Issue #203
December 1, 2009
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This newsletter is published by ONRIS at the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, and sponsored by the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The views and ideas expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Ontario Government.
ANNOUNCEMENTS [Table of Contents]
Ontario Gives a Boost to the Digital Economy
Ontario is supporting a new commercialization centre that will help digital media entrepreneurs build new companies and create jobs. The province plans to invest more than $26 million in The Communitech Hub: Digital Media & Mobile Accelerator ("The Hub"), a new centre that will help emerging digital media companies grow and succeed in the global market. In particular, The Hub will look beyond the entertainment sector to focus on companies creating hardware and software for industries, including advanced manufacturing, healthcare and finance. Based in Waterloo Region, The Hub expects thousands of jobs could be created over the first five years by serving entrepreneurs across the province.
New Site Tracks How Stimulus Dollars Flow into Science
More than $20 billion in stimulus money has poured into US universities, according to a new collection of data gathered by a trio of research consortia. California’s institutions were the big winners, snagging 1,602 grants worth almost $1.2 billion, but the money was spread across the country. Alaska received the most per capita at $248, more than three times the next state, Tennessee, on that metric. The Science Coalition teamed with the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities to gather data from most of the major research institutions across the country. The information is posted to a new website, ScienceWorksforUS.org, which was unveiled today at a press conference in Washington, D.C. The new bottom-up data collection effort is a good addition to the information on the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act spending being published by the Federal government at Recovery.org.
FEATURED EVENT [Table of Contents]
Book Launch: 21st Century Cities in Canada: The Geography of Innovation
Toronto, 2 December, 2009
21st Century Cities in Canada: The Geography of Innovation published by the Conference Board of Canada summarizes the key insights and findings of a multi-year national study on innovation, creativity and governance in Canadian cities, led by David Wolfe, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Professor Wolfe’s monograph delineates the innovation dynamic, based on in-depth analysis of the experiences of 15 Canadian cities. 21st Century Cities in Canada explores the ways in which the economic shock of the past year has dramatized the changing nature of Canada's economy, and it looks at the challenges that lie ahead. The monograph also sheds new light on the role of cities as the dominant sites of economic activity—the places where leading-edge innovation generates new ideas, new products, and new industries.
EDITOR'S PICK [Table of Contents]
Partnership and Action: Mobilizing Toronto's Financial Sector for Global Advantage
Boston Consulting Group for the Toronto Financial Services Working Group
The goal of this report is for the Toronto Region to become one of the two leading financial clusters in North America and one of the top ten global hubs. For those who doubt, consider this – Toronto is already recognized as 13th by the Global Financial Centres Index. And while banks around the world had to be bailed out by taxpayers, Canadian banks continued to generate revenue without a government-supplied life raft. We have also seen financial services annual job growth of 4.3%, a fortuitous occurrence given the simultaneous decline in manufacturing employment of 3.5% annually. This report contains recommendations that will help successful global players become even more so, driving international growth that can be serviced in Toronto; initiatives that will attract other global players to locate operations in the region and take advantage of the value proposition as a financial hub, thereby making their own contributions in jobs and economic revenue.
INNOVATION & RELATED POLICY [Table of Contents]
PRO INNO Europe, European Commission Enterprise and Industry
The Innovation Impact (INNO IMPACT) study assess the impact of publicly funded research on innovation. The study focuses on the interface between research, technological advancement and innovation. Special emphasis is placed on the role of the collaborative R&D projects funded by the 5th and 6th European Framework Programs for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration in promoting innovation and the innovation output of the FPs.The study focused exclusively on collaborative R&D schemes as vehicles through which two or more organizations join forces to develop new knowledge and competencies that can be applied to innovative products/services and processes. The analytical concentration is two-pronged, assessing the impact of research project management and of firm, industry, technology and market characteristics on the effective utilization of research results for innovation.
Higher Ambitions: The Future of Universities in a Knowledge Economy
Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, UK
Lord Mandelson’s vision to sustain university success in more challenging and competitive times sets out the UK Government’s approach on the major issues facing universities, including the need to make greater contributions to the economy, widening access and strengthening their research capacity. The higher education framework, Higher Ambitions, sets out a strategy for universities to remain world class, providing the nation with the high level skills needed to remain competitive, while continuing to attract the brightest students and researchers.
Innovation in the Software Sector
OECD
This book throws a spotlight on innovation across the software universe, setting out key issues and highlighting policy perspectives. It spans research and development, invention, production, distribution and use of software in the market. It also covers core innovation themes from a user perspective -- including security and privacy, mobility, interoperability, accessibility and reliability.
