Social and cultural determinants of innovation focus of new research project

A team led by two Univ of Toronto researchers have won their second major five-year grant to study the role that creativity plays in developing strong, innovative city regions. The $2.5-million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) will support the Social Dynamics of Economic Performance research project, with the three-pronged aim examining the social and creative aspects of innovation, as well as how civic associations and leaders work to develop support for innovative initiatives.

Co-directed by Dr David Wolfe and Dr Meric Gertler, the project builds upon a previous research project into clusters conducted between 2001 and 2005. Both were funded under SSHRC's Major Collaborative Research Initiative program. The new project involves seven Canadian partners, 22 Canadian co-investigators and 23 collaborators, both Canadian and international.

"The innovation agenda is the cities' agenda. It's where innovation occurs," says Wolfe, a professor with U of T's political science department. "All federal R&D programs are spent in cities but how do programs interact with other innovation players and institutes in a city region? How do they inform the innovation system?"

THREE RESEARCH THEMES

The social dynamics of innovation is the first major theme and stems from research conducted by Wolfe, Gertler and others on clusters. While it has been determined that strong clusters are central to strong innovative city regions, the new research will examine the institutions that cut across clusters and how knowledge flows from cities.

"These cities are more diverse with a better cross-pollination of ideas," says Wolfe. "Multi-cluster and multi-node cities will do better than those with just a single cluster."

The second research theme - creativity and social inclusion - stems from work conducted by Gertler and Richard Florida, a professor of public policy at George Mason Univ and author of several studies on the importance of creativity and social inclusion in developing prosperous, innovative societies. Gertler worked with Florida to extend his methodology to the Canadian context and will continue that collaboration under the SSHRC-funded project.

Wolfe notes that recent research by Florida in the US reveals that while creative and socially diverse city regions are the most successful, they are also demonstrating rising inequality and a growing income disparity among the population.

The project's third research area is governance, once again building upon previous cluster research and Wolfe's work on the role of government he recently completed for the Government of Ontario. The research will focus on governance structures outside of government and involve organizations such as civic associations and community leaders. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this level of governance in conjunction with local government is critical to garner support for initiatives that will strengthen a city region's innovative capacity.

The governance research will examine 15 cities of varying sizes, the largest being Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Five medium-sized cities and five smaller cities round out the study.

Wolfe says the greatest potential benefit offered by the project could be realized when all three research strands are integrated. Another major benefit will be the inclusion of several new researchers to work alongside those who were previously involved in cluster research.

"These bodies of research are treated discretely in the existing literature. The potential is there to look at three separate factors and integrating them together," he says. "This will be more complex in larger cities where we will have up to five researchers. Ottawa and Calgary should be a little easier."

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