Volume Eighteen
Issue #356 (March 15, 2017)
- Introduction
- Announcements
- Editor’s Pick
- Innovation Policy
- Clusters & Regions
- Statistics & Indicators
- Policy Digest
- Events
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
Canadian Business Growth Fund Launched
Department of Finance Canada
The Government of Canada welcomes the announcement by Canada’s leading financial institutions to establish a business growth fund that will help ambitious Canadian companies get the capital they need to grow and succeed globally. This will help them create good, well-paying middle class jobs, and will grow Canada’s economy over the long term. The Canadian Business Growth Fund will support the men and women working hard to grow companies and create more middle class jobs across the country. Entrepreneurs from coast to coast to coast have been asking for access to exactly this kind of capital and mentorship. The Fund will target investing $1 billion over 10 years, starting with an initial commitment of more than $500 million, aiming to fill a capital need by offering minority equity investments in ambitious Canadian companies seeking to grow their businesses.
Techstars Launches First Canadian Accelerator in Toronto
Betakit
The Boulder-based accelerator is launching the Toronto accelerator with Real Ventures, and will run its first program in 2018. While this is the first time Techstars has launched its accelerator program in Canada, Techstars has been active in Canada through its Startup Programs since 2010. The Toronto program will operate like Techstars’ locations in Boulder, Austin, Boston, and NYC, though he said specific details on the Toronto program and how to apply would be released later in 2017. In Techstars’ accelerator programs, startups automatically receive an offer of a $100,000 convertible note, and $20,000 in exchange for six percent stock. Companies receive office space for three months and connections to the Techstars network of over 5,000 founders, alumni and global mentors.
New Canadian Global Skills Strategy
Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
The Government of Canada’s new Global Skills Strategy will facilitate faster access to top global talent for companies doing business in Canada that are committing to bring new skills to Canada and create more Canadian jobs. Whether bringing in professionals to train Canadian workers or hiring global talent with highly specialized, in-demand skills, the Global Skills Strategy will help innovative firms in Canada thrive, creating economic growth and good middle-class jobs. This initiative will help high-growth Canadian companies attract the specialized global talent they need to innovate and grow by providing a faster and more predictable streamlined service. It will also assist Canadian firms in filling in-demand occupations where there is a demonstrated gap in the Canadian labour market. Under the new stream, a Global Talent List of eligible high-demand occupations is being developed in consultation with labour market experts and key stakeholders.
Editor’s Pick
Mark Muro and Sifan Liu, TechCrunch
The hope of tech-industry optimists for what former AOL chief and Revolution LLC founder Steve Case calls “the rise of the rest” — the spread of tech into the heartland — has gotten more urgent. Many tech people are hoping the growth of tech jobs in “flyover country” will help tamp down feelings of exclusion by allowing Main Street communities to participate more fully in tech. However, there’s a problem here: A quick look at recent data from Brookings on tech-sector employment does not support a lot of optimism for any widespread knitting of the U.S. back together through the location dynamics of tech. In fact, a close look at job-creation in four key digital services industries — software publishing, data processing and hosting, computer systems design and web publishing/search — finds that while tech employment is growing all over America, it really isn’t “spreading out” in terms of cities’ share shifts. Instead, the tech-employment “rich” — namely San Francisco and San Jose — are getting richer. Agglomeration economies are everything.
Innovation Policy
College Transformed: Five Institutions Leading the Charge in Innovation
Alana Dunagan, Christensen Institute
The nature of competition in higher education is changing—presenting both challenges and opportunities. For decades—centuries, even—higher education has been on a continuous trajectory of developing more complex and comprehensive institutions to build and disseminate knowledge and educate students. But technology is enabling a new, disruptive path: simpler, more affordable, more accessible educational experiences, built in alignment to the needs of the workforce. Leaders can look to examples of institutions that are successfully innovating in the new environment, some along this new disruptive path, and others by incorporating disruptive technologies to move forward along the traditional trajectory. This report includes profiles of five universities and their innovations: Arizona State University’s Global Freshman Academy; Northeastern University’s coding and analytics bootcamp; the University of Wisconsin’s adult learning program; Simmons College’s online graduate programs; and Southern New Hampshire University’s accessible degree programs.
