ABOUT THE CANADA 2020 INNOVATION PROJECT
We know that to be competitive, Canada must innovate more — or risk being left behind. With this in mind, Canada 2020 launched its Innovation Project, devoted to studying and discussing Canada’s innovation agenda — the risks, the opportunities, and key factors involved in making Canada a more innovative nation.
We launched Phase 1 of this project in June 2016, with our ‘Being Innovative’ event. We also convened a large team of Canadian policy makers, business and community leaders and innovators to examine how to make Canada a global leader in innovation.
From these events, we developed an outline for the Canada 2020 Innovation Project: a plan to define and promote innovation in Canada through research, roundtable discussions, surveys, measurement and public engagement. We decided the project should be inclusive, collaborative and, above all, innovative.
To ensure the Innovation Project is itself innovative, the consultative process has been designed to be agile, organic, and ever-changing. Canada 2020 doesn’t believe the discussion around innovation in Canada can conclude in a set amount of time — it is a conversation that continues, and builds on itself. This discussion paper is a part of the ongoing conversation.
Since the project’s launch, Canada 2020 has hosted three major conferences, each designed to explore important topics affecting Canada’s innovation agenda. We traveled to Silicon Valley to hear from innovative Canadian entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders there . Over the summer of 2016, Canada 2020 also travelled to eight Canadian cities to speak with key stakeholders in sectors ripe for innovation. While the sectors themselves were very different, common themes emerged: talent and immigration, availability of venture capital and Canadians’ aversion to risk. You can read more about those discussions at www.innovationproject.ca
While these conversations were invaluable, they are just the starting point of an important discourse around innovation in Canada. Not all of these discussions will be hosted by Canada 2020 and we look forward to learning from the many conversations and reports being generated by other think tanks, academic institutions and governments.
Phase 2 of Canada 2020’s Innovation Project documented the findings of the project to date; the 3rd Annual Canada 2020 Conference in November 2016 marked the start of this more public discourse around innovation in Canada, what it means and where our country needs to go.
To stimulate this conversation, we presented a series of 10 “Big Ideas” to help grow and support innovation in Canada. We hope that some of these ideas, together with our ongoing conferences and roundtable discussions, will lead to the kind of passionate and informed debates that Canada 2020 was mandated to facilitate.
Table of contents
- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- CHAPTER 1: INNOVATION INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER 2: MEASURING INNOVATION
- CHAPTER 3: INNOVATION BY SECTOR
- CHAPTER 4: CREATING BIG IDEAS TO DRIVE INNOVATION
- CHAPTER 5: TEN BIG IDEAS
- Big Idea 1 – Creation of a Parliamentary Coherence Officer
- Big Idea 2 – Data: Open, Shared, Stewarded and Transparent
- Big Idea 3 – Thicken Labour Markets
- Big Idea 4 – Re-invent firm and infrastructure financing in Canada
- Big Idea 5 – Create Financial Regulatory Sandboxes
- Big Idea 6 - Set “Canada 150 Goals” and “Canada 150 Prizes”
- Big Idea 7 – Canada-wide Transformation of Numeracy Skills
- Big Idea 8 – Creation of a Network of Cluster Research Centres
- Big Idea 9 – Reform Immigration with a Focus on Tradable Sectors
- Big Idea 10 – Creation of Sector-Specific Innovation Accords
- CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION