The IPL newsletter: Volume 24, Issue 486

June 1, 2023

News from the IPL

MEDIA

Do you miss your BlackBerry? Canada's innovation sector does too

Peter Armstrong, CBC
This article features commentary by IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz on Canada's innovation policy. The article situates the discussion with reference to the recent film BlackBerry. The article notes that while "the rise of BlackBerry showed Canada is as well placed as any country on earth to build and engineer new technologies...when they eventually failed, there was no system in place to support the ideas, and the work that was still being done."

RESEARCH

New Path Development in a Semi-peripheral Auto Region: The Case of Ontario

Elena Goracinova & David A. Wolfe, Economic Geography
The automotive industry is facing disruptive trends and great uncertainty. The path forward for automotive jurisdictions is uncertain in terms of how automakers will allocate the production of new connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs). The introduction of C/AV technologies creates high levels of uncertainty both for individual firms and regional innovation systems (RISs). The intersection of established production competencies with emerging digital technologies raises questions about how regional pathways and RISs develop and how local and RISs adapt to changes in global innovation networks. Building on recent contributions to evolutionary economic geography (EEG), the article examines the impact of the current technology transition on Ontario’s automotive sector. Drawing on rich empirical data and recent conceptual advances in theorizing about new path development from EEG and the literature on global innovation networks, the article casts light on how the intersection between global innovation networks and regional actors is altering Ontario’s developmental path. It examines the potential for Ontario to diversify away from its historic status as a semi-peripheral automotive region with limited investment in research and development to one with a greater role in the emerging paradigm of connected and autonomous vehicles. The article explores the potential for path diversification based on interpath dynamics between the region's auto and information and computer technology sectors as well as the importance of both system-level and firm-level agency for altering the region's developmental trajectory.

The Political Economy of Energy Transitions in Canada: Implications for the Auto Industry

David A. Wolfe and Nathan Lemphers, IPL Working Paper 2023-02
This chapter explores the broader implications of the current energy transition from a carbon-based energy paradigm to one based on decarbonized energy sources for the automotive and broader transportation sector. This transition carries grave implications for two of Canada’s leading economic sectors automotive and oil and gas two of the sectors that will be most directly affected by the prospective transition. The chapter focuses on the two provinces most directly affected by this transition Ontario and Alberta but also explores the implications for Québec. Ontario’s automotive sector is on the cusp of a major restructuring that will determine whether it continues to enjoy the status of a semi-peripheral automotive region it has held since the mid-1960s under the Auto Pact and the successor North American trade agreements, or whether it follows the steady path of decline that it has experienced since the early 2000s (Mordue and Sweeney 2020; 2017; Anastakis 2013). While this restructuring most directly implicates Ontario’s manufacturing sector, the energy shift creates broader implications for the political economy of the Canadian federation through its impact on the provincial economies of Alberta and Québec, given that energy products and motor vehicles combined accounted for 37 per cent of Canada’s total exports in 2020. The Ontario and Alberta economies, based as they are on manufacturing and resources, have long been viewed as representing antithetical interests, particularly since the OPEC price revolution of the 1970s (Simeon and Robinson 1990, 236249). In contrast, we argue that, since the late 1940s, the two provinces have been equally locked into the “carbon trap” in terms of the mutual dependence of their primary economic sectors on the production and consumption of carbon-based energy (Haley 2011). Consequently, they face similar challenges in restructuring their economic base in the coming transition to decarbonized energy sources and electrified transportation.

Incubating Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Regional Innovation Centres and Civic Capital in Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo

Alessandra Cicci, Darius Ornston, and Lisa Huh, IPL Working Paper 2023-01
A growing literature argues that entrepreneurial ecosystems benefit from intermediary organizations which increase civic capital or connectivity among entrepreneurs, risk capital, knowledge-bearing institutions, sophisticated customers, and complementary service providers. These intermediary organizations, however, are seldom subjected to comparative analysis. Focusing on three regional innovation centres in Waterloo (Communitech), Toronto (MaRS), and Ottawa (OCRI, now Invest Ottawa), we find that all three organizations fostered greater connectivity within their communities, but that they did so in very different ways. Distinguishing among entrepreneur-led “community creators,” institution-led “buzz builders,” and anchor-led “cluster organizers,” we demonstrate how institutional origins and organizational design shape their programming choices and, by extension, the structure of civic capital. While the differences among Communitech, MaRS, and Invest Ottawa have narrowed over time, this analysis suggests that organizations seeking to improve connectivity in immature, entrepreneurial ecosystems face important tradeoffs.

Promoting Inclusive Innovation for People With Disabilities: Who Does What and Why?

