The Conference Board of Canada issued a report on Tuesday on the state of Canada’s innovative abilities. Unfortunately, although we have the world’s best R&D funding program, we do not seem to rank very well on the global scale of taking the innovation we do and profiting from it. In fact, we ranked “14th among 17 industrialized nations for its ability to turn knowledge into money-making products and services.”
One of the sources of the problem suggested is that Canadian companies feel insecure about purchasing innovative products from other Canadian companies – and if a company cannot sell its products to other Canadian companies, then global companies start to question the value of the products.
Another source of the problem that is suggested is that Canada exports raw materials to be processed elsewhere instead of processing it here ourselves.
The report is not all bad news, however. It has been suggested that biofuels is an industry where Canada could become a leader.