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