Dan Breznitz & Amos Zehavi, Disability and Society
Disability policy is often characterized as comprising three different components: citizenship rights, labor market integration and social protection. This study presents a fourth component – disability-related innovation. Specifically it analyzes two critical interrelated questions: what governments do to guide innovation in this area; and do patterns of greater government disability policy involvement in social-democratic welfare states apply in the case of innovation? Utilizing a qualitative comparison of Germany, Israel, Sweden and the United States, it finds that while policy across all countries is at first glance decisively similar, the important differences that exist cannot be satisfactorily explained within the classical welfare state typology framework. Countries that are leaders in terms of social support for disabled people – Germany and Sweden – are not necessarily leaders in disability-related innovation. This is particularly noticeable in the case of programs for support of Assistive Technology development.

Mending the Net: Public Strategies for the Remediation of Network Failures

Steven Samford & Dan Breznitz, Social Forces
Market and hierarchical/organizational failures have long been the target of public policies explicitly aimed to mitigate their negative effects. However, in spite of a growing interest in policies around industrial clusters and business networks, scholarship on public efforts at remediating network failures has been ad hoc and lacking a binding theory. A central question is what strategies public agencies employ to repair network failures. The article begins to answer this question by distinguishing between two distinct approaches: (1) “network construction” in which government agents actively build, re-shape, or thicken the structures of private sector networks; and (2) “network activation” in which government agents seek to alter the internal dynamics of existing private sector networks. To provide empirical support for these concepts, it provides a series of short international examples to illustrate the scope of network remediation activities as well as two in-depth cases that demonstrate how these mechanisms can work: the Canadian Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) and the specialized Mexican Lead Substitution Program.

 

 

 

Editor's Pick

Friendshoring Critical Minerals: What Could the U.S. and Its Partners Produce?

Bentley Allan,  Noah Gordon,  Cathy Wang, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The push for collaborative strategies for critical minerals raises important questions: how much critical minerals could the United States and its partners produce, and where should they focus efforts to diversify and rebalance clean energy supply chains? In a new study of these issues, the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University finds that partnerships among democratic states would be able to produce enough minerals to enable the world to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more ambitious target in the Paris Agreement. However, producing enough metals to meet these targets would require extraordinary technological and financial cooperation.

Cities & Regions

The Industrial Transition and the US Metropolis

Bruce Katz, Milena Dovali, Avanti Krovi and Victoria Orozco, The New Localism
Drexel University’s Nowak Metro Finance Lab, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute’s Latinos and Society Program, has started to map the spatial, policy, and practice dimensions of the US industrial transition. Among other findings, the research shows that the manufacturing boom is benefitting a diverse set of states, regions, and metropolitan areas, reflecting the distributed nature of manufacturing, both defense and civilian, that exists in the United States.

Statistics

2022 Cleantech Industry Survey Results

Government of Canada
The 2022 Cleantech Industry Survey was conducted by Natural Resources Canada to better understand the challenges and barriers that Canadian cleantech companies are facing. This was a targeted survey sent out to 2427 pure-play cleantech companies that were identified through the Clean Technology Data Strategy. Pure-play cleantech companies are defined as companies that are predominantly engaged in developing and/or using innovative technologies that provide environmental benefits.

The Narwhal List – 2023

The Narwhal Project
The Narwhal List was developed to focus attention on the private Canadian technology companies best poised to become world class firms. To create the list the authors evaluated the results of 900 Canadian technology companies that have received more than $10 million of capital. For 2023, they have computed a ranking that compares each company to over 15,000 scaling companies in North America. This ranking measures each company’s ability to acquire capital to fuel growth, their growth rate in personnel and how big they have become in terms of the number of employees. The score they have given each company shows their ranking as a percentile against these reference companies. The final number is a percentile between 0% and 100%, showing the percentage of companies that any particular company is performing better at in scaling. This list is created annually and this is the list for January 2023. 

Innovation Policy

UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and The Rt Hon Chloe Smith MP
The National Semiconductor Strategy sets out how up to £1 billion of government investment will boost the UK’s strengths and skills in design, R&D and compound semiconductors, while helping to grow domestic chip firms across the UK. Working in tandem with industry, investment made by the government will drive research, innovation and commercialisation through the sector - helping to deliver products from lab to market.

DOE Launches New Energy Earthshot to Decarbonize Transportation and Industrial Sectors

The U.S. Department of Energy
The Clean Fuels & Products ShotTM is a new initiative that aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from carbon-based fuels and products critical to our way of life. This is the seventh DOE Energy Earthshot, which focuses on reducing carbon emissions from the fuel and chemical industry through alternative, more sustainable sources of carbon to achieve a minimum of 85% lower GHG emissions as compared to fossil-based sources by 2035. The Clean Fuels & Products ShotTM supports the national goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 by developing the sustainable feedstocks and conversion technologies necessary to produce crucial fuels, materials, and carbon-based products that are better for the environment than current petroleum-derived components.

