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The transmission of technology and knowledge to innovative Canadian manufacturing firms

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by Rad Joseph and Frances Anderson

In its recently released science and technology (S&T) strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage (Government of Canada 2007), the federal government stated its commitment to improve its ability to measure and report on the impact of federal S&T expenditures. In response to this challenge, the Policy Research Initiative (PRI) collaborated with departments and agencies that conduct and fund S&T to explore these issues. This article provides a summary from one of the PRI reports, The Transmission of Technology and Knowledge to Innovative Manufacturing Firms by Publicly Funded Research Organizations.

About this article
Background
Findings
References
About the authors

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About this article

The Statistics Canada Survey of Innovation 2005 surveyed 8,902 Canadian manufacturing establishments with at least 20 employees and at least $250,000 in revenues. Firms were asked to indicate whether they introduced a new product (good or service) or process during the three-year period covered by the survey (2002 to 2004). Based on responses to these questions, firms were classified as innovators or non-innovators. An innovative firm is one that introduced a new product or process during the survey period. The report analyzes innovative firms. Two-thirds (65.0%) of all firms were found to be innovative. The Survey of Innovation 2005 included questions that provide data for the development of indicators of in-bound diffusion. For more information on the survey, please click here.

Background

Released in May 2008, the PRI report (Anderson 2008) used international metrics developed by the OECD (OECD/Eurostat 1997) and data from the 2005 Canadian Survey of Innovation in manufacturing (Statistics Canada 2006) to examine publicly funded research organizations1 and how they transmit knowledge and technology to innovative Canadian manufacturing firms, with a view to contributing to the discussions on measuring the impact of federal S&T expenditures.

The measurement of linkages between publicly funded research organizations and innovative manufacturing firms represents only one aspect of the impact of publicly funded research organizations. The broader Policy Research Initiative project is examining measurement issues related to the wide range of impacts that publicly funded research organizations have on both the economy and society.

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Findings

Summary of survey results

Publicly funded research organizations such as universities and government research laboratories can serve the public interest by directly and indirectly helping other organizations to advance public policy goals.

The results indicate that while these organizations play a comparatively small direct role in supporting the introduction of new products and processes in most sectors, they are helping to realize a variety of objectives.

According to the survey, each of universities and federal and provincial labs were significantly less likely to be identified as an important source of information by innovative firms than were customers; suppliers; conferences, trade fairs and exhibitions; competitors; the Internet; scientific journals and trade/technical publications; industry associations; consultants; and experienced risk takers or entrepreneurs. In addition, innovative firms were significantly more likely to collaborate with other firms than with publicly funded research organizations.

However, the results vary across industries, with innovative firms in several natural resource processing and machinery and equipment sectors, as well as the aerospace sector, being significantly more likely to rate publicly funded research organizations as highly important information sources, and to collaborate with and acquire licences from them.

The one-in-ten innovators that were most strongly linked2 to publicly funded research organizations were more likely to be larger, have employees with university degrees and employees engaged in R&D, conduct a wider range of innovation activities, collaborate with other public and private organizations, and receive funding from government and from non-conventional private sources.

The innovative firms that were most strongly linked to publicly funded research organizations were significantly more likely to indicate that their innovations had a highly important impact on improving health and safety, reducing environmental impacts, meeting regulatory requirements, reducing materials or energy per unit output, and improving the quality of jobs.

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References

Anderson, Frances. 2008. The Transmission of Technology and Knowledge to Innovative Canadian Manufacturing Firms by Publicly Funded Research Organizations, Government of Canada Policy Research Initiative, Working Paper Series 036, May.

Government of Canada. 2007. Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage. Ottawa.

OECD/Eurostat. 1997. Oslo Manual: Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Data. 2nd edition. Paris.

Statistics Canada. 2006. “Survey of Innovation 2005.” The Daily. June 2. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11-001-X. Ottawa.

About the authors

Rad Joseph and Frances Anderson are with the Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division at Statistics Canada. For more information about this article, please contact sieidinfo@statcan.gc.ca.


Notes

  1. For this study, publicly funded research organizations include universities or other higher education institutions, federal government research laboratories, and provincial/territorial government research laboratories.

  2. Strongly linked innovators are considered to be those innovators that possess at least one of three in-bound diffusion characteristics with a publicly funded research organization: collaboration, licensing, or source of information of high importance.