CITIES, CLUSTERS & REGIONS [Table of Contents]
Maine 2010 Science and Technology Action Plan
Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of Innovation
Since the 1990s, Maine has done an excellent job investing in R&D to establish a robust research capacity, but little has been done in terms of building a capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship, according to this report. The report identifies three main strategies to position the state as a global competitor and create high-paying jobs and economic prosperity. The main strategies and several actions steps are described in the plan, which calls for $32 million annually to implement the recommendations, including: (1) Increasing Maine’s total R&D by increasing R&D in the academic, nonprofit and private sectors. Recommendations include providing incentives to increase private R&D and increasing R&D performed at the state’s colleges, universities and nonprofit research institutions; (2) Increasing employment by building innovation capacity. The report recommends aligning and integrating Maine’s innovation-based strategy with the state’s overall economic development strategy, recognizing that innovation has a critical role to play in making all enterprises more productive, efficient and competitive; and (3) Increasing per capita income by increasing the skills of Maine’s workers. Recommendations include increasing the supply of knowledgeable entrepreneurs who can successfully take products and processes to market through training and recruitment.
Global Pipelines or Global Buzz? A Micro-level Approach Towards the Knowledge-Based View of Clusters
Marc D Bahlmann et al.
Recent theorizing in cluster literature emphasizes the importance of inter-cluster knowledge linkages in addition to local knowledge dynamics, enabling new and innovative ideas to flow from one cluster to the other. This paper contributes to this topic by studying inter-cluster knowledge linkages at an individual level of analysis, making use of qualitative social network measures. Central to this case is the Amsterdam New Media-cluster, with a special focus on entrepreneurs engaging in lively inter-cluster exchange of knowledge and debate, resulting in the exchange of new visions and ideas across cluster boundaries. The proposed distinction
between local buzz and global pipelines is complemented by adding a third category of interlocal knowledge exchange: global buzz.
Karl-Johan Lundquist and Michaela Trippl
Due to strong regionalization tendencies in many parts of the world, the political collapse in Central and Eastern Europe and the continuing enlargement of the European Union cross-border regions have grown considerably in number and importance in the last years. There is a widespread agreement in the academic literature that in the emerging globalized knowledge economy the competitive strength of these areas increasingly rests on their capacity to create an integrated innovation space. The focus of this paper is on a theoretical analysis of different stages in the development of cross-border regional innovation systems and on a comparative analysis of the innovation capabilities of two cross-border areas in Europe, the Öresund region, composed of Southern Sweden and Eastern Denmark, and the Centrope area, which is located at the intersection of Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary. The authors identify conceptually crucial preconditions and key determinants for the rise of transfrontier innovation systems. From an evolutionary perspective cross-border regional innovation systems could be seen as the last and most advanced form of cross-border integration building on the success of previous incremental but less advanced modes of integration. They introduce a conceptual framework describing the different stages of such a process and examine how the prospects for successful development vary between different geographical settings. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the innovation capacity of the Öresund region and the Centrope area. Special emphasis is given to comparing the interplay of critical economic, socioinstitutional and political factors, and the main barriers for establishing a cross-border regional innovation system. The results suggest that the Öresund region and the Centrope area differ enormously regarding their capacity to develop an integrated innovation space.
Community Capacity Building: Creating a Better Future Together
OECD
Community capacity building (CCB) is a fairly new term for an age-old good: enabling people to define their own destinies. This book presents and analyses some of the most interesting recent developments in the field of community capacity building, in a variety of OECD and non-OECD countries. The focus is on how CCB has effected change in three major areas: social policy (health, housing, community regeneration); local economic policy; and environmental policy. The book also outlines the common conditions required for CCB to take hold and thrive, allowing for the political voice of local communities to be clearly heard.
STATISTICS & INDICATORS [Table of Contents]
Institute for Urban Strategies, The Mori Memorial Foundation
New York City, London, Paris and Tokyo are deemed to be the most powerful cities in the world. New research has assessed 35 cities from across the world based on six criteria: Economy, research and development, liveability, accessibility, cultural interaction as well as ecology and natural environment New York scores top marks for its economy as well as research and development, while London is judged to be the world’s cultural capital. Paris is number one for liveability and accessibility. Geneva, Zurich and Vienna are praised for their ecology and natural environment. his year the number of city regions included was increased from 30 to 35. In addition to the six main functions, which are assessed using 69 indicators, the GCPI also includes comparative analysis about five population groups who are considered significant to a city’s health. They are the residents, visitors, managers, artists and researchers. Researchers should be broadly interpreted to include many involved with tertiary education and/or urban policy work. In this year's ranking Toronto placed 15th.
