The IPL newsletter: Volume 25, Issue 516

November 15, 2024

News from the IPL

EVENTS

Unintended Effects of University Ecosystems EDI Policies on Female Graduate Entrepreneurship

November 28, 2024. 4:00PM - 6:00PM, Online & in-person, Boardroom at the Observatory at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, 315 Bloor Street W

Speaker: Chiara Marzocchi, Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Newcastle University, UK

This study assesses gender disparities in graduate entrepreneurship, specifically examining the impact of equality charters in bridging the gap between graduates' gender and their propensity of starting a business. Equality charters have been adopted by universities across the globe since the early 2000s to advocate inclusive practices for staff and students. Originally, equality charters were implemented to encourage commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment. The results reveal that students from universities that have a greater experience with the Charter show a lower propensity to start a business upon their graduation. Although this trend is observed in both males and females, male graduates are found to have almost twice the propensity to start a business than female graduates. However, the gender disparity in the propensity to engage in business start-ups narrows as the experience of universities with the Charter increases. Overall, the study suggests a paradoxical "negative halo effect" of equality charters on entrepreneurship, highlighting a need for policymakers and university administrators to re-evaluate Charter implementation strategies to better promote entrepreneurship as a feasible career option for graduates.

Editor's Pick

Impacts of policy-driven public procurement: a methodological review

Oishee Kundu, Elvira Uyarra, Raquel Ortega-Argiles, Mayra M Tirado, Tasos Kitsos, Pei-Yu Yuan, Science and Public Policy
This paper reviews recent research on the impact of public procurement with a focus on methods and data. The growing interest in mobilizing procurement for strategic purposes, such as innovation, economic growth, social value, and sustainable development, has brought to light significant knowledge gaps on the impact of public procurement on products, solutions, actors, and markets. Using a comprehensive approach to analyse scholarly understandings of procurement, the paper finds several notions of policy-driven public procurement and identifies challenges in distinguishing between strategic and ‘regular’ public procurement. The authors then provide a critical discussion on data, examining the currently available data sources and highlighting the need for greater data integration and linkage at the firm level to enable the causal identification of innovation and other impacts from participation in procurement. To address these gaps, the authors propose a set of actions for research and practice.

Cities & Regions

For growth or equity: a taxonomy of ‘Bidenomics’ place-based policies and implications for US regional inequality

Grete Gansauer, Regional Studies
Emerging US place-based policies aim to maintain US competitiveness and address widening regional inequalities simultaneously. However, scholarly debates question whether such logics can be reconciled within place-based policy agendas. This article identifies 33 place-based policies in recent US legislation and categorises each across a novel four-part policy taxonomy. Using multimethod qualitative analysis the study classifies programmes by primary strategic intent (growth or equity) and by primary scale of focus (regional or national). It contributes to regional policy debates by describing emerging US place-based policy designs in detail, and by estimating implications of the US’s place-based policy resurgence for long-run regional inequalities.

Statistics

Canadian Venture Capital Market Overview YTD Q3 2024

Canadian Venture Capital Association
CVCA’s public quarterly market overview reports provide a deep analysis of the Canadian market, offering a panoramic view of private capital trends and investments. These comprehensive reports utilize data from the CVCA Intelligence platform, Canada’s foremost private capital database. They highlight performance indicators, emerging sectors, and strategic shifts, empowering stakeholders with crucial insights for informed decision-making. Despite a traditionally slower third quarter, investment activity reached CAD $2.6B, largely driven by investment in Clio, the largest software funding round on CVCA records. Clio, a BC-based legaltech company, raised CAD $1.24B in Q3, accounting for 47% of total quarterly investment. The overall deal count dropped by 17% to 130 deals, but the average deal size surged to CAD $20.4M, the third highest on record, reflecting a continued focus on established companies.

Entrepreneurship indicators of Canadian enterprises, 2022

Statistics Canada
In 2022, there were 1,213,840 active enterprises in Canada with one or more employees, and two-thirds of these enterprises had four employees or fewer. There were 106,950 births of enterprises in 2022 and 85,020 deaths in 2021.These indicators are part of the Entrepreneurship Indicators Database program, which is available upon request for the 2022 reference period. The Entrepreneurship Indicators Database program provides data that describe the entrepreneurial dynamics of Canadian enterprises. Indicators include the number of active enterprises, the number of enterprise births and deaths and their corresponding jobs, the survival of newly created enterprises, and the number of high-growth enterprises and gazelles. Active enterprises include all enterprises with at least one employee.

Spending on research and development in the higher education sector, 2022/2023

Statistics Canada
Research and development spending in the higher education sector reached $18.1 billion in 2022/2023, up $1.4 billion from the previous year, with notable increases seen in both fields of research. The natural sciences and engineering field saw the largest gain as spending increased by $1.1 billion to $13.6 billion. Meanwhile, social sciences, humanities and the arts rose by $376 million to $4.5 billion.

Innovation Policy

What is the role of Government Venture Capital for innovation-driven entrepreneurship?

