Building an agile innovation ecosystem: Lessons from the past, plans for the future

The Past 

The answer to Canada’s lagging productivity and innovation outcomes can’t be grounded in economistic “gros bon sens”.

When it comes to innovation and productivity – a dominant topic of discussion in Canada currently – policymakers’ opinions about what works are at least in part informed by ideas that have continued to emerge in science, technology and society (STS) studies in the first half of the 20th century. This is as it should be, but Canada’s poor performance on international innovation indexes raises some concern as to whether they are using the most up-to-date evidence.

For instance, it’s fair to say that Canada’s innovation strategy builds on the idea that pure science is the key to applied research and industrial development. There is nothing original about this aspect of Canadian innovation policy. Since the 1970s, OECD’s science, technology and innovation indicators have been calculated as a function of the investment in pure and applied research and the revenues generated through IP and commercialization.

Specifically, Canada’s approach to innovation – as reflected in the National Research Centre’s current strategic plan – still revolves around a “triple-helix”, i.e. government-higher education-industry, approach to investment that takes innovation to be the outcome of a linear multistep process which, whether or not it involves invention, includes at least:

• Pure science research
• Applied research
• Industrial research, i.e., development
• Commercialization

In a sense, it is difficult to say that this linear R&D model is “wrong” or, for that matter, that it would be a mistake to invest in pure science to create economic and societal prosperity. But the triple helix is old news and, in 2025, the linear R&D model of innovation is only “right” in the sense that Newtonian physics was still “right” after the advent of Einstein’s theory of relativity: the old theory might still have done the job when it came to sending a rocket to space, say, but it was not sophisticated enough to develop lasers, nuclear reactors and GPS systems.

The study of innovation systems in the social sciences and humanities (e.g., economics, sociology, anthropology, business, history and political philosophy) is a formidably rich domain – if only one whose outcomes often get stuck in the ivory tower. On the surface, the limitations of the theoretical frameworks that underpin the linear R&D model might not be manifest, but those whose role is to engineer the type of “nuclear” solutions we need to address current societal issues agree on the need for a radical paradigm shift. Expert understanding of the nature and structure of innovation processes and the way they contribute to prosperity has evolved tremendously in the last decades alone. Unfortunately, many of the most advanced and sophisticated approaches to innovation strategy have yet to make their way to the desk of policy- and decision-makers. To fully equip Canada with the tools it needs to prosper and support innovation actors across sectors, it is crucial for policy- and decision-makers to operationalize state-of-the-art models of innovation.

Future

Since the 1980s, the paradigm in science, technology and innovation scholarship has shifted toward frameworks for innovation strategy that completely overhaul the linear R&D model. Drawing on complexity and systems theory, the new “systemic” models available to shape innovation strategy and policy converge in positioning research within a broader ecosystem that includes not only government, universities, and industry, but also people, communities (including a nonprofit sector that makes up about 10% of Canada’s economy) and their environments.

For policy- and decision makers, the challenge of articulating and deploying holistic and systemic models of innovation that place societal and environmental concerns on a par with economic priorities is urgent, to say the least: the time when one could still pretend that the benefits of science and innovation strategy are the prerogative of industrial progress and would trickle down to society is long gone. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our collective awareness of the challenges associated with emerging global crises and wicked societal problems has led to the realization that new methodologies are needed at the foundations of our efforts to address innovation, productivity and other economic issues. Just like the other problems our societies face today – from global health and ecological emergencies to housing crises and international political uncertainty – innovation and productivity challenges are rooted in complex systems dynamics that require sophisticated policy tools that do justice to social and human realities much beyond what the linear R&D model could ever deliver.

It is time for Canada’s government to set out and adopt an innovation strategy that goes beyond 20th-century economic and industrial theories and leverages a “whole-of-science”, mission-oriented approach to prosperity. This will involve at least three key actions.

First, to harness complexity, governments need to invest in that portion of the scientific enterprise that can handle systems dynamics and emergence. This means engaging social sciences and humanities research in all the places they are needed to support transformative policy and mission-oriented innovation. Social and human research expertise is needed to articulate embedded social and human knowledge, to collect and analyse relevant data about our ecosystems, to translate evidence needed to inform policy, and to engage key actors in co-creation and deliberative processes that deliver  policy solutions that can achieve Canada’s vision of wealth and well-being. Social science and humanities research, including but not limited to political and behavioural economics, should be involved at every step when it comes to defining societal missions and building the type of ecosystem intelligence required for their apt implementation.

Second, to bolster ecosystem capacity, governments must invest strategically to mobilize the readily available skills and expertise and to bolster the impact of those who, in parallel to social and human researchers in higher education, are most conversant and proficient with the mission-oriented, systems approaches and methods adapted to navigating social complexity and emergence. According to Social Innovation Canada, there are over 100 accelerators and innovation labs addressing housing, climate and health challenges, some 60 post-secondary institutions offering training in social innovation, and over 200 community-based platforms that support the type of ecosystem connectivity needed to bolster societal missions such as housing and environmental transitions. These valuable innovation assets should be supported and deployed as part of a strategic effort to build capacity for the type of social and public innovation needed most urgently.

Finally, governments should act to increase synergies between academic researchers and practitioners of social innovation and community-based systems change. Connectivity between key actors across innovation ecosystems is a foundational principle of mission-oriented innovation policy and governments have a critical role to play in creating the collective conditions for actors around major societal projects. Collaboration between research and practice in the public and social innovation space is presently sparse at best, and Canada’s aspiration should be to fully integrate social and human research across its social and public innovation ecosystems. Canada’s communities and businesses will benefit from innovation infrastructure that integrates the principles involved in defining, coordinating and implementing missions, and this starts with making sure that key actors across the relevant innovation ecosystems are adequately connected.

The linear economic model for R&D has long been obsolete. It was developed with reference to a subset of the research enterprise that excludes too many fields and disciplines. It is not designed to be applied in a context where science and innovation are understood to be elements of broader systems. It is not sufficient for addressing wicked societal challenges.

The innovation strategy that Canada needs should be informed by the best evidence we have. And the best evidence about innovation ecosystems tells us that it’s time for Canada to move away from the “Newtonian” logic of R&D and to embrace an “Einsteinian” approach to the systemic, complex and emergent nature of societal and economic challenges.

The Canadian Collaborative for Society, Innovation and Policy is pleased to announce the fourth edition of the Canadian Forum for Social Innovation hosted by the University of Calgary, in June 2026 will help turn this vision of a fully empowered innovation ecosystem into reality for Canadians.