SCImago Universities Ranking: 2009 World Report
This is a league table of research institutions by various factors derived from Scopus, the database of the huge multinational publisher Elsevier. SCImago’s institutional research rank is distinctive in including government research organisations such as France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, health organisations such as hospitals, and private and other organisations. Only higher education institutions are considered here. SCImago’s rank is useful in including all organisations with more than 100 publications indexed in Scopus in 2007. It therefore includes 1,527 higher education institutions in 83 countries. Some 38 countries have seven or more universities in the rank. SCImago derives five measures from the Scopus database: total outputs, cites per document (which are heavily influenced by field of research as well as research quality), international collaboration, normalised Scimago journal rank and normalised citations per output. Together these measures show that countries have been following two broad paths to supporting their research universities. One group of countries in northern continental Europe around Germany have supported a reasonably even development of their research universities, while another group of countries influenced by the UK and the US have developed their research universities much more unevenly. Both seem to be successful in support research volume and quality, at least as measured by publications and citations.
POLICY DIGEST [Table of Contents]
Research and Innovation for Germany: Results and Outlook
Federal Ministry of Higher Education and Research
The Federal Government’s High-Tech Strategy, presented in August 2006, was Germany’s first overarching national innovation strategy. A first progress report, presented in October 2007, provided a initial positive assessment of accomplishments under the Strategy. In the meantime, a second progress report has been prepared. This report summarizes the goals and the effects achieved by the German research and innovation policy to date. It cites outstanding initiatives and examples by way of illustration.
Summarizing the High Tech Strategy
Broad Scope: It is an innovation strategy that cuts across all relevant policy and thematic areas and brings competencies together, in the interest of increasing innovation. Research and innovation activities are being combined across all departments. Relevant joint activities have been launched.
Clear Priorities: The High-Tech Strategy emphasises several key areas: health; climate protection and resources conservation; mobility; and security. In these areas, existing strengths are being reinforced, and new incentives created – and lead markets with international competitive advantages are emerging as a result. At the same time, Germany is contributing to meeting global challenges via research and innovation.
Cooperation: This strategy combines numerous new instruments for promoting cooperation between industry and science with a clear focus on network-building, clusters and SMEs (for example, Top Cluster Competition; the “KMU-innovativ” programme for funding cutting-edge research by SMEs; the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM); the “Entrepreneurial Regions” programme). Strategic partnerships and innovation alliances between industry and science have been successfully established (for example, in the areas of energy efficiency and automotive electronics). The pathways leading from development to markets have become shorter and faster.
Improve Framework Conditions: It focuses especially on young, innovative companies and SMEs. Conditions for start-ups have been improved; financing opportunities for start-ups have been expanded; intellectual property protection has been reinforced; and innovation-oriented procurements have been promoted.
Program Evaluation: The Expert Commission on Research and Innovation (EFI), and the Science and Industry Research Union (Forschungsunion Wirtschaft – Wissenschaft), provide the Federal Government with expert advice; both have confirmed the Strategy’s positive impacts. Independent accompanying research on the Strategy’s impacts provides a reliable scientific database for the High-Tech Strategy’s systematic improvement.
Outlook
By means of a multitude of measures and initiatives, the Federal Government has provided a strategy for making Germany one of the world’s most research-intensive and innovation-intensive countries. It understands that the current crisis provides all the more reason to stay this course. The Federal Government is acting now to provide the basis for the wave of innovation that will shape the coming decade. The guiding idea in such efforts is to protect the country’s prosperity through investments in education, science and research. In the current difficult economic situation, growth-oriented policies are needed. All stakeholders in the areas of education, science, research and development will thus have to make additional efforts to ensure that Germany remains one of the world’s most attractive locations for research and innovation. Three recommendations will shape the strategy as it evolves:
Further efforts to ensure enough skilled people are available
The Federal Government plans to do everything possible to make even better use of Germany’s training and education resources and to further enhance Germany’s attractiveness for foreign students and skilled people. Measures under the Qualification Initiative for Germany, in combination with an ambitious “ten-percent goal”, provide enormous impetus for investments in education and research, and they will lead to considerable quality improvements. Along with the second economic stimulus package (Konjunkturprogramm II), the largest programme for investments in education and research ever undertaken in Germany has also been approved. The Federal Government and the Länder have agreed to combine their various activities and initiatives in the interests of ensuring the continuing availability of a skilled workforce and of improving the education system. Those measures, in combination with the Higher Education Pact 2020 and the action programme “The contribution of labour migration to securing the necessary pool of qualified workers in Germany” (“Beitrag der Arbeitsmigration zur Sicherung der der Fachkräftebasis in Deutschland”) and with the support of the “Alliance to advise the Federal Government in matters of workforce requirements” (“Allianz zur Beratung der Bundesregierung in Fragen des Arbeitskräftebedarfs”) will significantly strengthen Germany’s skilled workforce.
A modern structure for the science system
The Initiative for Excellence, the Higher Education Pact and the Pact for Research and Innovation have triggered dynamic developments in the German science sector. This positive development needs to be continued, so that the German science system can be among the world’s top three science systems by 2020. For this reason, in October 2008, acting in the framework of their Qualification Initiative for Germany, the Federal Government and the Länder agreed to continue the Higher Education Pact 2020 as necessary, and to enhance their joint Initiative for Excellence and the Pact for Research and Innovation, following suitable evaluation, in the interests of offering young scientists and researchers in Germany internationally competitive conditions.