Verbatim: The Economics of Supply Chain Politics: Dual Circulation, Derisking and the Sullivan Doctrine

Dan Ciuriak, C.D. Howe
This C.D. Howe Verbatim develops and elaborates on remarks by the author at the Trade Policy Research Forum Webinar, “Friends making sense of Friend-shoring: Costs, Benefits and Prospects”. Focusing on friendshoring and the related concepts of decoupling and derisking, the article considers the economic implications of incorporating political objectives in supply chain restructuring, the entailed role of public subsidies in this process or alternatively the creation of economic rents for preferred suppliers through non-tariff measures that eliminate non-friend suppliers from bidding, and the implications for the rules-based system. Against this background, the author unpacks the economics of the new supply chain politics and its rivalries.

 

 

Policy Digest

Critical Technologies Statement

Australia Department of Industry, Science and Resources
The Australian Government has updated the List of Critical Technologies that will have a high impact on Australia's national interest.

The updated list focuses on seven key enabling technology fields:

  • Advanced manufacturing and materials technologies 

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies

  • Advanced information and communication technologies

  • Quantum technologies

  • Autonomous systems, robotics, positioning, timing and sensing

  • Biotechnologies

  • Clean energy generation and storage technologies.

This statement sets out the Australian Government’s commitment to:

  • the important role of critical technologies

  • the activities underway to ensure Australia can capture the opportunities these critical technologies bring to support economic prosperity, national security, environmental sustainability and social cohesion.

The updated list has been developed through an extensive public consultation process. The key feedback from stakeholders was the need to have a focused list with a clear purpose.

This updated list complements the Government’s first National Quantum Strategy which was released earlier this month. In addition, the Albanese Government’s National Reconstruction Fund is targeting $1 billion of investment in critical technologies.

Whole of government alignment

The Government notes that "a balanced, whole-of-government approach to critical technologies policy will ensure all government portfolios are working together to identify and harness opportunities within the broader strategic context." To facilitate this coordination, the government established a Critical Technologies Hub and node operating model in the Australian Public Service. The hub sits within the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, supported by 3 nodes providing expert scientific, economic and national security advice.

When the government is developing options and deciding actions for critical technologies, the issues will be considered through the following framework:

  • whether the technology is on the List of Critical Technologies in the National Interest

  • alignment with government priorities or strategic needs (for example, priorities under the National Reconstruction Fund or AUKUS)

  • the national interest lens

  • development of specific strategies to ensure Australia is positioned to capture economic opportunities of a specific technology.

 

 

 

Links to recent IPL webinars

Does Canada have an effective innovation policy?

March 16, 2023 |11:00AM - 12:00PM, Online via Zoom
Since 2000 Canada has witnessed a proliferation of Innovation Strategies, including the 2017 Innovation and Skills Plan. Yet our innovation performance continued to deteriorate throughout this period. The 2022 Federal Budget began with the admission, “Our third pillar for growth is a plan to tackle the Achilles’ heel of the Canadian economy: productivity and innovation.” What factors best explain Canada’s dismal innovation performance over the past two decades? Join us for an IPL webinar with two of the most insightful analysts of Canadian innovation policy.

Moderator: David A. Wolfe, Professor of Political Science and Co-Director, Innovation Policy Lab

Panelists:
Shirley Anne Scharf, Ph.D. Shirley Anne Scharf is Visiting Researcher with the CN-Paul M. Tellier Chair on Business and Public Policy, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa and has her Ph.D. in Public Administration, School of Political Studies at U of O. Her dissertation, “Canadian Innovation Policy: The Continuing Challenge” (2022) examines the key dimensions driving the gap between policy intent and impact, and the consequences for Canada’s innovation eco-system.
Travis Southin, Ph.D. Travis Southin is a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration working with the Transition Accelerator on net-zero industrial policy. He completed his PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto in 2022. His dissertation, titled “Overcoming Barriers to Policy Change: The Politics of Canada’s Innovation Policy,” illuminates the political barriers constraining the Government of Canada’s ability to shift its innovation policy mix away from neutral/horizontal policy instruments towards more targeted innovation policy instruments.

Events

ICPP6 - TORONTO 2023

June 27 to 29, 2023, Toronto
The 6th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP6) is coming to Toronto! Organized by IPPA, ICPP6 is hosted by the Toronto Metropolitan University's Faculty of Arts and Public Policy graduate studies programs and will take place at the University's premises in downtown Toronto from June 27 to 29, 2023, with a Pre-Conference on June 26. This conference includes a panel chaired by IPL Co-director Dan Breznitz called "Organizational Evolution in Innovation Policy."

Subscriptions & Comments

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