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.
UPCOMING EVENTS
The transition to a post-carbon energy and economic paradigm is a stated priority for all the signatories to the Paris Accord, including Canada. Success in achieving this objective will depend on a complex mix of policy experimentation and coalition building in support of that objective, cutting across virtually every sector of the economy. This panel will explore some of the dimensions of that process and the prospects for success in achieving that objective. Register here for the Zoom link.
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.
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
Getting Canada Back on Track after COVID-19 with a Comprehensive Innovation Plan
Navdeep Bains & John Knubley, Public Policy Forum
Navdeep Bains served as the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Canada and is now the Vice Chair of Global Investment Banking at CIBC. John Knubley was the Deputy Minister and is now a consultant. In this report, the authors reflect on their experience developing and implementing Canada’s Innovation and Skills Plan (“the Plan”) at the Department of Innovation, Science and Industry. They note that “while work has continued on the Plan since our respective departures from government, COVID-19 has taken the country in unexpected directions and diverted attention from the broad innovation agenda.” The report summarizes their lessons learned as follows: “Double down on supporting the successes of VC and scaling-up unicorns. Build clusters and networks of innovation across the country. Do significantly better on procurement practices and on securing alignment and coherence. Stop spreading peanut butter; instead, commit to focus and scale.”
Cities & Regions
A new data deal: the case of Barcelona
Fernando Monge, Sarah Barns, Rainer Kattel, Francesca Bria, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
This paper examines how the City of Barcelona is becoming one of the leading advocates of citizen-first data rights and data sovereignty agenda with a consideration of lessons for other cities. Through a series of interviews with key participants involved in the design and implementation of Barcelona’s data sovereignty program under Mayor Ada Colau, the paper examines the policy and governance instruments deployed by the city to regain access and control over data and discusses the challenges and tensions it faced during the implementation phases of the program. Finally, the paper presents the main lessons of the Barcelona experience for other cities, including a reflection on the role that cities can play in shaping a global agenda around improved data governance.
Statistics
Spending on research and development, 2019 (final), 2020 (preliminary) and 2021 (intentions)
Statistics Canada
This release presents actual gross domestic expenditures on research and development (GERD) for 2019, actual gross preliminary data for 2020 and intentions data for 2021 at the national level. Research and development expenditures in 2019 reached $40.3 billion, a 3.9% increase from 2018, and the fourth consecutive year-over-year gain. This spending represents the highest amount that Canada has ever recorded in both current and constant dollars, and it was driven mainly by increased spending by business enterprises. Early estimates of Canada’s gross domestic expenditures on research and development for 2021 indicate that spending declined 1.4% to $40.1 billion.
Innovation Policy
Data Act: Commission proposes measures for a fair and innovative data economy
European Commission
This post includes details on the recently released new rules on who can use and access data generated in the EU across all economic sectors. The Data Act will “ensure fairness in the digital environment, stimulate a competitive data market, open opportunities for data-driven innovation and make data more accessible for all. It will lead to new, innovative services and more competitive prices for aftermarket services and repairs of connected objects.” This Act builds on the Commission’s data strategy in line with the 2030 digital objectives.
Growth? Which growth… and why?
Carlota Perez and Andrés Schäfer, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
This is the fifth and final instalment in the authors’ ‘After the pandemic’ series. The first, second, third and fourth essays in the series can be read here, here, here and here. In this post, the authors discuss summarize the debate between ‘free-marketeers’ and ‘degrowthers’, where “one side believes in the power of markets to deliver alone; the others don’t believe either in the power of technology nor in that of the state to shape it in synergistic directions.” They propose a third alternative, asserting that “reorienting economic growth by globally unfolding the digital revolution in a green (and socially fair) direction, through a new socio-economic and political paradigm is the way out of the dead end of gigantic problems caused by the mass production paradigm.”
Hypercroissance Québec
This post introduces a new program by Startup Montréal that will target supports to 25 scale-up firms with the aim of fostering global commercialization by doubling the overall growth rate of participating scale-ups and triple foreign sales within 24 months. The program was created in partnership with Silicon Valley-based scale-up incubator Apexe Global, and plans to support as many as 80 businesses in the first two years. The Quebec government has pledged $6.5 million to the project. BDC Capital and the Desjardins group are also involved.
Critical and Emerging Technologies List Update
U.S. National Science and Technology Council
This document from the Fast Track Action Subcommittee on Critical and Emerging Technologies identifies critical and emerging technologies. The NSTC established this Fast Track Action Subcommittee in 2020 to identify critical and emerging technologies to inform national security-related activities. In support of this work, the Subcommittee coordinated across the NSTC and the National Security Council (NSC) to identify priority critical and emerging technology subfields.
Policy Digest
Canada’s Moonshot: Solving grand challenges through transformational innovation
Thomas Goldsmith, Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
This report seeks to better understand how Canada can best use its innovation policy toolkit to intentionally direct, support, and fund innovation that solves the big challenges we face as a society, from COVID-19 to climate change, and along the way, solidify our place in the global economy as a leader in innovation. Guided by the project’s expert advisory panel, and informed by insights from interviews with innovation actors, and international case studies, Canada’s Moonshot offers suggestions on how Canada can use a moonshot approach to innovation that is cognizant of the barriers and opportunities that come from our particular Canadian context.
Recommended design principles drawn from the academic and policy literature on moonshot innovation policy:
- Select “grand challenges” that have clear, bold, measurable, and time-limited goals that are sector-, discipline-, and technology-agnostic and that align with top government priorities
- Seek a lean, agile, and independent governance structure
- Coordinate end-to-end support, using a wide range of policy instruments, to help scale the most promising ideas and help them reach their intended markets
- Create meaningful engagement with willing stakeholders, including existing innovation ecosystem actors, leading industry and research experts, communities, and the wider public
- Use a portfolio approach to managing risk, a high tolerance for failure, and an evaluation framework focused on learning and adaptation
Key challenges within Canada’s innovation ecosystem that moonshot innovation policies must address:
- Moving from an unintentional to an intentional innovation system
- Unleashing the power of demand-side instruments
- Overcoming the challenges of coordinating between and within governments
- Centering inclusion and reconciliation in innovation
- Connecting a complex innovation-actor landscape
Policy Recommendations on governance, operational, and design considerations:
- Define a clear “grand challenge” anchored in unaddressed real-world needs, through an open and inclusive consultation process.
- Facilitate policy innovation through providing delivery agencies with lean, agile, and independent governance structures.
- Develop a portfolio of moonshot projects that are cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral, embrace a range of different risk levels and types, and are inclusive of different types of individuals, organizations, industries, and regions.
- Support the full innovation continuum and value chain, from invention, through manufacturing, commercialization, and deployment, using a broader policy toolkit of supply- and demand-side levers.
- Focus on the metrics that matter for the success of the grand challenge.
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.
Subscriptions & Comments
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe