In this high-tech and extremely competitive, globalized marketplace, innovation is everything.
A new report from the Conference Board of Canada places Canada just within the top ten among 16 peer countries around the world in terms of their performance, and earns only a “C” rating in the report. That however is an improvement from a previous evaluation of “D”.
The latest Conference Board report card is one of an ongoing series on various aspects of quality of life in Canada compared to similar developed countries.
The Conference board report defines innovation as : a process through which economic or social value is extracted from knowledge—by creating, diffusing, and transforming ideas—to produce new or improved products, services, and processes.
Quoted in a press release, Daniel Muzyka, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Conference Board of Canada says, “Innovation is important to improving productivity, economic growth, and job creation, as well as to sustaining the high quality of life that Canadians have come to expect.”
The report notes that while interest tends to focus on radical and breakthrough innovation, such as 3D-printing, quantum computing, and so on, incremental innovation is just as important in making production more efficient and more competitive.
Sweden tops; Canada 9th
The report is called “How Canada Performs-Innovation” and evaluates Canada, with 15 other peer countries, and also includeds the individual provinces within Canada within the comparison. This is the first year that provincial rankings are included in the report cards.
It rates Sweden Denmark and Finland as the top three in that order. The US is fourth and Canada as whole is 9th. Interestingly, Ontario as a province comes in fifth place.
The ratings are based on eleven indicators including
- innovation capacity—i.e., investments and resources that provide a foundation for research, idea-generation, and insight-sharing (including public R&D, researchers engaged in R&D, connectivity, and scientific articles);
- innovation activity—i.e., entrepreneurial ambition, investments in ICT and venture capital, and business R&D activity that help to transform ideas into commercialized products, services and processes; and
- innovation results—i.e., evidence of the impact of research, innovation and commercialization as captured in patents, new ventures, and overall labour productivity.
The report was released today, and is the latest in the series of “How Canada Performs” reports. The Innovation report card is the fourth of six to be produced on Canadian and provincial socio-economic performance. To date, the Economy, Education and Skills, and Health report cards have been published. The remaining report cards will follow over the year.
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