The IPL newsletter: Volume 22, Issue 457

News from the IPL

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Dan Breznitz awarded Balsillie Prize for Public Policy

IPL Co-director and University of Toronto University Professor Dan Breznitz has been awarded the Balsille Prize for Public Policy by the Writers’ Trust of Canada for his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, published by Oxford University Press.

David Wolfe nominated to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies

IPL Co-director David Wolfe was recently nominated to serve on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies. The role of the Scientific Advisory Committee is to advise the CCA’s Board on assessment topics, expert panel composition, and peer review.

RECENT EVENTS

National Governments & Innovation Policy: Where – and What – Is Utopia?

This is a recording of a January 10 panel focused on national governments and Innovation policy. Canada, the Nordics, Taiwan? In this webinar, panelists examined the diverse roles played by national governments in setting the stage for innovation, as well as the key elements that ought to be considered in formulation of innovation policy in Canada and elsewhere.

Speakers:

  • Susana Borras, Professor, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen Denmark
  • Dan Breznitz, University Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies; Co-Director, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School; Clifford Clark Visiting Economist, Department of Finance, Government of Canada
  • Darius Ornston, Associate Professor, Munk School
  • Joseph Wong, Vice-President, International, University of Toronto; Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation, Munk School; Professor, Department of Political Science

Moderator:

  • Rana Foroohar, Global Business Columnist and Associate Editor, Financial Times, and Global Economic Analyst, CNN

RESEARCH

The Role of Experimentation in Driving Transformational Innovation in Real Places

Alex Glennie, Dan Breznitz, Greeta Nathan, Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium
This panel featuring IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz discussed the critical importance of creating transformative innovation strategies and policies that are evidence-driven, rooted in the capabilities and resources of communities, and that acknowledge and take advantage of where a country, region, or local area is situated along the entire process of innovation. Prevailing approaches to innovation policymaking have been heavily influenced by the Silicon Valley model of growth creation, which prioritizes technological innovation. Some cities or regions have benefited from this approach, but it is neither feasible or desirable in every context, and it is unlikely to lead to a step change in terms of directing innovation activities towards achieving transformative societal goals. A culture of exploration and experimentation is required, to develop and continually adapt innovation policies that are fit for purpose, and fit for context.

Rooted in place: Regional innovation, assets, and the politics of electric vehicle leadership in California, Norway, and Québec

Nathan Lemphers, Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann, & David A. Wolfe, Energy Research & Social Science
In the media, Norway, California, and Québec are widely acknowledged as innovative leaders in transportation electrification. Yet, what does leadership mean and how did these jurisdictions achieve it? We contend that leadership reflects both intentional forethought through early, experimental and innovative policy to promote electric vehicles and the on-the-ground successful outcomes of these policies. All three jurisdictions have embarked on different leadership paths. We argue that these differences are a function of how electromobility policy entrepreneurs engaged unique pre-existing local assets and activated similar political mechanisms of normalization, coalition building and capacity building. When policy actors harness mutually reinforcing political and industrial dynamics, electric vehicle policies can scale up. Eventually, these dynamics may lead to new industrial path development and the decarbonization of the transportation sector.

Into the Scale-up-verse: Exploring the landscape of Canada’s high-performing firms

Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
Scale-ups, or high-growth firms, are responsible for the vast majority of productivity growth in Canada, making them an immensely powerful tool in the pursuit of Canada’s long-term economic stability and prosperity. However, only 1 in 100 young firms reach scale-up status within their first ten years. How can we harness, support, and amplify the power of scale-ups and their contributions to the Canadian economy?  A collaboration between the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, this new study, Into the Scale-up-verse, takes the first step toward better equipping policymakers to support the success of Canadian firms by unpacking the complexity and nuance in Canada’s diverse scale-up universe. The research was initiated and funded by Delvinia in partnership with Mitacs and the IPL, and conducted jointly with BII&E.  The report analyzes the most recent and detailed data set concerning Canadian business dynamics to provide a novel and comprehensive guide for those in a position—such as academic researchers, industry players, and government policymakers—to design supportive economic policy and facilitate productive conversations about Canada’s scale-ups.

Editor's Pick

Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference 2022

This link contains recordings of panels from the January 17-21 2022 Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference. This conference was organized by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI).  The theme of the Conference 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 included participation of Globelics and Africalics members and with the involvement of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) members.

Cities & Regions

Do firms in rural regions lack access to credit? Local variation in small business loans and firm growth

Anders Kärnä & Andreas Stephan, Regional Studies
This paper investigates whether bank loans specifically designed to reduce credit constraints for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have different impacts depending on where the firm is located. Using detailed firm-level data from the state-owned Swedish bank Almi, which specifically lends to credit-constrained SMEs, the authors study the causal effects of small business loans on firm growth. The results show that receiving a loan has a greater impact on firm growth for those SMEs located in major cities than for firms located in remote rural regions. This result has implications for policies that aim to increase growth in rural regions and suggests that increasing access to credit alone is not sufficient to increase employment growth.

Statistics

Spending on research and development in the higher education sector, 2019/2020

Statistics Canada
Research and development (R&D) expenditures in the higher education sector in Canada increased 4.6% from 2018/2019 to $15.8 billion in 2019/2020. This was the 10th consecutive annual gain. In 2019, Canada had the highest education R&D intensity (0.68) among the G7 countries (expenditures as a ratio of nominal gross domestic product). Canada also ranked sixth in R&D intensity among member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and has consistently ranked among the top since the creation of the Canada Research Chairs program in the 1990s.

Labour-saving technologies and employment levels: Are robots really making workers redundant?

Mariagrazia Squicciarini and Jacopo Stacciol, OECD
This paper exploits natural language processing techniques to detect explicit labour-saving goals in inventive efforts in robotics and assess their relevance for different occupational profiles and the impact on employment levels. The analysis relies on patents published by the European Patent Office between 1978 and 2019 and firm-level data from ORBIS® IP. It investigates innovative actors engaged in labour-saving technologies and their economic environment (identity, location, industry), and identifies technological fields and associated occupations which are particularly exposed to them. Labour-saving patents are concentrated in Japan, the United States, and Italy, and seem to affect low-skilled and blue-collar jobs, along with highly cognitive and specialised professions. A preliminary analysis does not find an appreciable negative effect on employment shares in OECD countries over the past decade, but further research to econometrically investigate the relationship between labour-saving technological developments and employment would be helpful.

Innovation Policy

Harnessing the science base: Results from a national programme using publicly-funded research centres to reshape firms’ R&D

Kevin Mulligan, Helena Lenihana, Justin Doran, Stephen Roper, Research Policy

Since 2000 and the launch of Science Foundation Ireland, Irish policymakers have been involved in a large-scale national science policy program. Starting from a position with little pre-existing research infrastructure beyond its traditional higher education system, Ireland allocated significant public resources to rapidly develop an extensive research centres program. These centres are designed to harness knowledge embedded in the national science base to impact firm-level Research and Development (R&D). Each research centre focuses on basic and applied research (as opposed to development), targeted at prioritised sectors of the economy. Using a novel panel dataset (2007–2017), the analysis provides the first evaluation of these research centres. Results indicate that research centre collaborations increase firm-level R&D, and, over time, re-orientate collaborating firms’ R&D towards more applied research. The authors also consider how impacts vary depending on the firms’ characteristics (size and sector), and research centre characteristics. The findings demonstrate that Ireland’s policy programme improved firms’ R&D profile, and suggest key policy lessons for other economies who might consider adopting a similar strategy.

Governing finance to support the net-zero transition: Lessons from successful industrialisations

Olga Mikheeva, Josh Ryan-Collins, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) Working Paper Series
This paper examines the governance of industrial credit and capital markets in countries that achieved rapid structural economic transformation and considers lessons for net-zero carbon transition. The transition to a net-zero carbon economy requires a major shift in financial flows. Financial policy bodies — central banks, financial regulators and ministries of finance — clearly have a role to play in supporting such a shift. Up until now, policy discourse has envisaged this role primarily as one of enabling and de-risking private finance, via support for new ‘green finance’ markets and instruments (e.g. green bonds, sustainability taxonomies and ESG derivatives) alongside encouraging the disclosure of climate-related financial risks to support effective price discovery in financial markets. Historically, however, financial policy bodies have played a more direct and coordinative role in industrial and economic development, often via close collaboration with dedicated public financial institutions such as national development banks. This paper examines the governance of industrial credit and capital market financing in six countries — Mexico, Canada, Norway, Japan, Korea and China — which successfully and rapidly industrialised at different periods in the 20th century. It examines how central banks and ministries of finance coordinated financial policy to achieve rapid structural economic change, and consider the implications for the net-zero carbon transitions.

