Volume Twenty-one
Issue # 422 (May 1, 2020)
- Introduction
- News From the IPL
- Editor’s Pick
- Cities, Clusters & Regions
- Innovation Policy
- Statistics & Indicators
- Policy Digest
- Events
Introduction
This newsletter is published by The Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
News From the IPL
RESEARCH
From Gin to Gel, Why Canada’s Manufacturing Capacity Matters
Betsy Donald & Shauna Brail, Policy Options
This article co-authored by IPL Affiliated Faculty Shauna Brail asks “how is it that Canadian firms have pivoted, seemingly with ease, to manufacture new products to meet new demands precipitated by COVID-19?” The article draws answers from Canada’s industrial innovation history to help explain this response. This manufacturing pivot is “largely the result of Canada’s history of industrial activity in advanced manufacturing, its ability to continually withstand change and its skilled and talented workforce supplemented by a strong social safety net.”
INTERVIEW
Whitney Haring-Smith is an Associate in the Innovation Policy Lab as well as a co-founding managing partner at Anzu Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm focused on breakthrough industrial technologies in the United States and Canada.
In a sentence or two, describe your area of research. Why is it important and interesting to you? Why did you decide to pursue it?
I am researching how investment in innovation develops and differs between the US and Canada. Whether in life sciences building resiliency against pandemics or in physical sciences driving resource efficiency, I believe that technological breakthroughs have been a critical driver for improving humanity.
Are there any updates from your work or current projects that you can share?
Over the past several months, I had the joy of working with a group of IPL students on a capstone project around how to locate innovation investments in Ontario. The project report was much appreciated by the team at Anzu Partners, and I enjoyed the dialogue with the students about how to prioritize and measure key variables in the analysis. In addition, I have had the chance to publish a few pieces regarding my research: on new foreign investment rules between US and Canada and on different paths to developing billion-dollar companies:
What impact do you hope your research can have?
Technologies that make our life better today – from treatments from Genentech to devices from Blackberry/RIM – were originally backed by private capital, and how that capital gets allocated has huge impacts on whether we get Genentech and Blackberry on the upside or Theranos and Juicero on the more infamous downside…
What are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing your area of research? What do you think the innovation landscape will look like in 5 or 10 years?
Data on transactions in the private markets is becoming much more available through platforms like Pitchbook and CBinsights, so what was previously a very data-sparse landscape is much more complete. Over the next 5 to 10 years, it will become even more complete as platforms like Carta enable more transact-ability for private company ownership, particularly in venture-backed companies. The influx of data will enable new investment structures – some of which will be quite innovative and helpful, like revenue-based investment, while others, like an ETF or index fund of venture, could cause more volatility than anticipated.
What was the best book (or article) you’ve read recently? Why?
I am not a huge fan of ‘business books’ that feature alliteration as a replacement for analysis (see the 5Cs of this or the 4Ps of that…), but Ben Horowitz’s the Hard Thing about Hard Things is a pretty good book that speaks to the problem that hard problems do not fit into easy maxims.
What advice would you give a new graduate student studying innovation?
Insightful research is hard to produce for a field in which you have never lived or worked. Whether at a corporate, a startup, or an investment group – take some time on the ‘applied’ side to get grounded on the problems that need answers (vs the publications than need papers). Major academic institutions have stood for decades – even centuries – and you can always go back.
Editor’s Pick
Entrepreneurs and Cluster Evolution: The Transformation of Toronto’s ICT Cluster
Steven Denney, Travis Southin & David Wolfe
This paper is co-authored by IPL Postdoctoral Research Fellow Steven Denney, Ph.D. Candidate Travis Southin, and IPL Co-Director David Wolfe. Interest in ICT clusters has long been sustained by the power of emerging technologies to reinvent regional or local economies. Prior research has identified the structural conditions under which clusters form, decline, or evolve, but much less is known about the agents responsible for cluster change. This article examines the evolution of the Toronto ICT cluster from a home base for multinational firms in hardware and telecommunications into a more dynamic ecosystem for service-based domestic start-ups and emerging scale-ups. It contributes to the literature on clusters by showing how entrepreneurs have driven cluster evolution in Toronto.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Measuring Regional Skill Mismatches: Can Big Data Help?
Cath Sleeman and Jyl Djumalieva, Productivity Insights Network
This paper is a follow up to NESTA’s recent manifesto on the future of work, which called on the UK Government to create a national skills taxonomy which would identify the skills needed for different jobs. This latest research demonstrates the potential of such a taxonomy by showing employers and policy makers how workers’ skills vary across the UK. The analysis uses data from 53 million job adverts and their own skills taxonomy.
Innovation Policy
Understanding Innovation Policymakers in the Philippines
NESTA
This report presents a country analysis of the Philippines as part of the NESTA-led Global Innovation Policy Accelerator program. This report aims “to strengthen our understanding of innovation policymakers around the world…by looking at the challenges, opportunities and support for innovation policymakers in each country.” These country-profiles are informed by direct conversations with innovation policymakers working within these systems.
Competition in the Digital Age: The Competition Bureau’s Strategic Vision for 2020-2024
Competition Bureau Canada
This report outlines the Competition Bureau’s strategic vision for 2020-2024. Commissioner of Competition Mathew Boswell notes that “for Canadian consumers and businesses to thrive in the digital economy, the Bureau needs to continually seize opportunities to encourage competition and innovation in areas that matter to Canadians.” The report outlines the three supporting pillars of the organization’s strategic vision: “protecting Canadians through enforcement, promoting competition in Canada, and investing in our organization.”
The Case for a National Industrial Strategy to Counter China’s Technological Rise
Robert Atkinson, ITIF
This report notes that “further stimulus in response to the COVID-19 crisis should focus not just on short-term recovery, but also the long-term competitiveness of key technologically sophisticated, traded-sector industries.” The author asserts that the rise of China as a technological competitor requires the United States to devise “a national strategy that fortifies traded-sector tech industries that are “too critical to fail,” such as advanced machinery, aerospace, biopharma, electrical equipment, semiconductors and computing, software, transportation and more. To develop and implement a national industrial strategy, the federal government will need to “significantly strengthen its institutional capabilities to conduct thorough sectoral analysis.” Congress is called on to act in four areas: “support for R&D targeted to key technologies, tax incentives for key building blocks of advanced production, financing for domestic production scaleup, and adding a competitiveness screen for regulation.”
Statistics & Indicators
Caleb Foote, ITIF
This post summarizes findings from a recent paper by Albert Link, Cody Morris, and Martijn van Hasselt, titled “The Impact of the Third Sector of R&D on the Innovative Performance of Entrepreneurial Firms.’ Public research institutes (PRIs) are government-owned non-academic centers designed to collaborate with other research groups. Studying the research behaviors of more than 4,000 European start-ups in knowledge-intensive industries, the paper found that “firms that cite PRIs as an important source of knowledge are 5.3 percentage points more likely to introduce new or significantly improved goods or services over a three-year period.”
Policy Digest
Brookings Institute
This installment of papers for the Brookings Foreign Policy project “Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World” assesses China’s growing technological reach in the world by focusing on both thematic and technology-specific topics. Thematically, the papers explore the broad dynamics of U.S.-China technology competition, the relationship between the regulation of large U.S. technology firms and strategic competition with China, technology transfer and alliance management, and China’s role in the global competition for technology talent. The following are excerpts from this executive summary of all the articles.
Preparing the United States for the superpower marathon with China
Digital competition with China starts with competition at home
“AI weapons” in China’s military innovation
Navigating the US-China 5G competition
China’s digital payments revolution
Dealing with demand for China’s global surveillance exports
China’s approach to tech talent competition
Untangling the web: Why the US needs allies to defend against Chinese technology transfer
China’s role in the global biotechnology sector and implications for US policy
Scott Moore explores China’s trajectory in the global biotechnology sector, arguing that while the U.S. is likely to remain ahead in most biotechnology fields, China’s biotechnology sector can still be expected to produce significant innovations in coming years and is therefore poised to become a critical player in policy and governance issues related to biotechnology. Despite ethical and security concerns, Moore notes that shared interests in biosafety and biosecurity protocols could open channels of cooperation in the way that shared concerns about nuclear security and nonproliferation did in previous decades.
