When you message on your BlackBerry or let your GPS find your destination, do you think of innovation? You should. Innovation lies at the heart of modern competitiveness. It drives growth. It improves productivity and living standards. It gives consumers new choices. It is the answer to the question of how a high-wage economy such as Canada's can compete with emerging countries with low costs of production.
The problem is that Canada is not an innovation leader, Canadian business invests far less in innovation than many of their foreign competitors, and the competition is about to get tougher as China and India start investing in targeted innovation. It's time to discuss Canada's innovation deficit.
Innovation is the ability to create new products and services, to produce existing products in new ways, to develop new markets. To get a perspective on the innovation landscape, the usual starting point is investment in research and development by government and the private sector. What is surprising is their divergent paths over the past decade, with rising government spending on R&D as a proportion of the economy, mainly through university research, and falling business-sector R&D spending relative to the economy's size.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Innovation is our hidden deficit - The Globe and Mail
Author: Kevin Lynch
