What’s Happening With Canada’s Superclusters?
August 31st, 2022
By Brian Owens
After four years, the federal government’s billion-dollar superclusters are finding their feet, but they need more time.
Canada has a long history of underperforming on measures of private-sector spending on research and development, and failing to capitalize on the commercial potential of scientific discoveries made in the country. And it has almost as long a history of coming up with government schemes intended to overcome those problems and turn Canada into an innovation nation.
One of the most recent of these schemes, announced in 2017, is the Innovation Superclusters Initiative. The idea was to replicate the success of well-known clusters around the world, such as California’s Silicon Valley, by encouraging closer collaboration between businesses, academic institutions and non-profits in specific areas, focused on industries in which Canada already had some competitive advantage. The initiative was to be given almost $1 billion, with the expectation that each cluster would at least match their funding with contributions from companies in their industry.
September 26, 2022
Five Months in, Details On Canada’s New Innovation And Investment Agency Remain Sparse
August 31st 2022
What’s the feds’ plan? Only Dan Breznitz seems to know.
Delivering the budget speech in April, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland asserted the Liberal government’s three pillars in its plan to reinvigorate the economy.
“These three pillars, Mr. Speaker—investing in people, investing in the green transition, and investing in innovation and productivity—will create jobs and prosperity today, and build a stronger economic future for our children,” Freeland declared.
Central to that third pillar is the creation of a new innovation and investment agency, which was also announced during Budget 2022. But August has come and gone and details about the agency are few and far between.
Since the budget announcement, the federal government has little to offer about what the agency will look like, its role, how it will work and, most importantly, whether it will work at all. Queries to the federal government only elicit vague statements about why the new agency is needed, but yield nothing concrete about its potential workings.
In fact, only one individual seems to be empowered to address the future of the agency, and that’s a government outsider currently on contract with the federal government: Dan Breznitz.
September 26, 2022
Five Things Doug Ford’s Election Win Might Mean For Housing
June 3rd, 2022
By Donovan Vincent
Exclusionary zoning and transit-oriented communities are part of what will be front and centre during Doug Ford’s new mandate, experts say.
September 26, 2022
Munk Professor Dan Breznitz Wins Donner Prize For ‘Innovation In Real Places’
May 31st, 2022
By Canadian Press
TORONTO — Munk School professor Dan Breznitz has won this year’s Donner Prize for the best public policy book.
He collected the $50,000 award for “Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World” at a gala dinner in Toronto on Tuesday.
The jury says the book, published by Oxford University Press, eschews the “fetish” of focusing on high-tech solutions and instead urges communities to think innovatively so they can “realize their own advantages.”
Breznitz is the chair of innovation studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and co-director of its innovation policy lab.
The Donner Prize was established in 1998 and the winner is selected by a six-member jury.
September 26, 2022
South Korea could be getting a floating city — a concept that could work in Toronto, company says
May 23rd, 2022
By Donovan Vincent
A United Nations group and a large New York-based biotech company are among the players joining forces to build what could become the world’s first floating city adaptable to rising sea levels.
Called Oceanix Busan, it’s named after the large coastal city in South Korea that the yet-to-be built project is slated for.
The project will help cities facing land scarcity and also address climate change-driven weather events such as extreme flooding, those behind the initiative say.
And the CEO of the company set to develop it argues one could be built in Toronto given its proximity to a large body of water.
The project looks like floating platforms, hexagonal in shape, about 15 acres in size and anchored in shallow water to the bottom of the ocean, a lake or river.
September 26, 2022
Breaking Canada’s Innovation Inertia
May 25th, 2022
By Daniel Munro, Darius Ornston, David A. Wolfe
If the measures in the 2022 federal budget create a firmer and more consistent foundation for experimentation, it represents a valuable step in the right direction.
September 26, 2022
Into the Scale-up-verse: Exploring the landscape of Canada’s high-performing firms
December 10, 2021
Scale-ups, or high-growth firms, are responsible for the vast majority of productivity growth in Canada, making them an immensely powerful tool in the pursuit of Canada’s long-term economic stability and prosperity. However, only 1 in 100 young firms reach scale-up status within their first ten years. How can we harness, support, and amplify the power of scale-ups and their contributions to the Canadian economy?
A new study, Into the Scale-up-verse: Exploring the landscape of Canada’s high-performing firms , takes the first step toward better equipping policymakers to support the success of Canadian firms by unpacking the complexity and nuance in Canada’s diverse scale-up universe. Jointly produced by the Brookfield Institute on Innovation + Entrepreneurship and the Innovation Policy Lab, this report analyzes the most recent and detailed dataset concerning Canadian business dynamics to provide a novel and comprehensive guide for those in a position–such as academic researchers, industry players, and government policymakers–to design supportive economic policy and facilitate productive conversations about Canada’s scale-ups.
Among the findings in the report, we identify key themes that best summarize what we now know about scale-ups in Canada:
- Productivity: Scale-ups drive the majority of productivity growth in Canada. With high-growth firms in many industries experiencing productivity growth in excess of 25% in a single year, there is little doubt that scale-ups are an integral part of Canada’s long-term economic sustainability.
- Employment: Scale-ups are leading contributors to increased employment and job quality in Canada. Scale-ups employ ten times the number of people compared to non-scale-ups, and average pay at scale-ups exceeds non-scale-ups in almost all industries and across economic regions of Canada.
- Innovation: Declining investment in R&D poses a risk to scale-ups reaching their full potential. Although scale-ups are more likely than non-scale-ups to spend on research and development—a key driver of firm growth and sustainability—overall R+D investment is stagnating.
- Exporting: Scale-ups are more likely to export than non-scale-ups. Successfully exporting is a sure sign that a firm has raised their growth ceiling, expanded their market reach, and bolstered their organizational sophistication.
- Economic Policy: Scale-ups are too diverse and complex for a “one size fits all” policy approach. Using new and comprehensive insights into the three ways scale-ups are defined and measured, policymaking can now apply a more targeted approach to supporting the success of different types of high-growth firms, their behaviours, and contributions.
December 10, 2021
Dan Breznitz’s “Innovation in Real Places” Named to the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Longlist
FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2021
The £30,000 prize will go to the book that is judged to have provided the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, with £10,000 awarded to each runner-up. The 2021 prize will be awarded in London on December 1. Publishers can enter books here. For details of this year’s judges, and terms and conditions, please visit businessbook.live.ft.com. Please direct any queries to bookaward@ft.com.
August 16, 2021
Shiri Breznitz on “The Role of Intermediaries and Policy in Entrepreneurship Ecosystems”
Shiri Breznitz on “The Role of Intermediaries and Policy in Entrepreneurship Ecosystems”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLXZff3MbW0&list=PL-heuJIFoIF6LGdyocEO0a-z0u8Ee19Oy&index=7
Talk featured in the session on Policies, Actors, and Outcomes in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, part of the workshop series: Workshop Series: The Evolution, Persistence and Success of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Cardiff University, UK.
March 27, 2021
EVENT: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN CANADA
March 23, 2021–Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship in Canada
Entrepreneurship is an important part of growing one’s economy. Studies show that entrepreneurship can be learned, it is a skill. In Canada, one of the things that has been holding our entrepreneurs back is intellectual property and data protection. This webinar will focus on the importance of IP protection for entrepreneurship. In particular, we will discuss the intellectual property environment in Canada and existing support for firms.
Panelists will discuss issues relating to their firm’s ability to secure IP especially as it relates to IP education and the role of government in supporting IP protection.
Speakers:
- Seray Çiçek–Co-Founder & CEO, LSK Technologies Inc.
- Ryan Hubbard–Senior Counsel, IP Litigation, Shopify
- Graeme Moffat–Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, System 2 Neurotechnology and Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
Moderator;
- Shiri Breznitz–Director, Master of Global Affairs Program and Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
Main Sponsor: Innovation Policy Lab
March 9, 2021