international

UK Moves to Support Growing Social Innovation Sector
The United Kingdom (UK) recently announced that it will petition the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, for permission to increase the size of tax relief for social investments that address significant social issues. The proposed plan would:

Ontario officials launched a new fund-of-funds this week intended to boost capital resources for high-tech companies. The Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund is a privately led initiative, supported by federal and provincial funds. The governments of Canada and Ontario have agreed to make a combined capital commitment of $1 for every $2 secured from the private sector. Current commitments total $217.5 million CAD ($195.4 million USD), but leaders hope to match the government’s maximum match level of $300 million CAD ($269.6 million USD) in a second closing later this year. Read the announcement…

The European Union is investing € 15 billion ($20.5 billion) over the next two years toward the Horizon2020 project, an initiative designed to boost Europe's knowledge-driven economy, increase global competitiveness, and address key societal challenges. The European Commission has declared funding priorities for the project and opened submissions for the 2014 budget.

Battelle Memorial Institute and R&D Magazine have released their annual Global Funding Forecast, an assessment of global political and economic impacts on worldwide industrial research. The report notes that although global R&D spending by leading countries has remained virtually unchanged since the Great Recession, the flows of innovation research have changed substantially. Research collaboration between countries has increased markedly and the scope of research partnerships, particularly between Southeast Asia and the U.S. and European Union, has broadened significantly. The result is a growing global innovation ecosystem that leverages national advantages in tech commercialization and industry engagement to increase the economic return on public and private R&D investments.

University-industry collaborations need a paradigm shift from the traditional one-way knowledge transfer model to a two-way knowledge co-creation model, according to a new report from the Big Innovation Centre (BIC) — Collaborate to Innovate. The authors propose that a shift toward a knowledge co-creation paradigm focused on holistic relationships between university and industry, specifically small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), will have more significant economic and societal impacts than the traditional one-way knowledge transfer that relies primarily on patents, licensing and startup formation. Although focused on the innovation ecosystem in the UK, the paper addresses four universally important questions on how to achieve successful university-business collaborations via a co-creation model:

U.S. adults are less proficient in basic reading, math and problem-solving skills than many of their international counterparts, according to the first Survey of Adult Skills from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD found that, overall, U.S. adults possessed below average proficiency in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. In most of the countries included in the study, younger adults entering the workforce generally possessed better skills than older adults leaving the workforce, leading to better prepared labor pools over time. In the U.S., however, adults 55-65 years old performed at levels close to the international average, while younger adults ranked among the least skilled in the 24 countries surveyed.

The Social Venture Connection (SVX), a new impact investing platform in Toronto, was launched to catalyze debt and equity investments in socially driven ventures that have demonstrable social and/or environmental impact and the potential for financial return. Developed by the MaRS Discovery District, SVX provides local, socially minded accredited investors (e.g., high net-worth individuals, foundations and financial institutions) a savvy web tool to make investments in vetted nonprofit or for-profit organizations.

While the conditions of the U.S. economy continue to hinder growth, stability and efficiency in the financial markets and a positive assessment of public institutions have helped improve the nation’s competitiveness and reverse a four-year downward trend. In World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index 2013-14, the U.S. moved into the number five spot, up from seventh last year, overtaking the Netherlands and Sweden. For the second year in a row, Switzerland, Singapore and Finland held onto their first, second and third rankings, respectively.

The European Commission is offering a €500,000 (US$655,700) prize to accompany designation of an "iCapital" — the single city in the Union, which is building the best "innovation ecosystem", connecting citizens, public organizations, academia, and business. Should the U.S. federal government follow suit? Probably not without modifications.