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
WATERLOO REGION A LEADER IN R&D AND PATENTS GRANTED
Recently released data on private and public R&D and on patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark office shows that the Waterloo Region, known for more than 20 years as Canada’s Technology Triangle, is a world-class centre for innovation. Analysis for Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc, prepared by Community Benchmarks of Waterloo, indicates that expenditures on private and public sector research and development in the Waterloo Region in 2005 reached 2.7% of GDP. The Canadian average is 2%, while Ontario’s average is 2.4%. The Waterloo Region level compares to 2.6% for the United States in the same year. In the 2005 rankings compiled by the , the only OECD countries that spent more on R&D than Waterloo Region as a percent of GDP were Iceland (2.8%),
Switzerland (2004) (2.9%), Korea (3.0%), Japan (3.3%), Finland (3.5%) and Sweden (3.9%).
The University of Toronto has earned the highest possible marks from Research Infosource Inc., a leading Canadian consulting firm, in its annual rankings. U of T placed first overall in the medical and doctoral category among Research Infosource’s 2008 Research Universities of the Year, receiving a perfect score of 100 possible points. According to Research Infosource, this honour was determined by several criteria, including the amount of research a university published in a given year as well as the level of funding generated for that research.
Editor's Pick
ONRIS Workshop Presentations, November 6-7, 2008
Presentations from the joint MRI/ONRIS annual meeting include papers by the principal investigators in the network touching on all three themes of the project.
Innovation Policy
2008 Annual Toronto Innovation Gauge
Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA)
This report analyzes the current strengths and weaknesses of the region relative to other regions with strong research bases, like Silicon Valley in California and Massachusetts, and to more comparable research centres, like the Research Triangle in North Carolina, Montreal, Illinois and Michigan. These findings will help key decision makers in government, industry and post-secondary education better understand how the Toronto Region can grow and prosper by focusing attention on building a stronger research base. The Toronto Region has a strong foundation – a large and highly-educated population, diverse industries and high employment rates, for instance – upon which it can build to improve its performance. But to compete successfully to become a truly innovative research base will require significantly more sustained efforts – and a collaborative approach between government, industry and the postsecondary education sector.
Guy Stanley, Conference Board of Canada
The final report of the Leaders’ Panel on Innovation-Based Commerce argues that, to prosper, Canada should harness its technological and commercial resources along three key “pathways”: clean energy, water management, and regenerative medicine.
The challenge now is to aggregate Canada’s advanced technology capabilities, currently in isolated clusters, into globally competitive companies that can offer integrated, complete solutions.
From Bureaucratic Tech Transfer to Entrepreneurial Tech Commercialization
Norris F Krueger Jr, Brian Cummings, and Steven P Nichols
The University of Utah has been something of a rising star in the world of university technology transfer and commercialization. Over the past several years, the University has done an impressive job of spinning off new technologies and companies. This working paper seeks to better understand what’s working in Utah. The authors attribute the program’s success to its broad focus on engaging Utah’s entrepreneurial community. Instead of simply seeking to “push out” university technology, the program’s leaders engage local entrepreneurs, support providers, and other key stakeholders. Using a comprehensive approach that provides supports along all points of the company formation cycle, from invention to company maturation, The University of Utah has created a truly innovative program. The results have been quite impressive. Over the past three years, this effort has spawned sixty spin-out companies with 94% of the firms still in operation.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Getting on with the Job: From Deliberate Relationships to a National Community Innovation System
Neil Bradford, CPRN
This report speaks to the importance of enabling policy creativity at the local level. It proposes to mobilize a national community innovation system to support and engage the voluntary/non-profit sector and policy advocates in partnering with governments to introduce innovative programs and polices to meet local needs and strengthen communities. The system would address five key policy challenges: social inclusion, environmental sustainability, cultural diversity, public health and economic development.
Michael Rothgang, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
The EU Barcelona target assumes a close causal relationship between corporate R&D, the competitiveness of business firms and the economic performance of industrial countries. Testing this hypothesis, this paper contrasts innovation and production activities in four research-intensive manufacturing sectors (chemicals and pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, machinery, and electrical engineering). Starting point are observed long-term changes in worldwide value added of the manufacturing sector. The empirical analysis is based on a unique survey of R&D-intensive business firms in Germany and 50 personal interviews in large industrial companies.
Innovation by Adoption: Measuring and Mapping Absorptive Capacity in UK Nations and Regions
Sami Mahroum, Rob Huggins, Naomi Clayton, Kathy Pain and Peter Taylor, NESTA
The globalized economy has not only made it easier to trade and to travel. With new technologies and the growth of migration, new knowledge and ideas can be spread more quickly than ever before. Technology has also made novelty and innovation increasingly important to economic growth and development. When government seeks to encourage regional innovation, it typically seeks to stimulate brand new ideas and their development within regional boundaries. Yet the truth is that many places and firms are better at adapting the ideas of others than generating new ideas of their own. The ability to draw in new ideas from elsewhere and build on them at home is a more powerful stimulus than ever in today’s economy. This report shows that the capacity of cities and regions to meet this challenge will have a major impact on their ability to stimulate economic growth.
Statistics & Indicators
Immigration in the Long Run: The Education and Earnings Mobility of Second-Generation Canadians
Miles Corak, IRPP
The real test of the inclusiveness of a society toward its newcomers is not only the socio-economic well being of immigrants in the years following their arrival, but also – and possibly more important – the socio-economic progress of their children in the decades afterwards. This study looks at the socio-economic progress of second-generation Canadians by examining their educational and earnings outcomes compared with those of their parents. The evidence suggests that there is a good deal to celebrate in the Canadian model – mobility across generations is good; findings sugges that children raised under economic disadvantage do not experience educational disadvantage in adulthood; parental and adult earnings are not closely tied – but that there are challenges that remain to be addressed by public policy.
Foreign Policy
Which cities are doing the best job in terms of capitalizing on today’s global economy? This a joint project of A.T. Kearney, Foreign Policy magazine, and the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, provides a useful snapshot. The 2008 Index puts New York in the top spot, followed closely by London, Paris, and Tokyo. The Big Apple takes the top spot thanks to its unique combination of strong financial markets, major multinational corporations, and a large and diverse creative class. All of the top cities perform well on these categories so it’s often enlightening to check out other subcategories in the Index. For example, “The Biggest Boomtowns” list tracks cities that are undergoing rapid urbanization along with rapid opening to global markets. Beijing, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Dhaka top this list.
Re$earch Infosource
This special supplement to the National Post published in November shines the spotlight on Canada’s innovation leaders. The supplement includes the Top 50 Research Universities List, the Top 100 Corporate R&D Spenders List, and various related articles and editorials.
Policy Digest
Connecting the Dots Between University Research and Industrial Innovation
Jorge Niosi, IRPP
This study examines the channels by which university-developed technologies are transferred to industry. Canada invests large sums in academic research, but the fruits of these investments are not reflected in more industrial innovation and improved productivity. The paper lays out a supply-demand model of innovation according to which basic discoveries and advances in frontier science ultimately bear fruit in the form of commercially viable technologies.
The analysis shows that, while Canadian research supply is impressive, the demand and university-industry linkages should be stimulated. Niosi identifies the following policy options for Canada:
- The Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), under the auspices of the National Research Council, is the main vehicle for supporting SME business innovation. IRAP provides four main services: advice, financial support for R&D activities, networking and partnerships. Its total annual budget is about $150 million, of which just under 50 percent is earmarked for R&D activities. IRAP funding was more often linked to rapid growth than is private venture capital. Its funding should be increased.
- The SME Partnerships Initiative, proposed by the Expert Panel on Commercialization, would be a commercialization superfund to address SMEs’ commercialization challenges, to expand federal programs that support seed and start-up firms in proving their business ideas, and to increase research funds to SMEs to augment and improve technology transfer to smaller firms. Firms are better equipped to judge the commercial potential of technologies developed in the universities, and they should play a central role in identifying those that are worthy of support. The current SME partnerships proposal should be altered to include a greater role for firms.
- On the supply side, even if Canadian performance is widely considered satisfactory, there is room for improvement. It has repeatedly been suggested that the development of TTOs/UILOs in universities would help the commercialization of academic research, and that governments should subsidize their growth. Although they have existed across Canada since the late 1980s,compared with those in the US, they are understaffed and underfunded. Additional funding would help them
to better tackle the complex technical, legal, administrative and economic dimensions of technology transfer.
The paper concludes that, for a more balanced national system of innovation, policy-makers in Canada should focus on demand-pull policies that encourage businesses to participate more directly in research funding decisions that impinge on university research directions, without going so far as to dictate their specifics.
Events
Toronto Forum on Global Cities: Global Cities in Challenging Times
Toronto, 8-9 December, 2008
The Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA) is a sponsor of the Toronto Forum for Global Cities summit that focuses on making cities competitive and features business leaders from leading urban centres. Two critically important issues – “Transportation: Better Tools for Global Cities’ Competitiveness” and “Global Cities’ Energy Needs Innovation and the Knowledge Economy” – will be addressed.
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.
Toronto, 3-4 March, 2009
Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) is a two-day event showcasing Canada’s hottest new and innovative technology companies. A nexus of multiple meeting and networking opportunities, CIX is designed to enable the who’s who of North American investors to discover Canada’s next great companies. With facilitated and informal networking events, this innovation marketplace features Flash-forward presentations on the future of media, software, mobile and technology.
Understanding and Shaping Regions: Spatial, Social and Economic Futures
Leuven, Belgium, 6-8 April, 2009
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.
Community Engagement and Service: The Third Mission of Universities 
Vancouver, BC, 18-20 May, 2009
The conference will showcase research and practice of what in North America is called ‘service to the community’. Although newly discovered by some universities, service to the community has long traditions in others, and in many cases is recognized as an explicit mandate in the university charter. Service is understood to be the Third Mission alongside teaching and research. Service and community engagement take many different forms. Examples are community based research and learning, assistance in regional development, continuing and community engagement, technology transfer and commercialization, and other forms of knowledge sharing and linkages.
Glasgow, Scotland, 17-19 June, 2009
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.