Project Objective
To help chart the future for Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) eco-system to be a strategic national asset.
The Challenge
Canada, and indeed the world, is facing the confluence of a number of wicked problems that put in question the nation’s ability to deliver, advance and sustain the economic, security and social well-being of the nation and Canadians. Climate change, disruptive technologies, pandemics, conflict, bio-diversity loss, wealth redistribution, mass migration, productivity, affordability and more are all at play. The term polycrisis has been coined to capture this notion of simultaneous, inter-dependent issues with global, national and local impacts.
Across human history – and most certainly over the past 200 hundred years or so - humankind has been able to innovate its way to new economic, health and social outcomes that have generally improved the human condition – what has been referred to as the Age of Enlightenment. The question facing the nation – and, again, the world - is the extent to which past approaches to innovation can contribute solutions to the suite of challenges we are facing today.
This CIP Project is borne out of a sense of urgency in response to these challenges. An urgency to ensure that Canada’s STI eco-system is well positioned to be a strategic national asset that can help Canada adapt in the face of these challenges. An urgency to ensure that this eco-system enables innovation at the needed scale and pace through new knowledge embodied in ideas, evidence, technology, talent, foresight and more. An urgency to ensure that its outputs are adopted and implemented through policies, jobs, products, services, critical infrastructure that, taken together, help provide a sustainable and secure future for all.
Today's STI Eco-System
There have been many studies conducted over the past 10-15years to examine Canada’s STI eco-system and the effectiveness of that system in providing the critical infrastructure to support Canadian economic growth, productivity, job creation and socio-economic benefits. Governments at all levels of Canadian federalism have attempted to both invest in and support the S&T eco-system through polices, programs and regulations.
Despite this on-going effort, there are broad indications that Canada and Canadians are not seeing a commensurate return on this investment.
It is time to stand back and provide a more holistic assessment of Canada’s capacity to innovate – whether with a technology, business, policy and/or social lens – and to do so with a fresh perspective on the ambition to which its STI eco-system system must aspire.
The Canada Innovates Project - The Approach
This Project’s objective is a bold idea – to help chart the future for Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) eco-system to be a strategic national asset. The Project also needs a bold approach to deliver on this objective.
The Project would have a finite-term (renewable) multi-year mandate of 3 years. In each year of the Project, goals would be set, research and analysis would be conducted, findings would be socialized, debated and challenged, results would be synthesized and next steps identified.
To perform the Project will require collaboration. Collaboration among think-tanks and individuals that together possess the capacity to conduct the targeted research, analysis and synthesis. Collaboration among STI thought-leaders to help set Project goals. Collaboration across Canadian society to offer constructive challenge to findings and recommendations.
In its first 3-year mandate, the Project would have three sub-objectives, generally progressed sequentially.
Expectations. To build broad consensus on the expectations that the nation should hold for its STI eco-system – and its ability to help provide Canadians with the knowledge, technology and innovation enablers that help provide sustainable, equitable solutions in the public good. These expectations include, but go well beyond, measures of investment and capacity, to address measures such as focus, voice, connectedness, balance, responsiveness and governance, that taken together, set an ambition for what could constitute a national strategic asset with commensurate national impact.
Diagnostique. Against this backdrop of expectations, informed by previous research and analysis, to examine Canada’s STI eco-system today to determine how it holds up against these expectations– and where gaps are identified, to assess the root causes for these deficiencies. This is not intended to be only an inward examination of the system, but perhaps even more importantly, it must examine how the system connects. How it connects to governments across Canadian federalism as funders, performers and as customers. How it connects to industry as wealth and job generators. And how it connects to society more generally to give voice and help build consensus to solutions that advance the nation’s social well-being.
Synthesis and Recommendations. From expectations, to diagnostique to synthesis and recommendations on the broad strokes of what needs to be done, or done differently, to ensure Canada’s STI eco-system can be the strategic national asset it needs to be. The synthesis and recommendations need to look inward – what those within the system need to do and/or do differently – and to look outward – what must governments, industry and society do and/or do differently, both to ensure the STI eco-system is suitably resourced for success and to ensure that itsoutputs are being adopted for success.
The work across all three sub-objectives would include examination of approaches taken in peer OECD nations to inform and provide insights on possible new approaches.
The Project’s outputs are intended to provide Canadians across a broad swath of interests with insights as to what needs adjustment, what we can learn from others, what is working and where from here. The Project is not intended to be an effort in advocacy for the players in Canada’s S&T eco-system – to ask governments for more investment. Rather, it is intended to provide an inclusive assessment of perhaps competing views of structural impediments to upping Canada’s innovation game, with recommendations that can be broadly supported across Canadian federalism.
A core tenet of the Project approach is to encourage and welcome difficult conversations, conversations intended to recognize and address the polarization of debate and discussions on such topics that has become far too common in today’s Canada. The Project would seek out, welcome and embrace diverse points of view.
Project Governance
The Project would be housed within a Not-for-Profit organization, the Institute for Collaborative Innovation, with a fit-for-purpose governance and management framework.
The Board of Directors would include a dozen or so thought-leaders from across Canadian jurisdictions, bringing together multiple societal, economic, demographic and policy perspectives.
The Project’s Core Team would comprise a mix of paid and volunteer staff, the latter drawing on the willingness of retired Canadians to provide the benefit of their experiences and expertise.
Resourcing of the Project would be achieved principally through philanthropic and in-kind contributions. The intent is to avoid having an agenda that can be unduly influenced by potential funders.
Next Steps
Provided there is deemed to be enough interest in the Project concept as expressed in this Synopsis, then next steps over the coming months would begin with a Problem Definition Phase that would seek to develop a consensus on the problem definition and to prepare the key questions that the Project would be charged with answering. This would be followed by a Project Definition Phase, for which key considerations are outlined in the Annex. There would be go/no-go decisions after each phase.