Clusters & Regions
Three Maps that Show How U.S. Metro Economies are Doing
Alan Berube, Brookings
The U.S. economy is now in its 93rd consecutive month of growth, the third longest expansion on record. It has added jobs for 76 straight months, at a robust pace of 200,000 jobs per month. The unemployment rate stands at 4.8 percent, near its pre-recession level. While useful, these top-line national numbers paint an incomplete portrait of the economy in a nation as large as the United States. Brookings new Metro Monitor offers a deeper look in two ways: it focuses on a wider set of indicators that chart comprehensive economic progress; and it examines these dynamics in metropolitan areas, the distinctive regional hubs of the American economy. The first map highlights where regional economies’ growth and entrepreneurship has been strongest and weakest through most of the expansion. The second map focuses not on which economies are growing bigger and more dynamic, but instead on the quality of their growth, which is measured by indicators like productivity and average incomes. That leads to the third map, which arguably speaks most directly to the current economic debate—are people feeling the economic momentum in terms of employment and pay?
The Future of Economic Development Depends on Adaptation
Amy Liu, Brookings
The United States is in the midst of an important debate about how to create an economy that benefits more people, and the work of economic developers is at the center of it. While many across the country are stepping up, in a recent speech the author noted that major political, economic, and social changes will require leaders to adapt further. She outlined the five principles that defined a new, more inclusive view of economic development. One such change economic developers must grapple with is the federal political landscape, which has shifted dramatically following the 2016 elections. Both outcomes would place a greater burden on local actors to create good jobs and close income disparities in their region. In other words, the work of economic developers and their partners at the metropolitan and regional scale has never been more important.
Statistics & Indicators
Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report
BioEnterprise
Midwest healthcare companies attracted $1.7 billion in new equity investments in 2016, according to this report. A record 375 Midwest healthcare companies raised the 2nd largest amount in recorded history, edging within $60 million to the record-breaking 2014 year. Minnesota ($424 million), Illinois ($327 million) and Ohio ($291 million) led Midwestern states in attracting investment dollars. Minneapolis ($422 million), Chicago ($324 million), St. Louis ($242), and Cleveland ($198 million) were the leaders in the Midwest regions. The Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report includes medical device, biotechnology and pharmaceutical, and healthcare IT software and service investments, specifically seed, venture, individual and group angel funding, private equity, bridge funding, convertible debt, foundation funding with equity component, strategic and corporate investment, secondary offerings and PIPEs. Data are compiled from Pitchbook, SEC Filings, company press releases, news items and regional Midwest organizations.
Startup Genome
Canada has a new startup champion according to a report released Tuesday. Vancouver ranks 15th on the planet, ahead of the 16th place scene in Toronto and tech-heavy Waterloo, Ontario while Montreal dropped out of the top 20 index according to this report ranking the world’s strongest startup ecosystems. Silicon Valley predictably ranks in the top spot, followed closely by New York, Boston, Tel Aviv, and China’s big cities. But there were changes in the rankings for Canada’s major cities. The shift is a major surprise considering Waterloo (in conjunction with sister towns Kitchener and Cambridge) has the highest density of startups of any North American city outside Silicon Valley. Vancouver is estimated to have only 800-1,100 startups compared to Toronto-Waterloo’s about 2,100-2,700. Toronto ranked ahead of Canada’s two other major metros in the 2015 report in which it was considered the 17th best on the planet, ahead of 18th place Vancouver and 20th place Vancouver. Canada actually shows improvement despite the minor shifts, as the report two years ago did not include data on startup cities in the Far East, Hong Kong, or Singapore. This one does, yet Canada’s power remains steady.
Policy Digest
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
After a long Great Recession hangover, entrepreneurship is finally rebounding in the United States. Entrepreneurs are driving a resurgence of business activity in America—in new business creation, local small business activity, and the growth of small firms into larger businesses. But underneath this reassuring surface, turbulent shifts are shaping the future of entrepreneurship to be dramatically different than what it is today, or was in the past. This report posits that three mega trends will be defining forces shaping the future of entrepreneurship for decades to come. These three trends reflect the changing demographics, map, and nature of American entrepreneurship.
The New Demographics of Entrepreneurship
- The U.S. population is increasingly older and more racially diverse. By 2050, three out of every ten U.S. adults will be past the traditional retirement age, and more than half of the U.S. population will be from racial minority backgrounds.
- Yet, changes in the composition of America’s population are not yet fully reflected in the composition of the nation’s entrepreneurial population. This means that the portrait of U.S. entrepreneurs—80.2 percent white and 64.5 percent male—looks a lot different than that of the overall U.S. population.
- An aging population dramatically affects the pipeline of entrepreneurs, and the slow labor for growth associated with it is connected to the long-term decline in entrepreneurial dynamism in the United States.
- Certain demographic groups are consistently underrepresented in the entrepreneurial economy, leaving major gaps in the market. Minorities own half as many businesses as non-minorities do, and their businesses start smaller and stay smaller.
- These gaps cost the country. In fact, if minorities started and owned businesses at the same rate as non-minorities do, the United States would have more than 1 million additional employer businesses and approximately an extra 9.5 million jobs in the economy.
- Regardless of race, women are half as likely as men to own employer businesses. Though not a new trend, the persistent gender business gap costs the United States 1.7 million additional businesses.
- Adults without formal education—regardless of race—are much less likely to be entrepreneurs than their educated counterparts. Adults without high school degrees make up 11.6 percent of the population, but only 3.4 percent of entrepreneurs.
The New Map of Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial activity seems to be increasingly happening beyond the stereotypical entrepreneurial hubs of places like Silicon Valley and Boston—although the distribution is not even, and many areas are falling behind.
- Venture capital is more distributed than it was in the 1980s. Metros like Charlotte and Memphis are leading places for new forms of entrepreneurial financing like crowdfunding, and metros in the middle of the country, like St. Louis, are experiencing an entrepreneurial boom.
- Entrepreneurship is an increasingly urban phenomenon and, while it seems like mid-sized metros like Kansas City are winning, places like rural Kansas are losing.
- In 1977, more than two out of every ten U.S. startups were in rural areas. Today, this number is just over one in every ten. A major reason for this is that the U.S. population is less rural and more urban, but the circumstances are even more pronounced when you look at new firms: the percent of startups in rural communities has dropped from 20 percent in the 1980s to 12.2 percent today.
The New Nature of Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial companies create jobs, wealth, and innovation. This is true today, and it has been true for decades. Yet, technology has made the activity of starting and scaling up inherently different than it used to be.
- In the past, as companies scaled their revenue, jobs could scale at a similar pace. Today, thanks to the leveraging potential of technology, revenue and value creation can take off dramatically while job growth lags behind. Example: When Kodak first reached $1 billion in sales, the company employed 75,000. When Facebook reached the same scale in today’s dollars, it only employed 6,300 people.
- At the same time, new industries open and entrepreneurial opportunities become more widely accessible through platforms that lower barriers to entry—think of Airbnb or Etsy, for example.
Zero Barriers to Startup Initiative
Despite encouraging data and promising trends, not all Americans are experiencing the benefits of entrepreneurial growth or have the same access to entrepreneurial opportunities. The Foundation’s founder, Ewing Marion Kauffman, believed that individuals have a fundamental right to take an idea they have and turn that into a business. People shouldn’t need a formal degree. They shouldn’t need consultants to navigate the process. It shouldn’t matter what your race is, your gender, or where you live. Anyone should be able to do it fast, without confusion, and for free, without any artificial barriers imposed by others. Entrepreneurship is something that should be available to all—not just to those with money, connections, or expertise.
There is a big gap between today’s world and a future in which zero barriers to start a business are a reality. At the same time, these mega trends—affecting the demographics, geography, and nature of entrepreneurship—are causing fundamental shifts, and entrepreneurs need supportive communities to turn ideas into businesses and create jobs. As the engine of job creation in America, startups are too important to the economy to allow obstacles to persist.
To empower more entrepreneurs to pursue their ambitions, the Kauffman Foundation is launching a collaborative, nationwide effort called Zero Barriers to Startup. The Foundation will collaborate with entrepreneurs, policymakers, and others in the entrepreneurial community to first identify barriers and then work with these same groups to develop solutions.
Events
Innovation Policy in International Perspective
Toronto, Canada, 21 March, 2017
Professor Mark Zachary Taylor, drawing on his acclaimed book The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries Are Better Than Others at Science and Technology? will open the panel with a keynote address setting the international stage for innovation policy. He will be followed by Dr. Daniel Munro, responding to his arguments and positioning Canada within the global league of innovative nations. Concluding the panel will be Sagi Dagan, reflecting on these arguments from a practitioner’s perspective by sharing the experience of what is arguably the most successful innovation agency in the world since the 1970s. Professor Dan Breznitz will moderate the panel, which will conclude with lessons for Canada as the federal government launches its new Innovation Agenda.
Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions
Bolzano, Italy, 22-24 March, 2017
This second edition of “Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions” – SSPCR 2017 – faces the challenge of inspiring the transition of urban areas towards smarter and more sustainable places to live. Towards this aim, planners and stakeholders are called to take over – in a multidimensional perspective – both the urgent issues related to climate change and energy efficiency, and the new potential changes introduced by cities’ digitalization and the integration of ICT in infrastructures, mobility, and social interactions. In this scenario, planning requires a global overview and understanding of the past and current state of cities as well as a holistic approach in redirecting their future development and regeneration. Therefore, SSPCR 2017 warmly welcomes contributions coming from different research fields: urban and regional planning, environmental and social sciences, transportation, engineering and energy-related studies, as well as from the professional community. Alongside with oral, poster and virtual dissertations, cooperation and demonstration projects are also warmly invited to join SSPCR 2017, in the spirit of disseminating innovative approaches, implemented activities and achieved results.
Data Innovation Day 2017: Building Smart Cities for Tomorrow’s Data Economy
Brussels, Belgium, 28 March, 2017
Europe consistently ranks high as having some of the best cities in the world. However, its successes today are the results of past investments and strategic planning. The advent of smart cities has created a new inflection point in the development trajectory of cities. Join ITIF’s Center for Data Innovation to discuss the future of smart cities and steps policymakers should take to lead the way in their development.
CFP: ZEW/MaCCI Conference on the Economics of Innovation and Patenting
Mannheim, Germany, 15-16 May, 2017
The Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI) are pleased to announce their 7th conference on the economics of innovation and patenting. The goal of the conference is to present new research and to stimulate discussion between international researchers conducting related empirical and theoretical analysis. As a novelty, we will organize a special plenary paper speed dating session. Theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions from all areas of the economics of innovation and patenting are welcome.
CFP: 11th Workshop on the Organization, Economics, and Policy of Scientific Research
Torino, Italy, 18-19 May, 2017
The aim of the workshop is to bring together a small group of scholars interested in the analysis of the production and diffusion of scientific research from an economics, historical, organizational, and policy perspective. The workshop aims at including papers form various streams of research developed in recent years in and around the area of public and private scientific research.
Regional Studies Association Conference 2017: The Great Regional Awakening – New Directions
Dublin, Ireland, 4-7 June, 2017
A ‘Great Regional Awakening’ is underway. There is a growing realization that regional inequalities have both contributed to, and amplified, the ‘Great Recession’ that shook advanced and emerging economies alike. It is also becoming apparent that the crisis has been having very different impacts spatially. This will only help to further exacerbate uneven economic development, fueling more trouble down the line. In Europe, major economic fault-lines are re-emerging between and within national economies; between the core and the periphery; between urban and rural areas; between city-regions and within cities themselves. This pattern is replicated elsewhere – in advanced, emerging and developing world. There is an urgent need to re-examine all aspects of local and regional development and how it relates to national and international economic dynamics; and to social, political, cultural, technological and environmental processes. Having spent over 50 years advocating more balanced regional development, the Regional Studies Association is now spearheading a major effort to address these pressing issues in such challenging times.
