Working papers

2025

Regional Entrepreneurial Mentoring Networks as Transformative Innovation Policy: Insights from a Semi-Peripheral High Tech Hub

By Darius Ornston and Isabelle Watkinson

2024

Mission Green: Unleashing a Defense Decarbonization Innovation Ecosystem

By Carlos Cantafio Apitz

Leading From Below: Turning Greater Sudbury into an Export Hub of Mining Innovation and Sustained Prosperity

By Dan Breznitz, Scott McKnight, and Marte Vroom

2023

Canada's Pathway to Hydrogen Steelmaking

By Peter Warrian and Homeira Afshar

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

By Alessandra Cicci, Darius Ornston, and Lisa Huh

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

By David A. Wolfe and Nathan Lemphers

Super Connectors, Specialists and Scrappers: How Cities Use Civic Capital to Compete in High-Technology Markets

Tijs Creutzberg, Darius Ornston, and David A. Wolfe

2022

Mitacs skills for innovation: Sharpening Canada’s skill advantage

By Creig Lamb and Daniel Munro

The platform economy and competition policy: Options for Canada

By David Wolfe and Mdu Mhlanga

Integrated mobility and the governance of urban transit

By Elena Goracinova, Lisa Huh and David Wolfe

2021

Canada as a learning economy: Education & training in an age of intelligent machines: Policy challenges & policy responses

By Tracey M. White and David Wolfe

Innovation and de-carbonization in the Canadian steel industry

By Peter Warrian and Afshar Homeira

Picking winners: How growth and national context shape scale-up entrepreneurs’ assessments of innovation policy mixes

By Steven Denney, Travis Southin and David Wolfe

The benefits of an apathetic anchor: Why Waterloo adjusted faster than Ottawa

By Darius Ornston and Lorena Camargo

2020

Promoting inclusive innovation for people with disabilities: Who does what and why?

By Dan Breznitz and Amos Zehavi

Still sticky after all these years: The resurgence of Marshallian Districts in a world of global production networks

By Michael Murphree, Dan Breznitz and Giulio Buciuni

2019

Looking forward via the past: An investigation of the evolution of the knowledge base of robotics firms

By Eric Estolatan and Aldo Geuna

Beyond hope and despair: Developing healthy communities in the era of intelligent tools

By John Zysman, Martin Kenney and Laura Tyson

2018

Mapping the evolution of the robotics industry: A cross-country comparison

By Eric Estolatan, Aldo Geuna, Marco Guerzoni and Massimiliano Nuccio

Collaborating for investment attraction in the Toronto region

By Richard J. DiFrancesco and David Wolfe

2017

Digitalizing extractive industries: State-of-the-art to the art-of-the-possible — Opportunities and challenges for Canada

By Ray Gosine and Peter Warrian

Impact and effectiveness of public support for business innovation

By David Wolfe

The impact of the 2008-2013 financial crisis on university research output

By Shiri M. Breznitz and Paige A. Clayton

The social innovation strategies of Canadian foundations

By Kristen Pue and Dan Breznitz

2016

Small states and small cities: Using interpersonal networks to accelerate economic restructuring in Waterloo

By Darius Ornston

A policy agenda for the digital economy

By David Wolfe

Toward a theory of social innovation

By Kristen Pue, Christian Vandergeest and Dan Breznitz