The IPL newsletter: Volume 25, Issue 504

April 15, 2024

News from the IPL

RESEARCH

Urban Mobility: How the iPhone, COVID, and Climate Changed Everything

Edited by Shauna Brail and Betsy Donald, University of Toronto Press
This forthcoming edited volume by IPL affiliated faculty member Shauna Brail and IPL Affiliate Betsy Donald is now available for pre-order. The book explores the profound changes associated with technological innovation, pandemic-induced impacts on travel behaviour, and the urgent need for mobility to meaningfully respond to the climate crisis. Featuring contributions from leading Canadian and American scholars and researchers, this edited collection traverses disciplines including geography, engineering, management, policy studies, political science, and urban planning. Chapters illuminate novel research findings related to a variety of modes of mobility, including public transit, e-scooters, bike sharing, ride hailing, and autonomous vehicles. Contributors draw out the connections between urban challenges, technological change, societal need, and governance mechanisms. The collection demonstrates why the smart phone, COVID-19, and climate present a crucial lens through which to understand the present and future of urban mobility. The way we move in cities has been disrupted and altered because of technological innovation, the lingering impacts of COVID-19, and efforts to reduce transport-related emissions. Urban Mobility concludes that the path forward requires good public policy from all levels of government, working in partnership with the private sector and non-profits to direct and address the best urban mobility framework for Canadian cities.

Editor's Pick

Special Issue: New industrial policies in a new world order

Karl Aiginger & Christian Ketels, Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade
This special issue on industrial policy is a sequel to a 2020 special issue on the Rebirth of Industrial Policy under Responsible Globalization. Five years later, the world and therefore the need and goals for industrial policy have evolved further. This new special issue aims to take stock of how these recent changes have affected the debate and practice of industrial policy in different parts of the world. It finds industrial policy to be not only “reborn”, but also “reloaded". There is a large willingness of policy makers to engage in industrial policies, with unprecedented funding made available. The papers in this special issue provide more details on the way that these policies are shaping up and changing the global economic policy landscape. They also highlight that these “reloaded industrial policies” are well advised to take account of the insights that the experiences and debates of the past offer if they want to avoid ending in disappointment.

Cities & Regions

Agglomeration economies: different effects on TFP in high-tech and low-tech industries

Martin Gornig & Alexander Schiersch, Regional Studies
This study examines the impact of agglomeration effects on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) for industry groups defined by technology intensity. This allows for non-uniform effects on firms depending on their technological level. The authors find that urban economies have the largest impact on firm productivity in high-technology industries, while they have no effect in low-technology industries. For firms in the latter industries, the diversity of the local economic structure is relevant. Localisation effects have a consistently positive and significant impact on TFP, with the effect increasing with the technology intensity of the industries.

Statistics

Canadian international merchandise trade, February 2024

Statistics Canada
Imports of electronic and electrical equipment and parts increased 9.7% to a record $7.6 billion in February. Imports of computers and computer peripherals (+41.4%), which had been trending downward since the spring of 2022, were mostly responsible for the growth in February 2024. The monthly increase in imports was led by imports of high-value data processing units (servers) from the United States. These units are generally used for the development of complex cloud systems. This post was also discussed by the Logic in a recent article 'Imports of cloud computing hardware spike amid AI boom: StatCan.'

2024 Innovation Report Card: Benchmarking Canada’s Innovation Performance

The Conference Board of Canada
Innovation is the process through which economic or social value is extracted from knowledge –by creating, diffusing, and transforming ideas – to produce new or improved products, services, and processes. This year’s Report Card assesses 21 indicators of Canada’s innovation performance. Overall, Canada ranks 15th when compared with 19 peer nations and earns a C rating. Currently, is Canada performing better or worse than in previous years? What are the country’s chances of recovery over the next few years? On which indicators does Canada score below average and on which indicators does it show strength? The 2024 Report Card identifies seven areas that potentially could improve Canada’s innovation performance. What constitutes those areas? Read the impact paper to get the full analysis.

Innovation Policy

Let’s build an Innovation Box Policy: Ideas for Ottawa’s patent box consultation

Council of Canadian Innovators
The Council of Canadian Innovators submitted a policy brief to the federal government with ideas for an Innovation Box tax structure. Historically, a Patent Box has been a way for companies to have revenue from patents taxed at a lower rate, as an incentive for companies to conduct generate and commercialize IP. In the view of the Council of Canadian Innovators, innovation box is a better term. It accurately conveys that smart IP strategy isn’t confined to the use of patents – there are many kinds of valuable IP, and policy should encourage the development and use of IP assets across firms and sectors. CCI believes that a Canadian Innovation Box tax structure can complement SR&ED. While SR&ED encourages companies to spend on R&D, an Innovation Box creates an incentive to commercialize R&D and generate revenue.

The New Mobility Era: Leveraging Digital Technologies for More Equitable, Efficient and Effective Public Transportation

Ata Khan, Ren Thomas, IRPP
Digital technologies have the potential to enhance urban mobility to achieve a variety of societal and environmental benefits: They can improve access to public transit for those who are underserved. They can help transit users optimize routes and combine various modes of transportation through integrated apps and contactless payment. And they can improve the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of public transportation systems that are increasingly electrified. However, to reach their full potential, digital technologies must be a part of a broader government-led transformation, which includes greater joint planning of land use and transportation, and improving shared-mobility services such as ride-hailing, car-sharing and bike-sharing. Governments at all levels have an important role to play in shaping this transformation in ways that improve the equity, efficiency and effectiveness of public transportation.

Securing Canada’s AI advantage

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau
This recent post announces a $2.4 billion package of measures from the upcoming Budget 2024 to secure Canada’s AI advantage. These investments will accelerate job growth in Canada’s AI sector and beyond, boost productivity by helping researchers and businesses develop and adopt AI, and ensure this is done responsibly. These measures include Investing $2 billion to build and provide access to computing capabilities and technological infrastructure for Canada’s world-leading AI researchers, start-ups, and scale-ups, $200 million in support through Canada’s Regional Development Agencies, and $100 million to the NRC IRAP AI Assist Program.

A $4-billion idea gone wrong: the Canada Digital Adoption Program

Noah Zon, IRPP
This article analyzes why " the federal government couldn’t manage to give away a budgeted $4 billion for its flagship Canada digital adoption program (CDAP)." The pandemic-era program was launched in 2022 and was intended to cover 90 per cent of the cost to businesses for consultants to help identify ways to update their online technologies. This in turn unlocked eligibility for interest-free government loans of up to $100,000 for implementation. The government cancelled the program in February, two years early, after spending less than one-fifth of its budget. A smaller grant of up to $2,400 for small businesses to build websites remains open.

Policy Digest

Buying Ideas: Procuring Public Sector Innovation in Canada

Council of Canadian Innovators
This recent report by the Council of Canadian Innovators "Buying Ideas: Procuring Public Sector Innovation in Canada," provides "an in-depth look at how to fix government procurement in Canada." The full report can be downloaded here. The launch event can be viewed here, including a conversation with Careteam CEO Dr. Alexandra T. Greenhill, and Thrive Health Executive Board Chair David Helliwell.

Procurement amounted to 14.6% of Canada’s GDP in 2021. However, a recent Auditor General report found that about a third of the 1,480 mission-critical government digital applications are rated to be in poor health. "When Canadian governments do a poor job of buying innovative technologies it significantly undermines our innovation economy," said Benjamin Bergen, President of the Council of Canadian Innovators. "And when the government disproportionately relies on large foreign technology service providers to offer sub-par solutions, that impacts Canadian companies’ ability to compete and succeed globally."

The report outlines the following categories of policy problems with procurement:

Overspecification at the outset of a procurement process, and a lack of ongoing dialogue with vendors who may be able to innovate to better meet government’s needs.
Long and cumbersome procurement processes that discourage nimble innovators to invest time and effort for an uncertain outcome that may take months or years to fully play out.
Lack of in-house capacity and expertise among public servants to meaningfully engage with vendors.
Institutional culture and career incentives which create a risk averse culture that steers government buyers towards the “safe” choice.

The report identifies three international cases that exhibit best practices for potential paths forward. In the United States, the Small Business Innovation Research program has a long history of success. In the 2000s, the United Kingdom pioneered the Forward Commitment Procurement model which has been adopted around the world. In Finland, a network of agencies have created an ecosystem for government procurement that routinely leads the European Union.

As a first step, CCI has a suite of six recommendations:

Create a Small and Medium Enterprise Procurement Target
Create a Framework for Forward Commitment Procurement
Develop and Recognize an Innovation Procurement Standard
Prioritize Commercialization in Procurement Programming
Empower the Industrial Research Assistance Program to drive Innovative Procurement
Create a Federal Procurement Concierge

Events

EVENTS

The 23rd Annual Research Money Conference: Creating the future we want for Canada in 15 years
April 24-25, 2024, National Arts Centre, Ottawa
The primary objective of the 23rd annual R$ conference is to identify where Canada envisions itself in the next 15 years and craft how to reach that future. We’ll analyze the federal budget, assess past attempts to galvanize the country around innovation, hear from other countries how they did it and how they view Canada, learn from Canadian successes in specific sectors and regions, and address challenges that have been hindering us.

Participants will be able to record their ideas and commentary about the sessions in real time. The conference will include an interactive session during which participants identify priorities for future action.

ISS2024

June 9-11, 2024, Gothenburg, Sweden
ISS2024 is the 20th biennial conference of The International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society. The conference takes place in Gothenburg, Sweden, between Sunday 9th June and Tuesday 11th June, 2024. The ISS2024 conference theme is "Transformation: Creative Accumulation and Creative Destruction in the Economy". The Deadline for submitting abstracts is Jan. 15th 2024.

2024 RSA Annual Conference: Global Challenges, Regional Collaboration and the Role of Places

11-14 June 2024, Florence, Italy
The Regional Studies Association’s Annual Conference 2024 #RSA24 is being held in partnership with the Department of Economics and Business Sciences and Department of Architecture, University of Florence, Italy. This four-day conference brings together academics and policymakers to exchange news, views and research findings from the fields of regional studies and science, regional and economic development, policy and planning.

2024 Industry Studies Association Annual Conference

June 13-15, 2024, Sacramento, CA, USA
This year's ISA conference is titled Empowering Community Wellbeing: Clean Energy, Sustainability and Industrial Strategy and will be held at California State University, Sacramento. In the heart of the world’s largest subnational economy, California, the Industry Studies Association proudly presents its annual conference with a theme that resonates with the future of our planet and communities. The conference will explore the dynamic interplay between California's pioneering efforts in clean energy and sustainability and their profound impacts on industrial strategy and community wellbeing around the world. Call for Paper and Panel Submissions

Technology Transfer Society Annual Meeting 2024

September 11-13, 2024, Brussels, Belgium
The conference theme is 'Blurring Boundaries and Ambiguous Roles: Universities and the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.' The deadline for abstract submissions is February 15, 2024.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Ikerbasque Research Fellows 2024

The Basque Foundation for Science is launching a new international call for 20 positions for promising young postdoctoral researchers to strengthen scientific research in the Basque Country. 5-YEAR POSITION: During the last year the researcher can be assessed to obtain a permanent position. PHD DEGREE: Between Jan 2013-Dec 2021. APPLICATIONS FROM WOMEN Are especially welcome.

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