their full benefits” and that “the success of the technology families identified lies in the future prioritisation and targeting of government and business activity to respond to market opportunities.” This mission-oriented targeting initiative “will be driven by the new Prime Minister-chaired National Science and Technology Council.”
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.
Events
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.
Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference 2022
January 17-21, 2022, Digital Conference
The 2022 Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference is asking for a wide range of participants from across many disciplines and fields to submit ideas for panels, demonstrations, initiatives, and projects that work towards transformations for sustainability and a just transition. The ‘Call for Initiatives’ is open now until 4 September 2021 and encourage Expressions of Interest (EoI) from a wide set of contributors across research, civil society, business and policy. This is a short extension so please get your EOI in as soon as possible. The theme is “BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE ON TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION POLICY.” The aim of the sessions is to be a symphony of approaches and collaborations to mix-up the conference dynamic and offer a chance to experiment with building knowledge infrastructures and exchanges across sectors and disciplines to activate transformational system change to solve our Earth crisis. The TIP Conference 2022 is organised and funded by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI) with the participation of Globelics and Africalics members and with the involvement of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) members.
6th Geography of Innovation Conference
January 26-28, 2022, Bocconi University, Milan
The conference brings together leading scholars on the spatial dimension of innovation processes. It is a forum for interdisciplinary research on this topics, including perspectives from economic geography, innovation economics, and regional science, as well as economics and management science, sociology and network theory, and political and planning sciences.
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe