---

McGuinty Government Supports Ontario's Economic Advantage by Developing the Best Research Talent

Ontario's talented academic researchers are getting a $14 million boost from the McGuinty government. The government is investing $51 million over five years in the Early Researcher Award program. This second round of the awards will support 104 leading early career researchers working at 22 institutions in 10 communities across the province. Awardees receive up to $100,000 from the Ontario government and $50,000 from their institutions.

US Department of Defense funds Texas Nanotechnology Consortium

he Department of Defense will use a $1.4 million appropriation secured by U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to fund the Consortium for Nanomaterials for Aerospace Commerce and Technology (CONTACT), a consortium of seven leading Texas universities created to develop and commercialize revolutionary nanomaterials for the defense aerospace industry. CONTACT includes Rice University, The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Texas at Brownsville, the University of Texas Pan American and the University of Houston. CONTACT researchers will partner with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Materials and Manufacturing Directorate (AFRL/ML) in Dayton, Ohio to develop and rapidly commercialize the next-generation composites and smart materials the Air Force needs to ensure U.S. air superiority in the 21st Century.

EDITOR'S PICK                                                                            [Tableof Contents]

---

Public Support for Science and Innovation

Australian Government Productivity Commission

This study has three major aims: to assess the impacts of public support for science and innovation; to identify any major impediments that affect the operation of the innovation system and the scope for mitigating such impediments; and to evaluate frameworks for assessing where and how public funding should be allocated, including any scope for improvements. It also provides a comparison of Australian performance in these areas with OECD countries.

A Resource Guide for Technology Based Economic Development: Positioning Universities as Drivers, Fostering Entrepreneurship, Increasing Access to Capital

SSTI
This resource guide focuses on three of the elements – intellectual infrastructure, capital, and entrepreneurial culture – and is intended to assist economic development practitioners in their efforts to accelerate transition to technologybased economies. Practitioners can use the guide to implement and update programs addressing these three critical elements required for a tech-based economy. The guide also begins to resolve one of the most challenging issues for the tech-based economic development community: the paucity of written information that captures the insights, wisdom and practical knowledge of people who have decades of experience in the field.

 

CITIES & REGIONS                                                  [Table ofContents]

---

A Regional Policy Blueprint Highlighting the Use of Strategic Intelligence in Cluster Policy

Strategic Intelligence and Industry Clusters (STRATINC)

The Blueprint draws on the experiences of six regions and contains material useful to both experienced practitioners and newcomers. It will be of particular interest to: 1) Regional agencies involved in regional innovation and cluster policies, 2) Business representatives such as Chambers of Commerce, 3) Consultants and other experts operating in the fields of strategic intelligence, knowledge management, foresight, cluster policy, and innovation management.

New Book: Urban and Regional Technology Planning: Planning Practices in the Global Knowledge Economy

Kenneth E. Corey and Mark I. Wilson

The contribution of the book is to empower regional and urban planners to work with and mobilize other local stakeholders to engage and plan for the opportunities and challenges that are presented by the forces of globalization. A principal theme is that these forces are facilitated by information and communications technologies (ICT). A further emphasis is the need for local communities to be innovative and foresighted by creating productive content for the ICTs to enable. The key message is constructed from analyses of global knowledge economy trends, relational planning theory and local knowledge-economy cases from the global economy's three primary technology-economic regions from Eastern Asia, Western Europe and North America, including cases from Canada.

 

Cluster Complexes: A Framework for Understanding the Internationalization of Innovation Systems

Brian Wixted, CPROST

The literature on clustering that has developed over the last two decades and provides a wealth of information on the formation and competitiveness of places in the global economy. Similarly, the systems literature has been valuable in moving the debate around technology from a focus on the entrepreneur to one that encompasses institutions, government, suppliers, customers and universities. However, there remains an important limit to this research; the borders of political jurisdictions, usually nation states, typically delineate the studies. It is argued in this paper that during an era when the international architecture of production relationships is changing, this view of systems is hindering its further development. This paper briefly examines what has been learned of innovation systems, including clustering and also explores the limitations of this work. From this foundation it is proposes that a framework which understands clusters as nodes within extra-territorial networks is a promising approach for internationalizing the systems of innovation perspective.

 

---

OECD Compendium of Patent Statistics 2006

OECD

This report presents various patent indicators to reflect recent trends in innovative activity across a wide range of OECD and non-OECD countries, with 6 main sections: triadic patent families; patenting at the national, regional and international level; patenting in selected technology areas; patents by institutional sectors; international co-operation in patenting; European and international patent citations.