News That Matters To You

By Mark Lowey
Canada's fragmented and disconnected health care system faces a deepening talent crisis and innovation stall due to outdated bureaucracies, little multidisciplinary collaboration and a lack of accountability, industry and network leaders said at Research Money's annual conference. Integrating talent and technology adoption, and humanities and social sciences into training is essential to improving patient-centered care and addressing workforce failures.

By Andrew Maxwell
Canadian manufacturing leaders are operating on an obsolete framework as geopolitical shifts and AI-driven acceleration redefine industrial strategy, says innovation expert Andrew Maxwell at York University. He argues that companies must move beyond mere technology acquisition to adopt a model of organizational re-architecture and adaptive learning to survive in an era of permanent volatility.

By Andrew Maxwell
Canada consistently invents world-class technologies and scientific breakthroughs, only to lose their economic value to foreign companies, due to a structural focus on discovery over adoption. In an ongoing series on innovation, Andrew Maxwell of York University argues that to secure future prosperity, Canada must shift its innovation policy toward controlling downstream value through better institutional design and strategic scale.

By Mark Lowey
Canadian firms are frequently sold to foreign buyers not because they are failing to grow, but because they hit a structural wall – a "scale conversation problem" – when trying to scale independently, says a study by The Impact Group and collaborators. The study found that domestic support systems often fail to provide the necessary timely capital, customers and leadership talent at the critical transition from scaling company to global competitor.

By Andrew Maxwell
Andrew Maxwell from the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University says a national Post-Secondary Institution Network can bridge the gap between Canadian manufacturing research and industrial adoption. By adopting global best practices, this framework can boost national productivity and competitiveness through integrated testbeds, living labs, integrated skills training, commercialization support and outcome-based funding.

By Mark Lowey
Federal policymakers ignored established innovation cluster success factors and failed to integrate regional expertise in establishing cluster networks, policy experts David Wolfe and Travis Southin said in a study of the government's innovation clusters program. They argue that this systemic inability to learn from past policy mistakes reflects a deeper institutional flaw in the federal public service.

By Andrew Maxwell
Canada must shift its focus from AI research discovery to widespread deployment and experimentation to spark a national productivity revolution, says Andrew Maxwell at York University. By treating AI as a transformative system rather than just a technology sector, Canada can integrate AI tools into public operations to drive meaningful economic and social progress, he says.

By Mark Lowey
The federal innovation clusters program suffers from a critical lack of public service institutional memory, as government officials failed to learn and apply lessons from a previous national cluster initiative, say policy experts David Wolfe and Travis Southin. This disconnect hinders the clusters' effectiveness and their impact on national productivity, and underscores the need for a coordinated and integrated approach to innovation policy.

By Mark Lowey
Politicized regional agendas sidelined strategic technology and productivity goals in the federal innovation clusters program, resulting in policymakers repeating the mistakes of a previous national supercluster initiative, according to a study by David Wolfe and Travis Southin. This lack of institutional memory in the public service suggests that Canada's approach to industrial clusters requires a fundamental rethink to actually drive economic growth.