The future of the western industrialized economies, including Canada, depends on healthy and innovative high-tech sectors. In 2010, this realization spurred the Canadian government to commission a blue-ribbon panel charged with assessing the state of programs designed to support business and...

Based on a global survey of over 800 innovative firms, a new framework has been developed by the authors to understand innovation. Using the perspective of the innovators to explain the diversity of the strategies behind business innovation, they identified six broad patterns called games of...

This paper discusses how to improve Canada’s business innovation in order to boost labour productivity and output growth. Many general framework conditions are highly favourable to business risk-taking and innovation, including macro stability, openness, strong human capital, low corporate tax...

New trade rules being implemented as part of the on-going wave of major bilateral/regional trade agreements are impacting the complex and evolving innovation ecosystem in non-neutral ways, favouring some innovation modes (such as patent-oriented research and development), but generating...

Inventors who are considering whether and how to commercialize their inventions, can often avail themselves to evaluations and advice provided by government supported programs initiated to encourage innovation. In Canada, such a service is provided by the Canadian Innovation Centre, through its...

In January 2016, the Canadian Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (the “Ministry”) commissioned this study to gain insight into technological innovation in Canada through the lens of the United States (“U.S.”) patent system. Comprehensive patent data of the sort...

This brief examines the framing of the proposed reforms to the Investment Canada Act in the context of the digital transformation and the evolving nature of the contemporary innovation-intensive economy. It argues that the Act must go beyond considerations of the size of firms in triggering...

This paper examines a number of government policies related to competition or intellectual property and affecting innovation for their welfare effects. Its premise is that the enhancement of social welfare is included among the purposes of competition and intellectual-property laws. It also...

Today’s economy is being transformed by the application of new general purpose technologies built on the nexus of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence. At the business firm level and at the national level, the tsunami of disruption that is coming sends us a clear message:...