New York, USA, 12-14 June, 2017
DRUID and NYU Stern School of Business are proud to invite senior and junior scholars to participate and contribute with a paper to DRUID17, hosted by NYU Stern in New York. Presenting distinguished plenary speakers, a range of parallel paper sessions, and a highly attractive social program, the conference aims at mapping theoretical, empirical and methodological advances, contributing novel insights, and help identifying scholarly positions, divisions, and common grounds in current scientific controversies within the field. DRUID17 invites paper submissions on innovation, entrepreneurship and other aspects of structural, institutional and geographic change.
London, UK, 29 August – 1 September, 2017
Economic geographers have long been interested in the links between local-global economic dynamics (e.g. Bathelt et al., 2004). Within this sphere of interest, focus has been given to so-called ‘local anchors’ as the nodes through which regional, national, or global relations and dynamics function and occur. Specific physical places may, for instance, serve as local anchors for social movements (e.g. the maker movement) (Toombs and Bardzell, 2014), trans-local scenes (e.g. in music) (Hauge and Hracs, 2010; Lange, 2007), global knowledge communities (e.g. communities of enthusiasts) (Brinks and Ibert, 2015; Müller and Ibert, 2015) or global processes of value creation (Berthoin Antal et al., 2015; Pike, 2009; Power and Hauge, 2006). We observe a wide spectrum of local anchors that help to disseminate ideas and knowledge, enable and encourage participation in specific practices (e.g. tinkering, designing, building), serve as (temporary) productions sites (e.g. local workshops for music) and facilitate curation and consumption (e.g. pop-up stores, record stores). Despite this conceptual variety, these anchors are physical spaces through which economic and social activities occur and that actors utilize for creating objects, artifacts and products and to generate and disseminate ideas, brands and values. These local spaces have also drawn the attention of policymakers striving to capitalize upon local-global dynamics. However, very often these spaces are regarded overly optimistically and lack a critical reflection as to how they actually contribute to social, cultural and / or economic value creation. This session aims to nuance our understanding of the interplay between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ as well as ‘physical’ and ‘virtual’ spaces. We aim to explore the role of local anchors within local neighborhoods and scenes as well as trans-local scenes, communities and virtual networks. More specifically, the session aims to consider the diversity and specificity of local anchors which may comprise craft collectives, performance venues, records stores (Hracs and Jansson, 2016), coworking / maker/ hacker spaces / open creative labs (Merkel, 2015; Schmidt et al., 2014; Schmidt et al., 2016), universities (Cooke, 2011) and knowledge production sites (Power and Malmberg, 2008).
Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy
Atlanta, USA, 9-11 October, 2017
The Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy provides a showcase for the highest quality scholarship addressing the multidimensional challenges and interrelated characteristics of science and innovation policy and processes. Spanning three days, the conference will include plenary sessions reflecting different facets of the science and innovation system, presentations of well-developed research, and an early career poster session to allow young researchers to present their work. Submissions should address issues relevant to the science and innovation system, and may fall into one or more topic areas related to the STI/research system.
12th Regional Innovation Policies Conference RIP2017
Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 26-27 October, 2017
The 12th Regional Innovation Policies Conference (RIP2017) will be held at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia (Spain). The conference will be organized by the ICEDE Research Group and it will take place on the 26th and 27th of October 2017 at the Faculty of Economics and Business, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of economics studies in Galicia. The conference is a venue for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in regional innovation, regional development and innovation policy. Participants are encouraged to submit papers on topics in relation to the conference themes listed in the full call for papers.
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This newsletter is prepared by Jen Nelles.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe.