Charles’s favourite readings from 2021

I read a lot of about innovation policy for my work, and a daily newsletter I run. Here is my list of the 10 most interesting publications I stumbled across in 2021.

Source: Unsplash

1. If you aren’t following the missions work coming out of the
   OECD, you’re missing out. It is providing much needed nuance in this area around implementation, and lessons-learned from its member countries. While it has several case studies, this overview piece with four archetypes of mission-oriented approaches is maybe my most shared article of the year.
2. In a similar vein, as countries look to duplicate US-DARPA or adopt a broader-mission-oriented approach, the UK government has published two pieces that I think can guide policymakers. The first is from the Houses of Commons Committee on Science and Tech on evidence for its new research funding agency ARIA.
3. … and the other piece from them is the accompanying evidence for the UK’s Innovation Strategy. The deep discussion on how to approach missions after it already has experience in this area from its 2017 Industrial Strategy is useful and unique.
4. McKinsey publishes lots of beautiful and insightful reports. Two stood out for me this year. Their piece on the future of work after COVID brings together many of the major trends in this area that I’d seen separately.
5. … and ‘Getting tangible about intangibles’ demonstrates the importantance of intangibles for the growth of America’s top companies/sectors, and productivity in general
6. The US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends report is always a fascinating read. It comes out every four years when there’s a new president, and this one is again one of the most interesting pieces of foresight you’ll get your hands on.
7. Effects of Big Tech Acquisitions on Start-up Funding and Innovation is self-explanatory. It argues against short-term negative effects of big tech start-up acquisitions because they find there’s an increase in VC investment following them. How this plays out though in a smaller economy (e.g. Canada), and the long-term is very different of course and requires more research.
8. The American Jobs Plan was the precursor of ambitious policy recommendations coming out of the White House before the Infrastructure Bill was passed… it is full of interesting policy interventions! Most notabe for me, it includes the idea of regional innovation hubs, which seems to stem from a 2019 Brookings/ITIF
   paper on Growth Centres (a favorite of mine).
9. What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about Innovation is almost a summary of Dan Breznitz‘s book Innovation in Real Places. The crux of his argument is no one should try to replicate Silicon Hyphen models of innovation and rather focus on different ‘stages’ of innovation he identifies, and creating more equal form of growth seen in SV and the like. A big takeaway for me though from the book is his distinction between industrial policies and innovation policies: Industrial policies require intimately understanding an industry, and building competitive advantage around existing customers, products and business models; Innovation policies start with the assumption that you have no clue what the industry, customers, products or business models are, and instead focus on the broad-based supports innovators need to succeed.
10. Finally, Big is beautiful (the Canadian version) makes the case for the importance of big companies in the Canadian economy. It shows how they pay higher wages, invest more in R&D, are more productive, recruit more women, and all sorts of other positives… the things we want from companies to be more competitive! The original book on the subject from Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind focused on the US. If they’re looking to replicate more of their research in the Canadian context, I’d love to see a Canadian version of the Growth Centres piece.