News from the IPL
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dan Breznitz appointed Clifford Clark Visiting Professor at the Department of Finance
University Professor and IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz has been appointed as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at the federal Department of Finance. Professor Breznitz holds the Munk Chair of Innovation Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and is a professor in the Department of Political Science. He is a CIFAR fellow, where he co-directs the program on Innovation, Equity and the Future of Prosperity. Professor Breznitz is known around the world as an expert on rapid-innovation-based industries and their globalization. His latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, was chosen by the Financial Times as one of the Best Business Books of 2021 and has been shortlisted for the inaugural Balsillie Prize for Public Policy. The Department of Finance created the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist role in 1983 to bring in fresh outside policy perspectives. The visiting economists work closely with the Deputy Minister and Ministers to share their views and help shape thinking for the future. During his time with the Department of Finance, Dr. Breznitz expects to focus on developing advice centred on economic growth and innovation policy.
EVENTS
Today the power of algorithms to shape our lives is undeniable. The contests are about how fair, just, equitable, and socially useful these information-based decision systems are. They raise issues of power, both in the economic sense of control of markets and in the more political sense of who gets to decide the code and what it is used for. But the issues, and the systems, are deeply embedded in the history of capitalism, and have been developing and proliferating for nearly two centuries.
Join us as Ken Lipartito looks at the earliest examples of such systems, for mediating credit and financial relationships, starting with their origins in the nineteenth century and tracing their development into modern credit assessment surveillance platforms. Over that time most of the same issues that today surround information and decision-making systems arose, were debated, and were decided, in ways that have continued to shape practice down to the present.
Speakers:
- Kenneth Lipartito, Fellow, Innovation, Equity, & The Future of Prosperity at CIFAR and Professor, Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs at Florida International University
- David Wolfe (moderator), Co-Director, Innovation Policy Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Professor, Political Science University of Toronto Mississauga
RESEARCH
Designing Innovation Policy Mixes to Support High Growth Firms
Kieron Flanagan, Steven Denney, Adam Froman, Krista Jones, & David A. Wolfe,
This talk includes a presentation of a paper by IPL researchers Steven Denney, Travis Southin, and David A. Wolfe titled “Picking Winners: How Growth and National Context Shape Scale-up Entrepreneurs’ Assessments of Innovation Policy Mixes.” Despite today’s challenging conditions, Canada continues to identify and support high-growth firms with a view to increasing its market share. High-growth firms not only hire more employees, but they noticeably lead in productivity and innovation—especially in the digital and clean technology sectors. Lately, there has been an increase in unicorn companies and initial public offerings, leaving Canada to build upon this momentum and not lag behind other countries. This event examines what high-growth firms represent to the Canadian economy and why innovation is so difficult to support through government programs. Participants will learn about the barriers that prevent companies from becoming high-growth firms, the potential of program evaluation for identifying the next generation of high-growth firms, and the various ways policy instruments can be improved.
Speakers
- Kieron Flanagan, Professor of Science and Technology Policy, Alliance Manchester Business School – Innovation Management and Policy Division, University of Manchester (pre-recorded interview)
- Steven Denney, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto (pre-recorded interview)
- Adam Froman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Delvinia
- Krista Jones, Founding Executive, Momentum, and Vice President, Venture Services, MaRS Discovery District
- David A. Wolfe, Co-Director, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
Moderator
Neil Bouwer, Vice-President, Innovation and Skills Development Branch, Canada School of Public Service
What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz leads a forum in a new edited volume focused on how local economic development might foster long-term, inclusive prosperity. Dan argues that in today’s world of globally fragmented production and dominating high-tech clusters, efforts to duplicate silicon valley don’t raise all boats. To generate local, inclusive prosperity, cities must think beyond tech accelerators and science parks and instead embrace a wider range of innovation strategies. This forum is part of a new Boston Review book titled Public Purpose: Industrial Policy’s Comeback and Government’s Role in Shared 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
What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz leads a forum in a new edited volume focused on how local economic development might foster long-term, inclusive prosperity. Dan argues that in today’s world of globally fragmented production and dominating high-tech clusters, efforts to duplicate silicon valley don’t raise all boats. To generate local, inclusive prosperity, cities must think beyond tech accelerators and science parks and instead embrace a wider range of innovation strategies. This forum is part of a new Boston Review book titled Public Purpose: Industrial Policy’s Comeback and Government’s Role in Shared 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.
