News from the IPL
INTRODUCTION
This newsletter is published by The Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and sponsored by the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The views and ideas expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Ontario Government.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
INNOVATION PARK GETS FIRST MAJOR TENNANT
Trivaris — a company that puts ideas and money together to create new companies and social ventures– is moving to Hamilton from Burlington and taking over the entire top floor of the industrial space now under renovation on Longwood Road South. The innovation park is to take shape over 10 to 15 years on a 37-acre brownfield site once occupied by Camco’s appliance factory. McMaster bought the property in 2005 and its plans include 14 low-rise buildings housing as many as 3,000 employees in an airy, campus style setting. The park’s mission is to build university, government and private partnerships that turn research into commercial products and services. Chamberlain said that mission fits perfectly with his company’s, as both work to help Hamilton shift to a knowledge economy.
University of Waterloo Opens Up ‘Dorm-cubator’ Residence to Student Entrepreneurs
Last week, the first group of 70 upper-year and graduate students began living in VeloCity, a combination residence hall and business incubator at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, designed for student entrepreneurs interested in mobile communications and digital media. The university has spent about $400,000 to convert a 40-year-old building into the residence, which will include a wireless device lab, wi-fi, videoconferencing space, increased bandwidth, student presentation space, a LCD wall screen, and common areas to encourage collaboration.
Turning Innovation Into Ontario Jobs
Recently the Ontario government introduced Ideas for the Future Act, 2008, that, if passed, would provide a 10-year corporate income tax exemption for new companies that turn home-grown ideas into Ontario jobs and products. The tax exemption – the first of its kind in Canada – would encourage Ontario’s entrepreneurs to commercialize public research in areas such as bio-economy/clean technologies, advanced health technologies, and telecommunications, computer and digital technologies. Qualifying corporations that commercialize an idea would be eligible for the tax exemption if developed at qualifying Canadian universities, colleges or research institutes.
Editor's Pick
The Global Competition for Talent: Mobility of the Highly Skilled
OECD
This publication discusses the dimensions, significance, and policy implications of international flows of human resources in science and technology. The international mobility of highly skilled workers is increasing in scale and complexity as more economies participate in R&D and innovation activity. Mobile talent diffuses knowledge both directly and indirectly across borders. This can boost global innovation performance, with benefits accruing to both sending and receiving countries. It is clear that mobility is leading to an increasing level of labour-market internationalization and integration, and competition for talent is now influencing innovation policy initiatives across the globe.
Innovation Policy
Jan Fagerberg, David Mowery, and Bart Verspagen
This paper analyses the co-evolution of science, technology and innovation policy and industrial structure in a small, resource-based economy (Norway). The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it develops an evolutionary and historically oriented approach to the study of the development of science, technology and innovation policy based that may have wide applicability. Second, if focuses on a particular type of innovation, innovation in resource-based activities, that differs in many respects from the more commonly studied “high-tech” case and which arguably be of relevance for may present day developing countries. Third, the paper advances our understanding of the roles played by institutions and politics in innovation. Previous work on national systems of innovation has often devoted little attention to these matters, possibly because much of it examines “snapshots” of various
innovation systems at a specific point in time and lacks historical depth.
Comparing the Candidate’s Technology and Innovation Policies
Stephen J Ezell and Robert T Atkinson, ITIF
With aftershocks continuing to reverberate from last week on Wall Street, the presidential election is likely to be a referendum on which candidate is best suited to deal with a challenging economic situation. Effective technology and innovation policies must be and will be an important part of any solution, and this is an area where McCain and Obama offer quite different perspectives and prescriptions. A new Information Technology and Innovation Policy Foundation report compares the two candidates on innovation and technology policies. The study tracks the candidates’ position in eleven key areas, including tax, trade, education and workforce policies. The report is full of detailed proposals, but also notes that McCain and Obama bring different philosophies to the table.
Trade and Innovation Project: A Synthesis Paper
Osamu Onodera, OECD
This research paper examines the links between trade and innovation. It reviews the academic literature, and also assesses how trade has promoted innovation in five smaller countries: Finland, Korea, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. According to the study, trade’s impacts were in two primary ways. First, technologies and ideas get diffused across borders via trade and other interactions. Second, trade builds economies of scale. As firms gain market share, they can re-invest profits into innovative activities. Firms that are open to global competition tend to be more productive and more profitable, so it makes sense for national governments to open their economies and to update key rules for intellectual property protection and the like. These policy directions are especially important for small and medium-sized enterprises who are critical drivers of innovation in developing economies.
