Decalogue offers 10-point prescription for effective innovation policy and implementation

Future prosperity not assured

Canada risks losing the full economic impact of the once-in-a-century oil sands phenomenon unless it implements rules and regulations that allow its benefits to accrue domestically. According to a new framework document to support innovation policy development and assessment, if the science, technology and innovation outputs of the oils sands were measured on the Richter scale, it would score a 10.

The oil sands are on an innovation scale equal to the development of winter wheat and the completion of the trans-Canada railway and their STI underpinning has generated massive and lucrative exports for Canada and most of it — even a significant portion of the investments — has been Canadian. Alberta is now home the country's largest concentration of S&T and new jobs but policy failure is allowing much of the long-term benefits of the oil sands to escape offshore.

"We will continue to lose the benefits unless we link oil sands impact to knowledge-based enterprise based in our jurisdiction. We have failed to create 10 or so global corporations based on our oil sands expertise and now others are taking our technological experience and eating our lunch with it," says Dr Richard Hawkins, a professor at the Univ of Calgary and principal author of Canada's Future as an Innovative Society: A Decalogue of Policy Criteria. "There are lots of embryonic companies that could exploit the technology but they need direction and sets of rules around it ... My worry is that the oil sands wave is gone. It may have already moved offshore."

Hawkins discussed the new framework — developed in conjunction with several other senior policy researchers (see chart) — at a recent Ottawa gathering held by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. His warnings on the oil sands illustrate the consequences of failing to ensure innovation policy research uptake by policy makers, leading to the squandering of an opportunity that rarely occurs in a single lifetime.

The Decalogue calls for a holistic framework that considers all aspects of innovation and offers up 10 criteria for forging a true innovation policy that will support the key objectives of any society – jobs, sustainable growth and prosperity.

"The question is not how to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship. The issue is how to create prosperity out of them and that's harder," says Hawkins. "Innovations don't create prosperity. In the financial sector, some of its greatest innovations almost sunk the global economy."

Published by the Univ of Ottawa's Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP), the Decalogue is a distillation and condensation of a paper written last year by Hawkins that called for the creation of an innovation manifesto to bridge the disconnect between innovation policy and the resource industries (R$, March 15/12). The paper evolved into its present form with input from other policy researchers with the aim of extending its reach and impact throughout the policy community and government.

Hawkins says Canada needs to develop an innovation strategy that recognizes and embraces Canada's strengths, the history of innovation and offers rules and regulations that are effective and have an aligned purpose.

"We need to link the knowledge base to the resource base. We ignore our history at our peril," says Hawkins. "Right now we're like a blue ass fly. We go after every bright light that shines in our face and then we settle for a position well down the value chain. We've lost our nerve."

Compounding the problem is Canada's waning ability to measure innovation, particularly in a systems context. Budget cuts at Statistics Canada have prompted the elimination of several newer innovation surveys designed to capture the broader inputs and outputs of innovation, making it difficult, if not impossible, to track.

"STIC (Science-Technology and Innovation Council) won't be able to publish its next version of their State of the Nation. report. There'll be an asterisk at the bottom of the pages saying no data. A lot of the key data sources are gone," says Hawkins.

The Decalogue has been designed as a conversation starter for policy makers. Hawkins says he wants to be helpful rather than critical, while people in the policy arena want their work to be recognized and successfully deployed.

"The 10 points in the Decalogue are all complementary and are based on studies that are well documented and peer reviewed," he says. "And the government says it wants to be evidence-based."

To achieve the widest possible dissemination, Conservative Senator Dr Kelvin Ogilvie — a former technology entrepreneur — has been assisting the ISSP in targeting its outreach. A supporter of the Decalogue, Ogilvie was one of several high-profile individuals who either endorsed the report or served as an expert reviewer.

To view the Decalogue, go to www.issp.uottawa.ca.

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