Marius Berger, Antoine Dechezleprêtre and Milenko Fadic, OECD
Government Venture Capital (GovVC) has emerged as a policy tool to complement private venture capital (Private VC) by funding innovation-driven firms that might not attract traditional VC investment. This study analyses GovVC's role in OECD Member countries using comprehensive data on entrepreneurial firms, investors, and patents, with GovVC entities identified through surveys of ministry experts. The analysis shows that GovVC-funded firms are typically riskier than Private VC funded ones and generally demonstrate lower performance in securing follow-on funding and innovation output. However, when GovVCs partner with Private VC investors, these performance gaps diminish significantly. In co-investment scenarios, firms show comparable innovation and exit performance to those funded solely by Private VC. The findings indicate that GovVC can effectively direct capital to overlooked firms, particularly when working in partnership with private investors.

Carrot first, stick second? Environmental policy-mix sequencing and green technologies

Kinga B. Tchorzewska, Pablo del Rio, Jose Garcia-Quevedo, Ester Martinez-Ros, Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Eco-innovations are considered key in the transition towards a more sustainable economy. However, since there are several barriers to the adoption of eco-innovations, different instruments have been proposed to encourage their uptake, leading to instrument mixes. Analysis of these mixes has been scarce in the eco-innovation literature and mostly focused on static rather than dynamic combinations of instruments. This paper tries to cover this gap by assessing the sequencing of instruments to promote eco-innovation. To that aim the authors use a panel database of investments in green technologies by Spanish firms between 2010–2020. Their results show that the order in which the instruments are introduced (sequencing) affects the adoption of eco-innovation, although the effective sequencing effect slightly differs for different environmental technological innovation types (cleaner production vs. end-of-pipe). In both cases, using subsidies (“carrots”) first and then using environmental taxes (“sticks”) positively and significantly influence the adoption of environmental technologies. Results from heterogeneous analysis confirms that this is especially true for small and medium firms. Within carrots, it seems tax credits and subsidies are substitutes, whatever the sequence of their introduction is. These results have clear policy implications which cannot be derived from analyses of static policy mixes. They suggest that, if the aim is to promote the adoption of eco-innovations, carrots should be used first, and then sticks should be adopted. In addition, it warns against using tax credits and subsidies together, given their redundancy in promoting eco-innovation. If subsidies are introduced after tax credits have already been applied (or the other way around), substantial inefficiencies can be expected, increasing the costs of eco-innovation promotion without any added value in terms of effectiveness.

Canadian program similar to SBIR faces big budget cuts

Jerry Coughter, SSTI
This post summarizes funding for Canada's Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC) program, which is often compared to the U.S. Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program. And, like the SBIR program, ISC has faced criticism from skeptics despite metrics that show the program delivers high returns on investment. When Canada’s Budget 2023 Initiative recommended reallocating 14.1 billion Canadian dollars (CAD) in federal spending, each Ministry was tasked to identify programs that did not address the government’s top priorities. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) identified ISC as one such program. ISC’s budget of 147.6 million CAD in fiscal year 2023 was trimmed by 28.2 million CAD in 2024-25 and 70 million CAD annually thereafter.

Policy Digest

Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Report on Sustainable Aviation Fuel

The U.S. Department of Energy
This report highlights the critical strategies and investments necessary to scale SAF production and position the United States as a leader in the SAF economy by 2030.

With global air travel on the rise, the need for clean, sustainable fuel options has never been more urgent. This report outlines how SAF can significantly reduce emissions in the aviation sector with production pathways that are both commercially and technologically viable today. Scaling SAF production will drive down costs, create thousands of jobs, and build a more competitive and sustainable aviation industry that benefits communities and businesses nationwide.

Key Findings of the SAF Liftoff Report:

U.S. SAF Leadership Potential: Announced projects could produce over three billion gallons of SAF annually by 2030—enough to exceed the U.S. SAF Grand Challenge target and meet over 10% of projected U.S. jet fuel demand.

Economic Impact: SAF liftoff by 2030 could generate over $44 billion in investment and create more than 70,000 jobs across the SAF supply chain.

Reducing Costs: SAF currently costs 2-10 times more than fossil jet fuel, depending on the feedstock and production method. Federal and state incentives, alongside long-term offtake agreements, are essential to making SAF more affordable and widely adopted.

Global Collaboration: International alignment on carbon accounting, feedstock traceability, and sustainable standards will be critical to scaling SAF production and adoption globally.

On November 21, 2024, DOE will host a webinar featuring senior DOE leaders to discuss insights from the SAF report and explore the path forward for SAF production and deployment.

Events

EVENTS

SSTI's Annual Conference: Focusing on the Future

December 10-12, Metro Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Yearly gathering of leaders across all aspects of regional innovation advancement through public-private partnerships, policies and government-funded programs in the practice of technology-based economic development across the U.S.

WICK#12 PhD Workshop in Economics of Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge

December 12-13 2024, Turin
Annual meeting for doctoral students and young researchers in Economics of Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge. The Workshop is organized by the students of the Vilfredo Pareto Doctoral Program in Economics, in collaboration with the University of Turin, BRICK, Collegio Carlo Alberto and Young Scholar Initiative

The 10th Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy

May 14-16, 2025, Georgia Institute of Technology
Hosted by Georgia Tech, the Atlanta Conference provides a forum to present and discuss high quality empirical research by about 300 scholars representing more than 30 countries that focus on the challenges and trends associated with science and innovation policy and processes. Abstracts Due: Nov. 17, 2024.

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