Category: Innovation

New Thoughts on Innovation Policy

A new book on innovation policy came out this summer from a guy by the name of Mark Zachary Taylor, who teaches at Georgia State.  The book is called The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries are Better Than Others at Science and Technology and to my mind it should be required reading for anyone interested in following Canada’s innovation debate. First, things first: how does Taylor measure how “good” a country is at Science & Technology?  After all, there are

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Welcome Back

Morning everyone. We’re back for another term.  I hope everyone’s summer went well.  Let’s get started. First, a quick round-up of the major events since I was last in the Daily blog business: on August 1, the new Canada Student Grants program came into effect, with all grants now 50% larger than they used to be (the offsetting bad news, the loss of a whole bunch of tax credits, kicks in on January 1).   The big Ontario scheme doesn’t kick in

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Innovation Policy: Beyond Digital and Cleantech

So, earlier this month, federal Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star which lays out, as clearly as possible, where the current government’s thinking is with respect to Innovation policy.  Some of it is good, but some of it is dreck. Let’s start with the good stuff : “Innovation is fundamental to our continued growth and job creation, and it’s impossible to predict where and how disruption will happen. It can be in a start-up garage in Vancouver,

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Canadian B-Schools and Economic Growth

If there is one thing university Presidents desire, it is to be useful to society – and preferably to the government of the day, too.  After all, post-Humboldt, universities exist to strengthen the state.  The better a university does that, the more it will be appreciated and, hopefully, the better funded it will be.  So it has always struck me as a bit odd how little universities (an business schools in particular) have really done in order to help work

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Disturbing Portents for the Liberal Innovation Policy

Allow me to draw everyone’s attention to a piece last week in the Huffington Post called “How the Liberal Party Plans to Innovate the Way We Innovate”.  The piece was written by a Liberal-connected PR/GR flack named Greg MacNeil who works at “public affairs” (read: lobbying) firm Ensight Canada. MacNeil starts by asserting that “following Budget 2016, it is clear that when it comes to the innovation agenda, the government’s intentions are substantive”, which is nonsense: the budget simply introduced

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