New Challenges for Germany in the Innovation Competition
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, and Georgia Tech’s Program in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy
This report benchmarks Germany’s innovation performance against a number of other national systems, including China, France, India, Korea, and the US. Like the US, Germany faces many challenges in terms of coordinating policies across different parts of its Federal system. In terms of strategies, German innovation policies place great emphasis on support for small and medium-sized enterprises, what Germans call the Mittelstrand. These two patterns create special issues for German policymakers who must seek to promote technology transfer and commercialization in a fragmented environment characterized by numerous research organizations and numerous potential partners among German SMEs. Overall, Germany shows great strengths in areas related to international trade and key technology sectors. Information technology presents one exception where Germany’s international technology profile lags other economies. Germany is now making a big national push to spend at least three percent of GDP on R&D. The report applauds this ambition, but also cautions that policy makers must also focus attention on how best to optimize national framework conditions for innovation.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Christoph Grimpea and Roberto Patuelli
Nanomaterials are seen as a key technology for the 21st Century, and much is expected of them in terms of innovation and economic growth. They could open the way to many radically new applications, which would form the basis of innovative products. In this context, it seems all the more important for regions to put their own innovation systems in place, and to ensure that they offer a suitable location for such activities in order to benefit from the expected growth. Many regions have already done so by establishing ‘science parks’ and ‘nanoclusters’. As nanomaterials are still in their infancy, both public research institutes and private businesses could play a vital role in the process. This paper investigates what conditions and configurations allow a regional innovation system to be competitive in a cutting-edge technology like nanomaterials. The report analyzes European Patent Office data at the German district level (NUTS-3) on applications for nanomaterial patents, in order to chart the effects of localized research and development (R&D) in the public and private sector. The authors estimate two negative binomial models in a knowledge production function framework and include a spatial filtering approach to adjust for spatial effects. The results indicate that there is a significant positive effect of both public and private R&D on the production of nanomaterial patents. Moreover, we find a positive interaction between them which hints at the importance of their co-location for realizing the full potential of an emerging technology like nanomaterials.
The Entrepreneurial Advantage of World Cities
Zoltan Acs, Niels Bosma, and Rolf Sternberg
Recent discussions in the economic geography literature increasingly focuses on creative cities and the importance of creativity for achieving economic growth. Considering the increased attention on urban areas it is not surprising that the regional dimension of entrepreneurship is a subject of great interest. This paper sets out a framework encompassing the individual process between entrepreneurial perceptions and entrepreneurial activity and demonstrates how the urban environment can have an impact on this process. It creates entrepreneurship indices for 34 world cities exploiting the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Database 2001-2006. The paper investigates differences between the city level and country-level for a selection of the indices. These exercises can be seen as initial tests of the ‘entrepreneurial advantage of cities.’ Based on the literature the authors expect that most indices will be higher for world cities, although exceptions are also plausible, for instance in world cities where the government resides. The findings predominantly confirm the entrepreneurial advantage of world cities.
Statistics & Indicators
Saffron Consultants
This study ranks 72 of Europe’s largest cities based on a comparison of their assets and attractions against the strength of their brands. To support the analysis, Saffron commissioned a YouGov poll of 2,000 consumers to find out what people most want from a city. Paris and London emerged as the cities with the best assets and the strongest brands to match. Among old Europe’s other capitals, Berlin is the striking example of a city with a brand that is significantly stronger than its assets. On the other hand, Rome is more blessed with what people want than the German capital but it is not as effective at communicating this – hence its brand is considerably weaker than Berlin’s. Vienna, Austria, was the only city deemed to get precisely the reputation its assets deserve – its brand was judged to be fully consistent with what the city has to offer.
The most recent Urban Audit has revealed that there are large difference between cities in Europe when it comes to their quality of life. The audit included more than 300 indicators concerning a wide range of issues, such as crime, housing, health and climate. The indicators were measured in 321 European cities.