Cities & Regions
Measure Twice, Cut Once: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Metrics
Jip Leendertse, Mirella Schrijvers, & Erik Stam, Research Policy
Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach in science and policy, there is a scarcity of credible, accurate and comparable metrics of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This is a severe shortcoming for both scientific progress and successful policy. In this paper, we bridge the entrepreneurial ecosystem metrics gap. Entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of the actors and factors that enable entrepreneurship. This paper uses the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to quantify and qualify entrepreneurial economies. The authors operationalize the elements and outputs of entrepreneurial ecosystems for 273 European regions. The ecosystem elements show strong and positive correlations with each other, confirming the systemic nature of entrepreneurial economies and the need for a complex systems perspective. The analyses show that physical infrastructure, finance, formal institutions, and talent take a central position in the interdependence web, providing a first indication of these elements as fundamental conditions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The measures of the elements are used to calculate an index that approximates the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This index is robust and performs well in regressions to predict entrepreneurial output, which the authors measure with novel data on productive entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach and the metrics presented provide a lens for public policy to better diagnose, understand and improve entrepreneurial economies.
Statistics
Business innovation and growth support: Data, 2019
Statistics Canada
This recent post by Statistics Canada announces that “data and a research database on business innovation and growth support are now available.” Specifically, the purpose of this statistical program is to contribute, in collaboration with the Treasury Board Secretariat, to the improvement of performance and impact assessments for federal business innovation and growth support (BIGS) programs. The initiative focused on government activities that support business innovation and growth, such as funding, advisory services to enterprises, industry-facing research and development, support provided directly or in partnership, and support for technology development (commercialization) and exports. Fundamental science, tax expenditures, provincial and territorial programs, and Government of Canada Crown corporations were not included in the scope of this initiative. Statistics Canada maintains the Linkable File Environment (LFE), which facilitates the creation of datasets that pertain to individual Canadian businesses (microdata). Linkable datasets include, in particular, the Business Register, the corporate tax and payroll dataset, the export dataset, and a broad range of business surveys. Administrative data on program recipients were linked to Statistics Canada’s LFE, and the present dataset (BIGS) is now part of the LFE and is available for analysis and research.
In data: The big money behind London’s climate tech ecosystem
Connor Bilboe, Sifted
This article summarizes findings from a recent report presenting new data produced by Dealroom and London & Partners in a report looking at regional climate tech investment trends since the Paris Agreement. Europe is the fastest growing region for climate tech in the world, with VC investment into climate tech firms growing seven times since 2016 to reach $8bn this year so far. The UK, and specifically London, was the largest recipient of investment and had the biggest deals and most startups created.
Innovation Policy
Biden reveals $1.75T framework for Build Back Better agenda
Ellen Marrison & Jason Rittenberg, SSTI
This post summarizes a Oct. 28th announcement by President Joe Biden, who delayed his planned departure for Europe to announce a framework for the Build Back Better Act. The President said he was confident that the $1.75 trillion plan could pass both houses of Congress. While the Build Back Better Framework is not as large as initially proposed, the White House says it represents the largest effort to date to combat climate change, promises to create millions of good-paying jobs, spur long-term growth and meet clean energy ambitions. There is another $90 billion targeted for equity and other investments, but it is unclear as of this writing if that would include some of the innovation initiatives that were outlined earlier. The White House says the plan’s $555 billion investment in clean energy would cut over one gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, reduce consumer energy costs, and invest in clean energy across buildings, transportation, industry, electricity, and agriculture, to climate-smart practices. The plan contains provisions that clean energy technology, from wind turbine blades to solar panels and electric cars, would be built in the U.S., and would advance environmental justice through a new Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator that would invest in projects around the country.
Dept. of Energy tech licenses now subject to expanded domestic manufacturing requirements
SSTI
This post summarizes a recent announcement that technologies that are developed from the US Department of Energy’s R&D are now required to be substantially manufactured in America. The requirement was developed in response to President Joe Biden’s executive order that all agencies review their policies related to supply chain vulnerabilities. The rule change takes the domestic manufacturing preference that is in place currently only for exclusive licenses for products sold/used in the U.S. and applies it by default to all Energy licenses from Oct. 1 on.
The $2 Trillion Transition: Canada’s Road to Net Zero
RBC
In The $2 Trillion Transition, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership outlines its analysis of the costs and benefits of Canada’s transition to a net-zero economy; the strategies Canada must focus on to meet its 2030 and 2050 emissions targets; and the policies needed to guide Canada on the transition without hobbling any one region, or the whole economy. The report lays out six pathways – as well as their cost and feasibility – that are the most viable opportunities for Canada in this transformation. According to the report, Canada will need to invest at least $2 trillion of public and private money over the next 30 years in new energy systems, vehicles and industrial processes. The pathways that will need to be prioritized include doubling the supply of green electricity to decarbonize the grid; reducing the carbon intensity of Canadian oil and gas; retrofitting and cutting emissions from buildings; accelerating electric vehicle uptake and innovations in battery and biofuel production; reducing emissions in heavy industry; and making agriculture more efficient and less energy intensive.
Policy Digest
Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener
UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
On October 19th the UK released its Net Zero Strategy setting out how the country will transition to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, secure 440,000 well-paid jobs, and unlock £90 billion in private investment in 2030. The report was released just over a week before the UK hosts the UN COP26 summit, where other countries are expected set out their own domestic plans for cutting emissions.
The strategy builds on the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan For a Green Industrial Revolution, released in November of 2020. The UK Net Zero Strategy sets out a “comprehensive economy-wide plan for how British businesses and consumers will be supported in making the transition to clean energy and green technology – lowering the Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels by investing in sustainable clean energy in the UK, reducing the risk of high and volatile prices in the future, and strengthening our energy security.”
The Net Zero Strategy will be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the UK’s second Long-Term Low Greenhouse Gas Emission Development Strategy under the Paris Agreement.
The October 19th announcement summarizes the following new investments comprising the Net Zero Strategy:
- an extra £350 million of our up to £1 billion commitment to support the electrification of UK vehicles and their supply chains and another £620 million for targeted electric vehicle grants and infrastructure, particularly local on-street residential charge points, with plans to put thousands more zero emission cars and vans onto UK roads through a zero emission vehicle mandate
- kick-start the commercialization of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from sustainable materials such as everyday household waste, flue gases from industry, carbon captured from the atmosphere and excess electricity, which produce over 70% fewer carbon emissions than traditional jet fuel on a lifecycle basis. The ambition is to enable the delivery of 10% SAF by 2030 and the government will be supporting UK industry with £180 million in funding to support the development of UK SAF plants
- £140 million Industrial and Hydrogen Revenue Support scheme to accelerate industrial carbon capture and hydrogen, bridging the gap between industrial energy costs from gas and hydrogen and helping green hydrogen projects get off the ground. Two carbon capture clusters – Hynet Cluster in North West England and North Wales and the East Coast Cluster in Teesside and the Humber – will put the UK’s industrial heartlands at the forefront of this technology in the 2020s and revitalize industries in the North Sea – backed by the government’s £1 billion in support
- an extra £500 million towards innovation projects to develop the green technologies of the future, bringing the total funding for net zero research and innovation to at least £1.5 billion. This will support the most pioneering ideas and technologies to decarbonise UK homes, industries, land and power
- £3.9 billion of new funding for decarbonizing heat and buildings, including the new £450 million 3-year Boiler Upgrade Scheme, so homes and buildings are warmer, cheaper to heat and cleaner to run
- £124 million boost to the Nature for Climate Fund helping the UK towards meeting its commitments to restore approximately 280,000 hectares of peat in England by 2050 and treble woodland creation in England to meet our commitments to create at least 30,000 hectares of woodland per year across the UK by the end of this parliament
- £120 million towards the development of nuclear projects through the Future Nuclear Enabling Fund. There remain a number of optimal sites, including the Wylfa site in Anglesey. Funding like this could support the UK’s path to decarbonizing the UK’s electricity system fifteen years earlier from 2050 to 2035
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
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.
P4IE 2022 International Conference Measuring Metrics that Matter
May 9-11 2022, Ottawa and Online
How to best design innovation indicators for the future? You are invited to contribute to this challenging question during our second international conference on “Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems” (P4IE). The hybrid conference will be held online and in-person at Ottawa. You can actively participate by submitting an academic, industry or public policy paper. Topics includes, but are not limited to: New/Real-time innovation indicators; Sustainable, Inclusive, Responsible (SIR) innovation indicators; Measuring the performance of innovation ecosystems; and Science-to-innovation SIR innovation indicators. Submissions of academic extended abstracts due by December 13, 2021 (acceptance notification by February 15). Submissions of policy papers due by January 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by February 14). Submissions of industrial papers due by February 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by March 14).
Subscriptions & Comments
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe