Volume Twenty-one
Issue # 428 (September 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
LINKS TO RECENT WEBINARS
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This is a recording of the Jul 16th, 2020 event focused on exploring the short and long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Panelists included Catherine Beaudry, Ben Spigel, Tara Vinodrai, and David Wolfe.
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This is a recording of the July 7th, 2020 event focused on the national and international security implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Janice Stein discusses the historical security lessons of previous pandemics and depressions, Jon Lindsay considers emerging military and strategic dangers exacerbated by COVID-19, and Ron Deibert discusses the cybersecurity and surveillance threats associated with the unprecedented relocation of life online.
- Cities After COVID
- This is a recording of the June 11, 2020 event focused on how will COVID-19 shape the future of our cities. Join experts Anita McGahan, Shauna Brail (School of Cities), and Nathalie des Rosiers (Massey College), Richard Florida (School of Cities Professor) as they discuss cities after COVID with Marcia Young, host of CBC’s World Report.
- The Future of the University
- This is a recording of the June 11, 2020 event focused on the impact of COVID-19 on higher education. Speakers: Shiri Breznitz, Heike Mayer, Donald Siegel and Elvira Uyarra.
The Future of (Decent?) Work After COVID-19
This is a recording of the May 26, 2020 Munk School / Innovation Policy Lab / CIFAR event focused on the future of work after COVID-19. Speakers: Dan Breznitz, Zabeen Hirji and Peter Warrian.
The World after Covid-19
This is a recording of the May 11th 2020 event focused on “what will the world look like in the wake of COVID-19?” Speakers: Shauna Brail, Anita McGahan, Tara Vinodrai and Shiri Breznitz.
COVID-19 and the World’s Grand Challenges
This is a recording of the May 8th 2020 event focused on “what impact will COVID-19 have on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?” Speakers: Anita McGahan, Joseph Wong and Karlee Silver.
How is COVID-19 affecting global supply chains?
This is a recording of the April 29th 2020 event focused on “how is COVID-19 affecting supply chains in Canada and around the globe?” Speakers: Dan Breznitz, Shauna Brail and Steven Denney.
RESEARCHERS
A Systematic Review of Big Data Analytics for Oil and Gas Industry 4.0
Editor’s Pick
Measuring the Economic Value of Data and Cross-border Data Flows
David Nguyen and Marta Paczos, OECD
The amount and variety of data that companies collect, aggregate and analyze has increased dramatically in recent years. This paper investigates how the economic value of data can be conceptualized and measured from a business perspective. It discusses data monetization as a strategy for developing new business models or enhancing traditional ones, and proposes a new taxonomy for data that focuses on measuring its business value. The paper also discusses how different data characteristics and types affect economic value, before examining the role of cross-border data flows as a key enabler of our global economy. As part of this discussion, the concept of a “global data value chain” is presented, based on the idea that digitalization enables the physical detachment of data collection, analysis, storage and monetization. The paper concludes with a summary and discussion of the most promising avenues for measuring the economic value of data.
Cities, Clusters & Regions
Innovation Policy
What to Expect from Biden-Harris on Tech Policy, Platform Regulation, and China
This article explores what the Biden-Harris combination will mean for technology policy, internet platform regulation, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and relations with China. The authors note how previous statements from Biden and Harris “may form the basis of a new policy regime for the technology sector that shifts the prevailing guardrails in meaningful ways. Biden-Harris administration is likely to move towards greater regulation of the technology sector. That includes stronger action on competition policy, antitrust enforcement, privacy policy, cybersecurity, and Section 230 reforms.”
