Volume Twenty-two
Issue # 456 (January 17, 2022)
- Introduction
- News From the IPL
- Editor’s Pick
- Cities & Regions
- Statistics
- Innovation Policy
- Links to Recent IPL Webinars
- 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
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dan Breznitz awarded Balsillie Prize for Public Policy
IPL Co-director and University of Toronto University Professor Dan Breznitz has been awarded the Balsille Prize for Public Policy by the Writers’ Trust of Canada for his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, published by Oxford University Press.
David Wolfe nominated to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies
IPL Co-director David Wolfe was recently nominated to serve on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies. The role of the Scientific Advisory Committee is to advise the CCA’s Board on assessment topics, expert panel composition, and peer review.
RESEARCH
Into the Scale-up-verse: Exploring the landscape of Canada’s high-performing firms
Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
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 collaboration between the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, this new study, Into the Scale-up-verse, 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. The research was initiated and funded by Delvinia in partnership with Mitacs and the IPL, and conducted jointly with BII&E. The report analyzes the most recent and detailed data set 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.
What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation
Dan Breznitz
IPL Co-Director Dan Breznitz leads a forum in a new edited volume focused on how local economic development might foster long-term, inclusive prosperity. Dan argues that in today’s world of globally fragmented production and dominating high-tech clusters, efforts to duplicate silicon valley don’t raise all boats. To generate local, inclusive prosperity, cities must think beyond tech accelerators and science parks and instead embrace a wider range of innovation strategies. This forum is part of a new Boston Review book titled Public Purpose: Industrial Policy’s Comeback and Government’s Role in Shared Prosperity. The book’s other forum is led by economist Mariana Mazzucato and articulates an industrial policy agenda organized around ambitious, cross-sector “missions,” designed around important national goals. The authors in this volume collectively argue for “putting public purpose at the center of our politics and policy.” Excerpts from the authors participating in Mariana Mazzucato’s forum are available online here.
Editor’s Pick
Cities & Regions
Statistics
Business innovation and growth support, 2019
Statistics Canada
The Canadian federal government manages programs that offer Business Innovation and Growth Support (BIGS) through its departments and agencies. These government programs provide financial and service-based support for innovation and growth to for-profit businesses and not-for-profit organizations such as government organizations and educational institutions. The BIGS data supports program evaluation, assists with statistical analysis on the impact of innovation programs and provides a better understanding of the characteristics of the enterprises receiving support. In 2019, similarly to 2018, small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for the vast majority of BIGS beneficiaries. Enterprises having annual revenues of $2 million or more received over two-thirds of the total value of federal support.
Spending on research and development in the higher education sector, 2019/2020
Statistics Canada
Research and development (R&D) expenditures in the higher education sector in Canada increased 4.6% from 2018/2019 to $15.8 billion in 2019/2020. This was the 10th consecutive annual gain. R&D spending rose across all funding sectors in 2019/2020, though the increase in spending for each sector was less than what occurred in the preceding year. The largest amount of funding for higher education R&D came internally from the higher education sector itself. Their R&D funding increased by $303.0 million (+4.1%), a small decline from the $312.4 million increase that occurred in 2018/2019 (+4.4%). The federal government sector, the next largest funder of higher education R&D, experienced a similar change, with spending rising by $202.7 million in 2019/2020 (+5.7%), which is down slightly from the $255.7 million increase realized in 2018/2019 (+7.7%).
Researchers ask: Can Canada keep up in the race for R&D leadership?
Richard L. Hudson, Science|Business
This article summarizes recent policy commitments in the context of Canada’s performance in R&D spending. The author notes that from a peak of 2.02% of gross domestic product in 2001, Canadian spending on R&D tumbled to a low of 1.59% in 2019, as successive governments redirected funding to other national priorities. In 2020 the percentage climbed to 1.7% of GDP, as three years of Trudeau’s expanded R&D budgets started registering. But that ranks Canada just on a par with the underperforming UK, and well below the 3.19% of Germany, 3.07% of the US, or 2.23% of China, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Innovation Policy
Policy Digest
Links to Recent IPL Webinars
From Science to Entrepreneurship
This is a recording of the Nov. 15th, 2021 webinar. There is a plethora of research on university commercialization and technology transfer. However, there is less of a discussion on the skillset and technical capabilities that allow a scientist to become an entrepreneur. In this webinar we will focus on these skills and programs that induce entrepreneurship. Moving from the scientist’s lab, to entrepreneurship courses, to forming a startup, to growing the firm within an incubator or accelerator.
Speakers:
• Fabiano Armellini, Associate Professor Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal
• Shiri M. Breznitz, Director, Master of Global Affairs Program; Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
• Elicia Maine, W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Academic Director, Invention to Innovation (i2I); Special Advisor on Innovation to the VPRI, Simon Fraser University
• Sophie Veilleux, Professor, Department of Management of the Faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval
• Sarah Lubik (moderator), Director of Entrepreneurship; Co-Champion, Technology Entrepreneurship@SFU Lecturer, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University
Canada’s Quantum Internet: Prospects and Perils
This is a recording of the April 20, 2021 webinar that together experts to discuss the political, economic, and scientific implications of quantum communications, for Canada and the world .Speakers: Francesco Bova, Associate Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Anne Broadbent, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa; Jon Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Christoph Simon, Professor and Associate Head, Research, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary; & Dan Patterson (moderator), Technology Reporter, CBS News
Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship in Canada
This is a recording of the March 23rd 2021 webinar focused on the importance of IP protection for entrepreneurship, the intellectual property environment in Canada, and existing support for firms. Panelists discussed 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, Ryan Hubbard, Graeme Moffat, Moderator: Shiri Breznitz
Events
January 19, 2022, Digital Conference, 12.00 – 13.30 London (UK)
This event is part of the GEOPL series. The guest speaker is Dr. Mikel Landabaso, Director Growth & Innovation, Joint Research Centre at the European Commission.
Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference 2022
January 17-21, 2022, Digital Conference
The 2022 Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) Conference is asking for a wide range of participants from across many disciplines and fields to submit ideas for panels, demonstrations, initiatives, and projects that work towards transformations for sustainability and a just transition. The ‘Call for Initiatives’ is open now until 4 September 2021 and encourage Expressions of Interest (EoI) from a wide set of contributors across research, civil society, business and policy. This is a short extension so please get your EOI in as soon as possible. The theme is “BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE ON TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION POLICY.” The aim of the sessions is to be a symphony of approaches and collaborations to mix-up the conference dynamic and offer a chance to experiment with building knowledge infrastructures and exchanges across sectors and disciplines to activate transformational system change to solve our Earth crisis. The TIP Conference 2022 is organised and funded by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (Eu-SPRI) with the participation of Globelics and Africalics members and with the involvement of Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN) members.
P4IE 2022 International Conference Measuring Metrics that Matter
May 9-11 2022, Ottawa and Online
How to best design innovation indicators for the future? You are invited to contribute to this challenging question during our second international conference on “Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems” (P4IE). The hybrid conference will be held online and in-person at Ottawa. You can actively participate by submitting an academic, industry or public policy paper. Topics includes, but are not limited to: New/Real-time innovation indicators; Sustainable, Inclusive, Responsible (SIR) innovation indicators; Measuring the performance of innovation ecosystems; and Science-to-innovation SIR innovation indicators. Submissions of academic extended abstracts due by December 13, 2021 (acceptance notification by February 15). Submissions of policy papers due by January 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by February 14). Submissions of industrial papers due by February 14, 2022 (acceptance notification by March 14).
Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022
June 7-10, Dublin, Ireland
Under the umbrella topic “Territorial Development”, Trinity College Dublin & University College Dublin invites you to participate in the sixth Global Conference on Economic Geography 2022 to be held in Dublin, Ireland. The conference is organized into 13 session themes – see list below which also provides a link to the detailed theme description. All session theme leaders welcome submissions to their respective themes via the submission portal. In addition, there is also a long list of Special Sessions that are associated with these themes – see list further below which again provides a link for a detailed description for each of these. All Special Session organizers welcome submissions again via the submission portal.
Subscriptions & Comments
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe