Archive | Industry Clusters for Economic Prosperity

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Scott Stern is the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology at MIT, and co-founder of the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (MIT REAP). Richard Florizone is the President of Dalhousie University, which is a partner in Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, and chair of the Nova Scotia MIT REAP team.

Can Canada’s disparate regions be harnessed to be more than the sum of their parts? This is the defining question for Canada’s economy and the vision behind the federal government’s recently launched superclusters initiative.

Rather than a “superboondoggle,” Canada’s Innovation Superclusters Initiative lays the foundations for nurturing and extending the global leadership of this country’s regional economic strengths.

While the concept of clusters has been around for a while, too many regional development initiatives simply try – and very often fail – to be “the next Silicon Valley.” Rather than having all regions chasing after the same “next big thing,” research shows that clusters prosper by building on existing advantages. Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

On the morning of Feb. 15, federal Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains strode to the stage at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa with his jacket off, sleeves rolled up. The room was full of CEOs and entrepreneurs, academics and reporters, all waiting to hear who was about to win the federal lottery.

Mr. Bains was there to announce the five groups chosen to share the spoils of one of his government’s signature economic initiatives: the $950-million supercluster program. First, though, he had some explaining to do. “This comes up time and time again: What is a supercluster?” he said.

“I know it’s a jargony term,” he acknowledged, before offering a quick explanation: “It’s a made-in-Canada Silicon Valley that will create tens of thousands of jobs.” Continue Reading →

iPolitics.ca

The Liberal government’s $950 million supercluster program is being touted as a good news story Friday – despite ongoing hesitation about what comes next for the five winning projects, stakeholders say.

“It can’t just be about a billion-dollar cheque,” said Jamison Steeve, executive director of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. “There’s an actual positive force of the government, that is as an organizer, as convener and as a cajoler.”

The five supercluster winners were announced Thursday and are distributed fairly evenly across the country, with hubs being located in British Columbia, the Prairies, Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario. This is causing a bit of eyebrow raising within the tech circle, he said. Continue Reading →

http://nationalpost.com/

Recipients of Superclusters cash don’t have to persuade consumers of the value of what they produce. They just have to be good at lobbying the federal Liberals

If you were to leave $950 million at the corner of Bloor and Yonge in downtown Toronto — in packets of twenties, it would create a pile roughly 1.45 metres square by 2.6 metres high — I can guarantee you the result would be a substantial boost to economic activity.

People in the area would pick up the money and spend it on goods and services. With such a sudden influx of cash in search of something to spend it on, factories would have to step up production; distributors and retailers would take on staff.

These new hires would spend their wages on more goods and services, leading to yet more new hires and so on. With such “spin-offs” included, the economic impact of dumping all that cash on the ground could be multiples of the initial outlay. Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The federal government unveiled the winners of its flagship innovation funding program on Thursday, committing $950-million to five industry consortiums drawn from hundreds of companies, research institutions and industry groups that don’t typically collaborate but that Ottawa hopes will create economic growth by combining forces.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said the goal was to create “a made-in-Canada Silicon Valley” that will add billions of dollars to the GDP and get businesses to invest heavily in research and development – and create 50,000 jobs.

The winners represented a broad cross-section of industry and academic players, which Mr. Bains said was the government’s intent. “This was about seeing how the private sector can step up,” he said in an interview. “We wanted to see more collaboration … more ambition” on the part of Canadian industry. Continue Reading →

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

OTTAWA — The federal government will kick off the centrepiece of its innovation agenda Wednesday by officially launching a program that will disburse $950-million to as many as five “supercluster” initiatives geared toward creating high-paying jobs in fast-growing sectors.

Initial applications for the funds will be due July 21 from industry-led consortiums in eight high-potential sectors: advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean technology, digital technology, health-bioscience, clean resources, infrastructure and transportation. Shortlisted applicants will have until Oct. 20 to submit detailed proposals, and the government plans to select the winners by year’s end.

“This initiative is about government partnering with industry, academia and communities to build on our strengths to develop the economy and the jobs of the future,” Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains said in an interview. Continue Reading →

http://www.ottawasun.com/

Perhaps we should be a little insulted. There’s a section in Wednesday’s federal budget that highlights how a multitude of measures aimed at accelerating innovation are supposed to work.

The government wants us to create innovation superclusters — “dense areas of business activity” capable of attracting the very best talent and companies from around the world. To give us an idea of what these look like, the budget lists four urban areas that have already achieved this distinction: California’s Silicon Valley, Berlin, Tel Aviv and the Toronto-Waterloo corridor.

A nod in the direction of the capital region would have been nice. While it’s true Ottawa and Gatineau long ago lost the distinction of being the planet’s most important supercluster in matters of telecommunications technology, the cities’ innovators are mounting an impressive comeback. Continue Reading →