Policy Digest

Massive House innovation bill would fund semiconductor incentives, create tech hubs, NSF directorate

Jason Rittenberg, SSTI
This post presents a summary by SSTI of the recently released innovation bill by House Democrats, the America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act of 2022 (COMPETES). This bill is the long-awaited response to the Senate’s U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness Act (USICA).  If the House passes the bill on the floor, the chambers will move to conference America COMPETES with USICA. The resultant legislation will then need to pass both chambers again before being submitted to President Biden. The 2,912-page House bill (also available: a 109-page detailed summary, and a 20-page “fact sheet”) includes authorization for Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs, establishes a new directorate within the National Science Foundation (NSF), reauthorizes the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Energy (Energy) Office of Science, and funds incentives for U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing. Specific initiatives include the following:

  • $50 billion in funding for semiconductor manufacturing loans and incentives and another $2 billion for related R&D
    These programs were proposed under the CHIPS Act and authorized by the FY 2021 defense bill but have yet to be funded. These are the only sections of either the COMPETES or USICA bills that include appropriations.
  • Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs 
    Establishes a five-year program at the Department of Commerce to: (a) fund regional innovation strategy development; (b) designate hubs around the country; and, (c) provide a total of $6.8 billion in implementation grant funding.
  • NSF Directorate for Science and Engineering Solutions
    Supports translational R&D that addresses societal challenges (such as environmental sustainability and cybersecurity) through Technology Research Institutes, capacity-building grants, scholarships and more.
  • Manufacturing Extension Partnership Pilot 
    Creates a new program allowing NIST to make additional grants to MEP centers with the goal of supporting employee training or ownership, strengthening supply chains, and assisting manufacturers in the adoption of advanced technologies.
  • Clean energy innovation programs
    Expands on authorities for Energy to operate an incubator network, university prize competition, entrepreneurial fellowships and employee leave programs at National Labs, and a small business voucher program.
  • Immigration options for entrepreneurs and STEM graduates
    The House bill includes the creation of a startup visa and allows admission of immigrant and non-immigrant entrepreneurs, as well as visas for doctoral STEM graduates. These provisions appear to be similar to those included in past iterations of the Startup Act.

SSTI notes that the outlook for the COMPETES/USICA legislation is unclear. Many of the proposals are broadly popular in Congress: the Senate passed USICA with bipartisan support; the House passed the NSF for the Future Act with bipartisan support; and, the House science committee advanced multiple bills — including the regional technology hubs authorization — unanimously. However, the America COMPETES proposal does not seem to enjoy the same bipartisan consensus.

Links to recent IPL webinars

From Science to Entrepreneurship

This is a recording of the Nov. 15th, 2021 webinar. There is a plethora of research on university commercialization and technology transfer. However, there is less of a discussion on the skillset and technical capabilities that allow a scientist to become an entrepreneur. In this webinar we will focus on these skills and programs that induce entrepreneurship. Moving from the scientist’s lab, to entrepreneurship courses, to forming a startup, to growing the firm within an incubator or accelerator.

Speakers:

  • Fabiano Armellini, Associate Professor Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal
  • Shiri M. Breznitz, Director, Master of Global Affairs Program; Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
  • Elicia Maine, W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Academic Director, Invention to Innovation (i2I); Special Advisor on Innovation to the VPRI, Simon Fraser University
  • Sophie Veilleux, Professor, Department of Management of the Faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval
  • Sarah Lubik (moderator), Director of Entrepreneurship; Co-Champion, Technology Entrepreneurship@SFU Lecturer, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University

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

Events

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).

Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022

June 7-10, Dublin, Ireland
Under the umbrella topic “Territorial Development”, Trinity College Dublin & University College Dublin invites you to participate in the sixth Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022 to be held in Dublin, Ireland. The conference is organized into 13 session themes – see list below which also provides a link to the detailed theme description. All session theme leaders welcome submissions to their respective themes via the submission portal. In addition, there is also a long list of Special Sessions that are associated with these themes – see list further below which again provides a link for a detailed description for each of these. All Special Session organizers welcome submissions again via the submission portal.

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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe