Ontario is the top performing province on Conference Board of Canada's innovation report card Français
Province maintains a "B" grade for innovation performance
OTTAWA, May 14, 2018 /CNW/ - Once again, Ontario is the top-ranked province, earning a "B" overall, on The Conference Board of Canada's How Canada Performs: Innovation report card which compares the Canadian provinces against advanced countries. Ontario falls two places—from fifth to seventh—among 26 regions (10 provinces and 16 countries), as stronger performances by Switzerland and Austria launch those countries into the upper tier.
"Ontario remains a top performer when it comes to innovation, doing better than Canada as a whole," said Paul Preston, Director, Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, The Conference Board of Canada. "The province does very well on entrepreneurial activity and public R&D—two important elements of innovation performance. However, Ontario's persistently weak grades on business R&D, patents, and labour productivity suggest that the province continues to struggle with commercialization and reaping the larger benefits of innovation."
HIGHLIGHTS
- Ontario earns a "B" grade overall on innovation and ranks seventh among 26 jurisdictions, after Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the United States, Finland and Austria.
- The province scores "A+" on entrepreneurial ambition, "A" on public R&D, and "B" grades on scientific articles and enterprise entries.
- With public R&D spending of 0.96 per cent as a share of GDP, Ontario is among the highest spenders in the world.
Ten indicators were used to measure the provinces' innovation performance. This includes indicators in three categories:
- innovation capacity—i.e., investments and resources that provide a foundation for research, idea-generation, and insight-sharing (including public R&D, researchers engaged in R&D, and scientific articles);
- innovation activity—i.e., entrepreneurial ambition, investments in ICT and venture capital, and business R&D activity that help to transform ideas into commercialized products, services and processes; and
- innovation results—i.e., evidence of the impact of research, innovation and commercialization as captured in patents, new ventures, and overall labour productivity.
Ontario receives one "A+", one "A", two "B"s, three "C"s and three "D" grades.
Ontario earns an "A+" and ranks first among all jurisdictions for entrepreneurial ambition (the percentage of the working age population who report being engaged in early-stage entrepreneurial activity). With 17.4 per cent of Ontarians reporting some kind of early-stage entrepreneurial activity, the province improves over its previous "A" grade and eighth place ranking in the previous report card.
Ontario receives an "A" on public R&D. With spending of 0.96 per cent as a share of GDP, Ontario is among the top-ranked in the world, behind only Nova Scotia, Denmark, Quebec and Sweden.
Ontario receives fewer "B" grades on this report card versus the previous one—falling from five to just two. The province receives "B"s on scientific articles, measured as the number of peer-reviewed scientific articles per million population, and enterprise entry.
Although Ontario's average venture capital investment as a share of GDP climbed substantially—from 0.11 to 0.15 per cent as a share of GDP—the province slips from a "B" to a "C" grade given dramatically stronger performance of top-ranked United States. The province also receives "C" grades for researchers engaged in R&D and ICT investment. Ontario is the top-ranked provinces on ICT investment, but trails 10 of the 16 international peers. The province places 7th out of 26 jurisdictions on researchers engaged in R&D (including researchers employed in business, higher education and government) but only gets a "C" grade relative to top-ranked Finland.
Like most provinces, Ontario gets poor grades on business enterprise research and development (BERD), patents, and labour productivity. While it ranks second among the provinces on BERD, Ontario trails 12 of the 16 comparator countries and earns only a "D" on this indicator. Likewise, on the patents indicator, Ontario is the top-ranked province but achieves only a "D" relative to international peers. On labour productivity, Ontario earns a "D" and ranks 20th among the 26 jurisdictions.
How Canada Performs is an ongoing research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada's socio-economic performance. Six performance domains are assessed: Economy, Education and Skills, Innovation, Environment, Health, and Society.
This is the second time that provincial rankings have been included in the innovation report card. Further details, including information on data sources and the methodology behind the rankings, can be found on the How Canada Performs website.
Paul Preston will present the findings from the How Canada Performs Report Card on Innovation in a live webinar on June 26.
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SOURCE Conference Board of Canada
Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]; or Juline Ranger, Director of Communications, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 431, E-mail: [email protected]
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