This report shows that while small in number, taken together, scale-ups are crucial in ensuring Canada’s long term economic sustainability. In order to unlock their full potential, policymakers need to carefully approach discussions around scale-ups, particularly in distinguishing the different ways in which they contribute to the Canadian economy.
Authors/Project Team
Steven Denney
Viet Vu
Ryan Kelly
About This Report
For Canadian firms, high-growth is rare. Our new report, Into the Scale-up-verse, finds that—despite their relatively small population—scale-ups are responsible for the vast majority of productivity growth in Canada. Through a research collaboration between the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship and the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School for Public Policy & Global Affairs in the University of Toronto, this report takes the first step toward better support the success of Canadian firms by unpacking the complexity and nuance in Canada’s diverse scale-up universe.
For government policymakers, industry players, and researchers, this report acts as a resource that clearly defines the different types of scale-ups, maps their geographic (at the sub-provincial level) and industrial diversity, and highlights their impact on export values, innovation adoption, employment creation, and productivity growth for Canada. It will also inform economic policy-making as Canada works to encourage the creation and sustainment of scale-ups that are crucial to securing long-term economic sustainability and prosperity.
Read this report to help you
- Understand the immense impact Canadian scale-ups have on productivity growth, employment creation, and innovation adoption.
- Navigate the first-of-its-kind sub-provincial and industrial mapping of Canada’s scale-up activity
- Gain the language and the framework to discuss scale-ups in the context of policymaking and research.
- Identify areas that deserve particular attention of policymakers to ensure we harness the full potential of scale-ups in Canada.
Technology retrospective
Scale-ups are responsible for the majority of productivity growth in Canada. The tech sector is unsurprisingly an important part of this picture. This extract from Into the Scale-up-verse focuses on what our research means for the tech sector, and how policymakers should look towards unlocking its full potential to contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity.
Partners
This is a joint project between the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E) and the Innovation Policy Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not re!ect those of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or the Government of Canada.
