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Category: Innovation

The Return of Peter Nicholson

Peter Nicholson occupies a very odd place in Canadian policy circles.  There are not many people as smart as him who are as little known outside Ottawa as they are influential within the capital.  So, when he speaks it is always worth listening because you know the senior folks in Ottawa are doing so. Last week, Nicholson wrote a stem-winder of a piece for IRPP. You should read it in full, but let me give you the Coles notes version: Canada

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October 9, 2018 4 Comments

In Tech, We are All Maritimers

I got a bit of blowback for Friday’s blog criticizing that U of T/Brock piece on the alleged Brain Drain.  Nobody tried to argue that my critique of the methodology was wrong, but some argued that a) data on migration is always terrible and I was making the perfect the enemy of the good and b) I was ignoring the core truth that a lot of Canadian tech talent does head south and this makes things difficult for Canadian tech firms, and

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May 7, 2018 1 Comment

Better Arguments for Superclusters

[the_ad id=”12142″] A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail published an op-ed “Beyond “the Next Silicon Valley”: Why Many Kinds of Economic Superpowers Matter” by Dalhousie University President Richard Florizone and MIT’s Scott Stern. It is, in my opinion, a better explanation of and argument for superclusters than anything the government itself has published, but it’s also a rebuttal (I think) to naysayers (like me) of the Supercluster concept, so I thought it worth reviewing some of the arguments

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April 23, 2018 1 Comment

Superclusters, Cold Fusion and Perpetual Motion

When writing last week about superclusters, I neglected to go through the actual “economic impact statements” that were being touted by the clusters themselves. It seems that the Industry Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), has to some degree accepted the statements.  And I think this is important because some of what is being suggested is pretty close to a national scandal. So, let’s take a quick look at what, allegedly, we’re getting for our $950 million in Supercluster investments.

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February 23, 2018 3 Comments

La Nausée des Supergrappes

So, yesterday, the Government of Canada ended two years of tediousness by announcing the winners of the supercluster process. To briefly recap.  At some point in 2015 or early 2016, the Liberals became enamoured with the idea of technology superclusters, mainly because they got to spend money on hip-sounding industries in a spatially-restricted manner, which meant they could claim points on both the economic growth and regional development scorecards.  To this end, they invited groups of businesses (large, medium & small

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February 16, 2018 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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