Subsidy Entrepreneurs: an Inquiry into Firms Seeking Public Grants
Anders Gustafsson, Patrik Gustavsson Tingvall & Daniel Halvarsson, Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade
This paper studies the incentives and characteristics of firms that apply for, and eventually receive, one or multiple governmental grants intended to stimulate innovation and growth. The analysis departs from a contest model in which entrepreneurs are free to allocate their effort between production and seeking grants. The results suggest that highly productive entrepreneurs abstain from seeking grants, moderately productive firms allocate a share of their effort to grant seeking, and low-productivity firms allocate most resources to seeking grants. Due to their efforts in seeking grants, these low-productive subsidy entrepreneurs also have a relatively high probability of receiving the grants. Using comprehensive data over grants from the three largest grant-distributing agencies in Sweden, the authors find concordant evidence of a negative relation between the probability of receiving a grant and firm productivity. This negative relation becomes more pronounced for multiple-grant-supported firms.
Statistics & Indicators
COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerated Shift to E-commerce by 5 Years, New Report Says
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch
This article summarizes a report from from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index. The report finds that COVID-19 has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. Department stores, as a result, are seeing significant declines. In the first quarter of 2020, department store sales and those from other “non-essential” retailers declined by 25%. This grew to a 75% decline in the second quarter. The report indicates that department stores are expected to decline by over 60% for the full year. Meanwhile, e-commerce is projected to grow by nearly 20% in 2020.
McKinsey Global Institute
This report quantifies the effect of disruption on global value chains. Businesses that successfully implemented a lean, global model of manufacturing achieved improvements in indicators such as inventory levels, on-time-in-full deliveries, and shorter lead times. However, these operating model choices sometimes led to unintended consequences if they were not calibrated to risk exposure. Intricate production networks were designed for efficiency, cost, and proximity to markets but not necessarily for transparency or resilience. Now they are operating in a world where disruptions are regular occurrences. The authors found that disruptions lasting a month or longer occur every 3.7 years and disruptions exceeding 100 days occur in every five to seven years on average, costing companies 42% of a year’s profits every decade.
Policy Digest
Autonomous Vehicles, Mobility, and Employment Policy: The Roads Ahead
John Leonard, David Mindell, Erik Stayton, MIT Task Force on Work of the Future
This research brief considers the current state of automated driving technologies, including driver assistance systems and highly automated vehicles (AVs), as well as their potential implications for mobility and employment. Broader impacts, including the interplay with transit and land-use and environmental consequences are also briefly considered. The authors note that “analysis of the best available data suggests that the reshaping of mobility around automation will take more than a decade” and that “fully automated driving will be restricted to limited geographic regions and climates for at least the next decade.”
KEY FINDINGS:
•The widespread deployment of fully automated driving systems that have no safety driver onboard will take at least a decade. Winter climates and rural areas will experience still longer transitions.
•Expansion will likely be gradual and will happen region-by-region in specific categories of transportation, resulting in wide variations in availability across the country.
•The AV transition will not be jobless. New opportunities will arise for employment, such as in the remote management of vehicles, but the quality of these jobs is uncertain, and depends somewhat on policy choices.
•AV should be thought of as one element in a mobility mix, and as a potential feeder for public transit rather than a replacement for it. However, unintended consequences such as increased congestion remain risks.
•AV operations will benefit from improvements to infrastructure, which can create positive spillover effects with respect to jobs, accessibility, and the environment. This includes not only traditional transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges, but also information infrastructure such as communications systems, databases, and standards.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS:
•Investing in local and national infrastructure and public-private partnerships will ease the integration of automated systems into urban mobility systems.
•Sustained investments in workforce training for advanced mobility will help drivers and other mobility workers transition into new careers that support mobility systems and technologies. These areas include software, robotics, testing, electrification, vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, and human-machine interaction.
•Dramatic improvements in mobility safety and access should be pursued, with the aim of reducing traffic fatalities and injuries by several orders of magnitude in the coming decades, while also ensuring access for elderly and disabled passengers.
•Increased federal investment in basic research in the technologies that underpin automated mobility will enhance U.S. competitiveness; these include human-machine interaction, robust perception, prediction and planning, and artificial intelligence.
Events
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.
Regional Innovation Policies Conference
Aalborg, Denmark, 25-26 March 2021
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak the conference has been postponed to March 25 and 26, 2021 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 analyzing regions. Submission deadline: 30th November 2020.
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe