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Germany Awards 'Elite Status', and $26 Million, to 3 Universities

Three universities were the big winners this month as the German government announced the results of the first round of its excellence program, which is designed to make the country's universities more competitive internationally. The University of Karlsruhe, the Technical University of Munich, and Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich, were awarded what has become known informally as "elite" designation. The project, which will award $2.4-billion in total, began last year after much delay and opposition. The notion of singling out individual institutions for special honor and financial reward is controversial in a country where the principle of egalitarianism has underpinned the public-education system for the entire postwar era.

McGuinty Government Support Start-Up Technology Companies

he McGuinty government is funding the creation and expansion of angel investor networks that will help Ontario's leading-edge start-up companies grow and succeed, Premier and Minister of Research and Innovation Dalton McGuinty announced recently. he government is investing $2.5 million to build and expand angel investment networks across the province. The National Angel Organization (NAO) will work with the Ministry of Research and Innovation, MaRS, the Ontario Centres of Excellence and others to ensure angel investors and start-up high-tech companies are linked together through the networks. This will help identify and nurture opportunities for investment in promising technologies. The funding is part of the government's four-year, $46-million Market Readiness Program launched in July 2006 to help get new discoveries to market.

EDITOR'S PICK                                                                            [Tableof Contents]

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Shaping Our Future: Creative Ideas for Transforming Western Canada's Economy

Todd Hirch, Canada West Foundation

This report looks at what factors will be most important to sustaining Western Canadian growth and prosperity through 2026. It identifies five priority areas to ensure these goals: training the brightest, most highly educated, and most productive work force in the world; fostering creativity and innovation among scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and everyone who contributes to the western Canadian economy; developing a flexible, adaptable, and agile workforce; establishing an efficient transportation system across the West, and building a world-class communication system; and respecting the physical environment while at the same time finding new, responsible and sustainable ways to create wealth from the West’s bountiful natural resources.

 

Giving with One Hand, Taking Away with the Other: Commentary

Kenneth J Mackenzie, CD Howe Institute

Recent research suggests that Canada’s tax system acts as a drag on innovative activity. In effect, the Canadian approach has been to give with one hand, by providing generous tax credits targeted at R&D, and to take with the other, by imposing high taxes on the fruits of innovative activity and entrepreneurship. Canada’s tax treatment of business spending on R&D does appear to be internationally competitive. The cornerstone is a 20 percent federal tax credit — for small businesses it is 35 percent — which most provinces top up with a further R&D credit of 10 or 15 percent. The result is “one of the most generous scientific research and experimental development tax incentive regimes in the world", according to the federal Department of Finance. And among industrialized countries, in terms of direct tax subsidies per US$1 of R&D expenditures, Canada is indeed near the top. Despite this support, Canada ranks low in aggregate R&D intensity — that is, R&D as a percentage of gross domestic product. On this measure, business R&D in Canada in 2004 was 1.07 percent — below the average of 1.53 percent for OECD member countries and well below that of other Group of Seven major industrialized economies except Italy. Canada also compares poorly to Sweden, for example, which provides few direct subsidies for R&D (but has a very competitive production tax regime): business R&D as a percentage of GDP in Sweden is about double that in Canada. This report provides some suggestions as to how Canadian public policy can address these findings.

 

Proceedings of Technology Transfer Society Annual Conference

This event was held on September 27 – 29, 2006 in Atlanta, USA. Among the over 100 papers available online related to the theme of "Next Generation Approaches: New Approaches and Policy Designs" are: 'Firms’ utilization of knowledge external sources: towards a holistic approach', 'Inter-Cluster Innovation Differentials: The Role of Research Universities', 'Policy and Networking: An RIS Case in Korea', 'Firm Characteristics: Collaborative Culture and Perceived Issues with University-to-Industry Knowledge Transfer', and much more.

 

CITIES & REGIONS                                                  [Table ofContents]

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Building Successful Cities: Lessons from the United Kingdom

Marni Cappe and Anne Golden, Conference Board of Canada

The United Kingdom is impressing urban advocates with the coherent and comprehensive strategies it has adopted for building successful cities—notwithstanding the lack of local autonomy in its highly centralized system of government. This briefing examines U.K. national and local governance solutions to the challenges facing its cities and highlights key lessons relevant to Canada. It looks at national and local solutions—developed and implemented in spite of the lack of local governance autonomy—to the challenges facing its major cities and pulls out lessons relevant to Canada. The level and quality of urban regeneration now underway in the U.K., and the optimism and confidence that accompany this regeneration, show how political and community backing can propel the urban agenda forward. Key lessons for Canada focus on developing partnerships, investing in gateway cities, recognizing the importance of local leadership and developing a national policy focus on major cities.

 

STATISTICS & INDICATORS                                              [Table ofContents]

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The Use and Limitations of Indicators in the Context of City Region Development Strategy

PREST/CRIC for Manchester Knowedge Capital

This discussion paper is the main outcome of Stage 1 of the Manchester:Knowledge Capital (M:KC) indicators project. The primary objective of Stage 1 was to produce (this) discussion paper providing a challenging and critical overview of the use, limits and problems of indicators for use in economic development policy at the city-region scale.

 

Canadian University Publications 2006

Re$earch Inforsource

This paper is the first in a series of annual reports analyzing scientific publications from Canadian universities and affiliated research hospitals. It provides in-depth analysis of the publishing output of 69 research institutions in Canada from 1999-2004. If you want to know how much Canadian scholars publish compared to those from other countries, which universities publish the most, or what the Average Relative Impact Factor (ARIF) is of the publications out there, this is the data source for you. It also attempts to define some new indicators, including "publication efficiency" (an analysis of how research funding translates into publications) and "publication effectiveness" (a comparison of the cost vs. the "quality" of the publications).

 

Innovation Capabilities: The Knowledge Capital Behind the Survival and Growth of Firms

John Baldwin and Guy Gelatly, Statistics Canada

This paper summarizes the findings of a research program aimed at outlining the importance, to the firm growth process, of competencies that arise from investments in intangible assets. The program has consisted of two parts. First, longitudinal databases have provided a rich set of studies on entry, exit, mergers and other aspects of dynamics related to growth and decline in firm populations. These studies have shown the pervasiveness of growth and decline in the firm population. By themselves, these studies do not demonstrate what strategies differentiate the most successful from the least successful. To do so, this paper builds a set of business surveys that allowed profiles to be developed of the type of competencies that stem from investments in organizational capital. In turn, these are linked to administrative data that allow us to classify firms as either growing or declining. We then asked how differences in competencies were related to the performance of firms.