Taking an active role in shaping european research policy – networking and building even greater international orientation
In light of global challenges, research activities must have a strong international orientation. The Federal Government’s strategy for internationalization of the science sector addresses this need. It is strengthening international cooperation and taking an active role in shaping European research policy. Germany plans to stay this course, in the interests of further concentrating relevant international and European resources. Research and innovation competencies will continued to be strengthened via international cooperation, especially via internationally coordinated research agendas and privileged technology partnerships. Furthermore, Germany, as a key stakeholder, will help shape the European Research Area.
EVENTS [Table of Contents]
The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX)
Toronto, 2 December, 2009
This is Canada’s most important gathering of the key players in the innovation economy. Over the course of one action-packed day, participants will be exposed to the people, ideas and inspiration who are defining and succeeding in the technology-based innovation milieu. CIX provides a showcase for the country’s most compelling new technology inventions, and a platform for partnerships and transactional relationships with counterparties from Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. CIX plays the role of providing critical insight through its sessions, and great facilitated and informal networking events designed to enable investors to discover each other as well as Canada’s next great companies. CIX culminates in the presentation of Canada’s top 20 Innovative Companies and participants in CIX vote live to choose the CIX 09 “Canadian Innovation Leader".
Stimulating Recovery: The Role of Innovation Management
New York, 6-9 December, 2009
Organized by ISPIM and hosted by The Fashion Institute of Technology this symposium will bring together academics, business leaders, consultants and other professionals involved in innovation management. The symposium format will include facilitated themed sessions for academic and practitioner presentations together with interactive workshops and discussion panels. Additionally, the symposium will provide excellent networking opportunities together with a taste of local New York culture.
CALL FOR PAPERS - Innovation, Knowledge and Entrepreneurship: DRUID-DIME Academy Winter Conference
Aalborg, Denmark, 21-23 January, 2010
The conference is open for all PhD students working within the broad field of economics and management of innovation and organizational change. We invite papers aiming at enhancing our understanding of the dynamics of technological, structural and institutional change at the level of firms, industries, regions and nations. DRUID is the node for an open international network - new partners are always of interest (we of course encourage DRUID Academy PhD students and students connected to the ETIC PhD program to submit an abstract as well). Do not hesitate to apply even if you have not been in contact with DRUID previously.
Pecs, Hungary, 24-26 May, 2010
An increasingly complex array of actors is involved in today‟s regional development agendas. They range from private firms and labour organizations to government and non-government institutions. Despite the growing awareness in the public and academic domains of the multi-actor nature of regional development, we still often struggle to fully comprehend the mutually interactive strategies and practices which cut across regions and countries. In light of recent upheavals in the global economic and financial system, such an understanding will be critical to future studies of regional development. Indeed this interest in actors, institutions and organizations in regional development needs to be properly grounded in the wider contexts of global change in economic imperatives, transnational working and cooperation and environmental concerns. To some regions, these contexts provide favourable and timely frameworks for action and initiatives. Other regions may find these contexts increasingly challenging and threatening. Taken together, understanding better these broader contexts can provide important insights into regional development potential, planning and practices and establish the agenda for research and policy. We welcome papers from all – academics, students and those working in policy and practice. The event is inclusive and offers major networking opportunities for scholars in our field.
CALL FOR PAPERS - Opening Up Innovation: Strategy, Organization and Innovation
London, 16-18 June, 2010
The DRUID Summer Conference 2010 intends to explore new theoretical, empirical and methodological advances in industrial dynamics, contributing novel insights and stimulating a lively debate about how economic systems and organizations evolve. The conference will include an exciting programme of plenary debates where internationally leading scholars take stands on contemporary issues within the overall conference theme. Both senior and junior scholars are invited to participate and contribute to the conference with a paper.
Madrid, Spain, 20-22 Oct, 2010
Innovation is understood as a resultant of a complex and dynamic process related to interactions between University, Industry and Government, in a spiral of endless transitions. The Triple Helix approach, developed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff, is based on the perspective of University as a leader of the relationship with Industry and Government, to generate new knowledge, innovation and economic development. The main theme of our conference is “Triple Helix in the Development of Cities of Knowledge, Expanding Communities and Connecting Regions”. Submissions on Triple Helix related topics are encouraged and shall focus on the following subthemes: S1 Economic growth and social development in knowledge-based cities and connecting regions: challenge and future; S2 Triple Helix study; S3 Triple Helix in action: unlocking economic and social crises; S4 University in regional innovation and social development; S5 Government and public policy in the Triple Helix era; S6 Enterprises and industrial development in a knowledge-based city or region.
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