Today, the Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) released a major report that looked at Canada’s state of innovation as compared to the global economy. This is the second public report the council has released; it looks at how Canada’s performance has changed since 2008, allows readers to understand how innovation happens in Canada, and gives recommendations on what we can do in the future to improve our innovation.
Most of what can be found in this report isn’t that new – it covers a lot of the same bases that other reports in the past few years have covered, and show the same strengths and weaknesses when it comes to Canada’s state of innovation. That said, there are a couple of interesting things that make it worthwhile to take a look at it.
Canada is still at the top of providing indirect support for R&D to businesses. That said, Canada is below the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average as far as actual business expenditures on R&D goes – which is no surprise when you remember a number of the other studies that have been done the past few years.
That’s not to say that Canada hasn’t improved their business expenditures on R&D, just that other countries are increasing their expenditures at a greater rate than Canada is.
The other challenge that Canada is facing is (as mentioned, again, in other studies previously), Canada’s ability to create profit from innovation, and bringing the knowledge garnered through innovation to the market.
The report goes on to state that the in some industries, Canada actually ranks higher than the majority of countries when it comes to R&D, including: manufacturing, paper and lumber, communication services, utilities, IT services. Speaking of Canadian industries that are involved somehow in R&D, one of the most interesting bits to come out of this report is the following diagram that outlines what industries have changed in the past few years:
If you’re interested on reading more in depth about the findings of the STIC, the full report can be read here.