Prince Edward Island set to roll out new innovation strategy targeting four key areas

Closely linked to economic development

Prince Edward Island is putting the final touches on an innovation strategy aimed at bringing provincial R&D intensity up to the Canadian average by building on four areas of niche strength in science and technology. The strategy will include a five-year action plan that includes proposed funding to achieve full implementation.

The stakes are high for Canada's smallest province which is facing a triple whammy of mounting pressure in the agriculture and fisheries sectors, an aging population and out-migration of many young islanders. PEI has a provincial gross domestic product of just $4.4 billion and 70,000 out of its population of 137,000 are engaged in the workforce.

"We're looking for significant uplift from our institutions. PEI has to change channels quickly and get communities working together from an applications perspective," says Dr Michael Mayne, DM bioscience and economic innovation within the premier's office. "Our mandate is to encourage partnerships and be outcomes driven. All applicants for funds must use this approach. We're moving further down the R&D chain and really pushing commercialization."

Mayne — who is on a two-year secondment from the National Research Council's Charlottetown-based Institute for Nutrasciences and Health (INH), where he was research director — is leading the charge for the strategy's development and eventual implementation. He accepted an invitation last August from recently elected PEI premier Robert Ghiz to take up the newly created position and is being replaced at the NRC on an interim basis by Dr Jeffrey Ziodichouski.

There are promising signs that the push towards a knowledge-based economy is having the desired effect. The NRC's presence on the island, the aggressive strategic thrust of the Univ of PEI and a handful of entrepreneurial firms are helping to boost the fortunes of the biosciences. Two multinational firms — Genzyme and Novartis — have significant operations in PEI. Not only do they provide links into Europe (Novartis) and the Boston area (Genzyme) but they add to a growing bioscience cluster that seeks to strengthen the province's agriculture and fisheries industries through higher value-added products.

"Big players are looking closely at our biosciences (assets) … they're sniffing for intellectual property," says Mayne. "Agriculture and the fisheries play key roles in the economy but they're having a hard time. We need to move them forward through innovation."

During the first seven months on the job, Mayne has been meeting with key stakeholder leaders and emphasizing the importance of niche-based clusters to grow the four sectors that have been identified as having the greatest potential. Energy is the fourth and newest priority, with wind power shaping up as the niche focus.

clusters need focus

The other three are all at different stages of maturity in terms of macro-economic generators. Aerospace is driven heavily by tax incentives, is more mature and working well with flourishing operations in engines and overhaul. One major obstacle is the lack of an engineering school in the province, prompting PEI to look outside the province to institutions such as the Univ of New Brunswick to link the aerospace industry to academic expertise.

The emerging biosciences platform is displaying strength in terms of blending together discovery-based research and commercialization through increasing collaboration between industry, government and academia. Premier Binns has even characterized the NRC-INH as PEI's oil's sands for its potential to dramatically increase provincial prosperity.

For information technology, PEI is focusing primarily on new media and gaming, which are starting to develop. Energy is the least mature and the province has to look closely as how to capture its benefits. There are huge infrastructure costs involved in developing wind energy, leading to a close examination of public-private partnerships."

Mayne says the new strategy will employ a results-based management framework and is slated for release either in advance or following the next provincial speech from the throne and Budget, due in April.

"I believe in discovery-based research but right now the feds are pushing for more applied ... In my previous job at the NRC I got my feet pretty wet in the area of economic development because the NRC plays in this area," he says. "The new (federal) government has different thinking on S&T than the previous Liberal government. We need to make innovation economically relevant and viable so that politicians can touch and feel it."

There's no doubt the stakes are high for PEI. The fisheries, forestry and agricultural sectors have all been hit hard by the rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar. By 2012, more people will be leaving the provincial workforce than entering it — a trend that's exacerbated by the increasing flow of young workers to Western Canada to tap into the resource boom. Add to that some worrying indictors on the health of PEI residents and the ingredients for a fiscal crisis are both real and pressing.

"There's a tsunami coming and we need to build a dike. Innovation is the key," says Mayne. "In areas like nutraceuticals and natural products there's a critical mass growing but they need further focus."

Efforts to build capacity in IT, aerospace and biosciences have so far been encouraging. In the past decade, Mayne says between 4,000 and 5,000 new jobs have been created, many high-paying and reliant on specialized skills. The challenge is to ensure that technical support skills underpinning those sectors are also addressed, so that the young workers who left the province for greener pastures have an economic incentive to return.

For the government, there's the challenge of paying for the innovation policies and programs required to build vibrant, growing S&T-based clusters. Raising the province's gross expenditures on R&D as a percentage of GDP to the national average of just below 2% will be expensive.

"There's not a huge amount of wiggle room. Health, the debt and roads are also priorities," says Mayne. "I want to pull PEI in line with the Canadian average (for PGERD/GDP). The premier and the Cabinet support this and I took the job with this in mind."

R$