Policy Digest
Regional Innovation Policy Impact Assessment and Benchmarking Guidebook
Innovating Regions in Europe (IRE)
The focus of this guideline is to introduce innovation policy impact assessment and benchmarking at the regional level. This document is targeted at two audiences: on the one hand it is aimed at the large community of professionals who have different roles
in regional innovation policy who may not have been much involved in evaluations yet, but who would like to have an overview on concepts, approaches and practical implementation of impact assessment and benchmarking. This refers both to people who are involved in the preparation of strategies and the design of programs and their implementation, as well as to those who are involved in specific innovation activities and support operations. It also targets the innovation policy professionals, particularly those responsible for regional strategy, who are seeking to increase their know-how on impact assessment and benchmarking in Europe. This includes people responsible for the set-up, implementation, follow-up, and the evaluation of regional innovation policies.
This guideline is based on the results and experiences of the first systematic attempt in Europe to develop tools and methodologies
for Impact assessment and benchmarking of innovation policy at a regional level. This has been done thought the eight projects of the pilot action of Regional Innovation Policy Impact Assessment and Benchmarking, undertaken within the framework of the Innovation Regions in Europe Network. These projects were pioneering in Europe in creating evaluation systems based on the needs of actual regions while at the same time putting the systems in practice and ensuring that they can be universal to any regional setting. The findings presented here are thus based on the practical, concrete feedback obtained from testing the tools and systems in participating regions.
Benefits of Regional Impact Assessment and Benchmarking
Helping decision making and the development of strategies and programs: The analysis of the regional context, that is the current performance of the whole region, the strengths and weaknesses of the regional innovation systems as well as needs of companies helps to identify the need for policy intervention. For example, the policies can seek to enhance the strengths and counteract the weaknesses. Comparing different contexts through benchmarking can help identify areas where policy intervention are required and can also help provide insight as to what policies and actions are conducted in other regions.
Monitoring progress: Impact assessment and benchmarking provide a number of benefits during the policy implementation. First of all, it is necessary to see if the policies are actually being implemented as planned. The innovation policy-making process is so complicated with different actors playing a role at different stages and in different fields, and with some regions often having different budgets as well using both national and European programs to implement their strategies, that without an integrated review of the implementation, it would not be easy to monitor progress. IA&B also provides important feedback during project implementation.
Improving policy design and implementation: Conducting IA&B implies a choice: the choice to commit resources to reviewing a policy area and to examine the extent of the outcomes. Working towards a better understanding of what makes a policy a success implies a willingness to redesign and improve on previous policy. IA&B allows the detection of inconsistencies, gaps, and overlaps in innovation support activities. The inefficiencies can be removed as the policy reviews move forward, thereby improving policy actions. Therefore IA&B brings an improvement in policy implementation, and potentially improvements in policy design.
Improvement of the policy making process: Reviewing the impact of innovation policy in a region allows for policy learning and improves the capacity of the policymakers to understand the policy mechanism and get new and better ideas for the future. Impact assessment and benchmarking can be integrated in policy making from the start. If impact assessment is repeated or undertaken on a continuous basis it allows an incremental and structured improvement in policy. IA&B usually takes place more than once: it measures change over time. When repeated on a continuous basis a structured improvement in policy is allowed. Over time and across regions the collection of results on IA&B improves insight on the innovation system, which should help to improve processes overall.
Legitimizing policies and raising awareness: IA is normally conducted in a scientific manner and is sometimes undertaken by external experts. Benchmarking is a comparison between organizations that are usually independent of one another. Therefore this give a certain scientific legitimacy to the results emerging from IA&B exercises. So IA&B provides objective, measurable, and often independent proof of the results from policy actions. This external proof is reassuring for those planning and implementing policy, and facilitate a policy dialogue with the stakeholders based on hard-measures.
Difficulties with Conducting Impact Assessment and Benchmarking
The nature of innovation: Innovation is complex. Just agreeing on a definition of what innovation is, and deciding what encourages innovation is a challenge. However, this complexity does not prevent meaningful measures being applied to aspects of innovation. The fact that innovation can be stimulated in numerous ways and can be tracked based on very diverse outcomes in fact increases
the opportunity for IA&B.
Innovation scope of action: An extension of this problem is measuring impacts when one has to attribute outcomes to different actors when many and different actors are involved in the process. For example polices of: past and current governments, institutions including regional agencies and universities, companies, and individuals all interact on innovation support. In some countries the competence to support innovation is held by either national or regional governments. This can lead to difficulties attributing outcomes to innovation policies of one or the other.
Time as a factor in policy outcome measures: An important difficulty with impact assessment is the time-lag between implementing a policy and the impact following that action. The time-lag between innovation policy and its outcomes clearly impacts on what can be measured and proofs of results. Innovation policy is complex and changes to environmental conditions take time to filter through and to influence innovation actors such as companies, investors, researchers etc. The use of IA&B to gather credit or praise from policy actions is a powerful motivating force for policy actors. However, this can work in favour of actions that give short-term and easily measured returns. There is evidence to support the idea that innovation is incremental, benefiting from a multiplicity of complex effects that interact, and build over time.
Overcoming Difficulties, Reaping Benefits
The report continues to discuss the mechanics of impact assessment and benchmarking, as well as difficulties with measurement and bias. It also provides a roadmap to help organize the IA&B process and a collection of approaches and tools. The relevance of each of these issues, approaches and tools is very context dependent and strategies need to be adapted to regional particularities. The report concludes with a summary of the eight assessment and benchmarking projects conducted through IRE. Each of these offers insights into the processes and specific challenges each assessment encountered. Using these cases policy makers in other jurisdictions can learn and develop effective strategies to overcome the difficulties of conducting IA&B exercises of regional innovation policies and maximize the effectiveness of political interventions.
Events
St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, 16-18 October, 2008
The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, Memorial University of Newfoundland is hosting an International Conference, with over 90 submissions received with themes ranging from:How to identify opportunities and challenges to knowledge sharing; How to work with the media in connecting research to the community; How to translate knowledge to influence policy and decision-making; How communities and non-governmental organizations can “reach in” to influence research and knowledge generation; How outreach centres can evaluate and maximize their impact; How institutions in other countries are doing it, from Iceland and Ireland, to the U.S. and the Philippines; How Canada’s research funding councils are developing knowledge transfer and knowledge mobilization strategies.
Regional Comparative Advantage and Knowledge-Based Entrepreneurship
Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-10 October, 2008
The organizers invite submissions for empirical and theoretical papers on the financing of knowledge-based entrepreneurial firms, on the influence of venture capital on firms’ ability to translate technological advances into successful products, and on the contribution of knowledge-based entrepreneurship to regional dynamics.
Seville, Spain, 16-17 October, 2008
Following the success of 2004 and 2006 events, the International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) has become a major occasion for FTA experts, practitioners and decision-makers to bring their ideas and knowledge together in a highly interactive environment. As with previous FTA events, the 2008 Conference places emphasis on diversity of views by attracting participants from a wide geographical base. Academics, practitioners as well as public and private sector decision makers from Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australasia are invited to broaden the network and to increase understanding of advances in the field of FTA.
The 5th International Conference on Innovation and Management (ICIM2008)
Maastricht, Netherlands, 10-11 December, 2008
Organized by UNU-MERIT (The Netherlands) and supported by Wuhan University of Technology (China) and Yamaguchi University (Japan), This conference will bring together academics, practitioners and other professionals involved in the filed of innovation and management. The conference format includes plenary and parallel sessions with both academic and practitioner presentations and workshops. In addition, the conference will provide networking opportunities together with a taste of local culture.
Understanding and Shaping Regions: Spatial, Social and Economic Futures
Leuven, Belgium, 6-8 April, 2008
Many topics will be discussed such as regional policy and evaluation, regions as innovative hubs, economic restructuring and regional transformation, and local and regional economic development. Abstract submission deadline: Sunday, 4th January 2009.
Glasgow, Scotland, 17-19 June, 2008
Triple Helix VII offers a multi-disciplinary forum for experts from universities, industry and government. The Conference is designed to attract leading authorities from across the world who will share their knowledge and experience, drawing a link between research, policy, and practice in sustainable development. The Conference will bring together policy-makers, academics, researchers, postgraduate students, and key representatives from business and industry. The theme for Triple Helix VII – “The role of Triple Helix in the Global Agenda of Innovation, Competitiveness and Sustainability” – reflects the interaction between academia, the private and the public sector.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.