On a national level, Canada is in an innovation crisis.
Canada has received a ‘D grade’ in innovation from the Conference Board of Canada.
A symptom of this issue can be seen in how much of its gross domestic product Canadian organizations invest in innovation. Canada uses less than 2% of its GDP on civilian research and development. However, countries such as Sweden and Finland spend more than 4.5% of its GDP on R&D.
How does Canada ensure that it is on the cutting edge of innovation?
There are several ways to address this issue. For starters, here are two:
1. Increased integration between academia and business:
This can be seen in action by the founding of Singularity University - an academic institute partially sponsored by Google. Its founders have priority access to any new commercialization opportunities created by the institute.
As well, a recent symposium was held in Toronto where researchers from Tel Aviv University were demonstrating technologies that had the ability of going from “lab to market”.
There are also less formal grass roots methods for supporting national innovation, such as:
2. Greater grass roots interaction amongst innovators:
This would be an orchestration of people who usually do not have the opportunity to talk with each other to collaborate together for greater innovation. They would meet on a casual, yet frequent, basis and share ideas and other resources to support their innovation goals.
Canada is competing on a global stage as we have never before. Innovation has never been more important.
Regards,
Jeremy
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Jeremy Nickerson, BASc, MBA
Director, Helix Commerce
www.helixcommerce.com
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Feel free to read these articles to gain additional perspective on this blog:
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/HCP/Details/Innovation.aspx
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=1250659
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=1250640
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1 Comment
Some new ideas are needed - or a major cultural shift?
In comparing Canadian R&D expenditures, as a percentage of GDP, with those of other advanced industrial nations it's interesting to look at who is spending what. A new report by the Science, Technology, and Innovation Council (State of the Nation 2008) gives a very detailed look at R&D funding, performance, and collaboration between sectors. The report, which is available for download from Industry Canada 's website, confirms the Conference Board conclusion that all is not well with Canadian innovation.
According to the report, Canada 's low R&D intensity ($R&D/GDP) is almost entirely due to low R&D spending by industry. While government spending on R&D is on a par with comparable nations, Canadian companies spend much less. Canadian business R&D spending as a percentage of GDP was 1.06% in 2006, compared to a G-7 country average of about 1.5%. The U.S. number was 1.8%. These results are perplexing, since the Federal Government's policies are designed to maximize the leverage of government R&D spending to promote industry R&D. For example, 80% of all Canadian government R&D spending is on the Scientific Research & Experimental Development Tax Credits program, designed specifically to promote industry R&D. This percentage is much higher than in other nations. We also have other cost sharing programs, such as IRAP, the Strategic Aerospace & Defence Initiative (SADI), and various environmental R&D programs. Also, government labs doing applied research, are expected to be working with industry partners. It's difficult to see what else the government can do to promote industry R&D. Perhaps we need some brand new ideas, or some sort of cultural shift.
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