Innovation Network Policy in Canada: Federal and Provincial Differences

Innovation network policy is a type of industrial policy that first emerged in the 1980s. The goal of innovation network policy is to establish connections between private enterprises, universities, public research institutions, and other innovative organizations, thereby stimulating collaborative innovative activity. In Canada, both federal and provincial governments have fully embraced this form of industrial policy, forging inter-organizational connections through a variety of policy tools and programs. Some of these programs fund collaborative research projects and research consortia that bring together innovative organizations across the country. Others create and fund physical innovation spaces, such as innovation hubs, technology incubators, and science parks. Although many Canadian scholars have examined federal and provincial innovation network programs, none have ever compared them in a rigorous and systematic way. This dissertation seeks to conduct such a comparison; using qualitative research methods, it aims to determine whether federal and provincial innovation network programs are different from each other and, if so, why. The main finding is that federal and provincial programs are, in fact, different in two key ways. First, they target innovative organizations in different industries or areas of technology. Second, they both fund physical innovation spaces, but do so in different ways; federal programs provide these spaces with capital funding, while provincial programs provide them with operational funding. These differences in policy approach reflect the different geopolitical and historical-institutional realities facing federal and provincial governments.