Category: Innovation

Innovation Policy: Are Universities Part of the Problem?

We’re talking a lot about Innovation in Canada these days. Especially in universities, where innovation policy is seen as a new cash funnel. I would like to suggest that this attitude on the part of universities is precisely part of Canada’s problem when it comes to Innovation. Here’s the basic issue: innovation – the kind that expands the economy – is something that firms do. They take ideas from here and there and put them together to create new processes

Read More »

Announcements

Guys!  I’ve got it solved!  This whole funding thing! You know how Liberal MPs are taking up the entire back-to-school season with on-campus announcements of Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) money?  It’s annoying, right?  I mean this is money isn’t some “favour” delivered through hard work and pork-barrelling by the local MP.  It’s technocratically-determined funding decided upon by a professional public service.  And yet all the universities and colleges have to go through this rigamarole, saying “thank you” to the local

Read More »

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

Read More »

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

Read More »

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,

Read More »