Managing China’s rise in outer space
Frank A. Rose outlines how China has rapidly expanded its presence in outer space in both the civil and military arenas. Rose argues that, in light of these developments, the United States will need to develop a strategy that deters China’s advancing anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, while also addressing sustainability and safety concerns like orbital debris, space traffic management, and the rise of mega-satellite constellations.
Secure power: Gigawatts, geopolitics, and China’s energy internet
Tom Stefanick argues that the United States’ and China’s mutual concern about the security of their increasingly complex electrical grids could provide an opening for mutual restraint on activities perceived as threatening each other’s grid networks. Stefanick focuses on the application of AI and, in the future, the potential for quantum applications as well.
Maintaining China’s dependence on democracies for advanced computer chips
Saif M. Khan and Carrick Flynn address China’s ambitions, achievements, and obstacles in developing an indigenous semiconductor industry, and argue that it is in the strategic interest of the United States and democratic allies and partners for China to remain reliant on them for state-of-the-art computer chips. Khan and Flynn recommend coordinated, multilateral export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment to slow, if not halt, China’s progress toward producing advanced chips, and thereby inhibit China’s development and use of dangerous or otherwise concerning technologies.
Events
Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems (P4IE)
THIS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED AS OF MARCH 13, 2020 DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT COVID-19 AND RECENT TRAVEL ADVISORIES. IT WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR A FUTURE DATE.
Ottawa, Ontario, 12-13 May 2020
The Partnership For the Organization of Innovation and New Technologies is organizing the first ever ‘‘Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems” (P4IE) international conference on 12-13 May 2020 in Ottawa. Organized around eight highly relevant tracks, the conference offers participants the opportunity to discuss the impact of various technologies, practices, processes and policies, on innovation ecosystems, and the best means by which to design collaborative environments. The goal of the conference is to explore ways to strengthen Canada’s innovation through innovation ecosystems.
THIS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED AS OF MARCH 13, 2020 DUE TO THE STATE OF EMERGENCY IN SPAIN.
Valencia, Spain, 14-15 May, 2020
The Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Valencia, in collaboration with the University of Padova and the University of Firenze, organize the 3rd International Workshop on Cluster Research. As in the past editions, the event aims to to bring together some of the world’s leading scholars working on clusters, networks, ecosystems, platforms and regions. The conference gathers scholars from economic geography, innovation studies, regional science, as well as those working on economics and management, sociology or network theory.
DRUID20 Silver Anniversary Conference
Copenhagen, Denmark, 15-17 June, 2020
THIS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT COVID-19 AND RECENT TRAVEL ADVISORIES.
DRUID celebrates 25 years as one of the world’s premier academic conferences on innovation and the dynamics of structural, institutional and geographic change. DRUID is proud to invite senior and junior scholars to participate and contribute with a paper to the DRUID20 SILVER ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE, hosted by Copenhagen Business School. Presenting distinguished plenary speakers, a range of parallel paper sessions, and an attractive social program that celebrates DRUID’s 25 years, 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.
Regional Innovation Policies Conference
Aalborg, Denmark, 27 October 2020
The 15th edition of the Regional Innovation Policies Conferences will be hosted by Aalborg University on the 26th and 27th October 2020 in Aalborg, Denmark. The conference will focus on regions in transformation – as well as transformations in regional innovation policy and new developments in methods for defining and analysing regions. Submission deadline: 30 June 2020.
Canadian Science Policy Conference
Ottawa, Canada, 23-25 November, 2020
The CSPC 2020 call for panel proposals is now open. The 12th Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC 2020), will be held in Gatineau Quebec on November 23-25, 2020 at Hilton Lac-Leamy. Presenters are invited to submit proposals in a variety of presentation formats that revolve around any of the conference themes. Due to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals and organizations across Canada and the world, and to accommodate the community, CSPC is extending the panel proposal deadline by an additional four weeks, to May 15th, 2020.
Subscriptions & Comments
Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think will find it of value. We look forward to collaborating with you on this initiative. If you would like to comment on, or contribute to, the content, subscribe or unsubscribe, please contact us at ipl.munkschool@utoronto.ca .
This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe