Public policy and the innovation agenda

There is no clear formula, and it is not a linear or predictable process. If policy-makers are unable to deal with the unpredictably and complexity of this process, they are unlikely to make good decisions.

We do know that there is a correlation between the education levels in society and the ability of that society to innovate at the edge of knowledge. An economy based on imitation of the advances made elsewhere requires only people with secondary and some post-secondary education. A society capable of innovation, though, needs a significant number of people with postgraduate and post-doctoral education. Canada has the largest proportion of people in the world with some post-secondary education, but when it comes to people with doctorates we are well behind the United States.

Creating and sustaining a critical mass of research excellence is a necessary base for economic takeoff. There is no substitute for excellence and for a culture that strives to achieve it.

Supportive policy without imaginative entrepreneurs and the constant interchange of ideas and people is not enough to enable robust wealth creation. How to find, enable and sustain a larger cohort of serial entrepreneurs in Canada is a challenge we have not yet met. We have too few entrepreneurs who have experienced both success and failure. In highly entrepreneurial cultures failure is accepted as part of the risk to be taken on the way to success. Canada is not yet entrepreneurial enough to embrace this attitude. It's not clear what public policy can do to change this since culture change is even more mysterious than the process of scientific revolutions. People and their relationships to history, institutions and each other are much more complex than the particles that physicists study.

The competition for talent in both knowledge creation and wealth creation will increase in the decades to come. Successful countries will need high-quality thinking about science policy. As in other policy areas this capacity takes time to grow and develop. More people educated in the history and philosophy of science, in the various 'dialects' of knowledge endeavours, who are well informed about science policy around the world will be necessary for governments and universities alike. An informed public, with people who have some understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry and the scientific method will also be required.

A culture that values free inquiry and openness to new ideas enables knowledge creation of all sorts. The commitment to exploring the frontiers of learning, the willingness to take risks and go in new directions, the ability to experiment and learn from our mistakes are among the characteristics of the human race that have enabled us to survive and thrive so far. Such a culture is also its own reward.

-- by Dr. Chaviva Hošek