One Month of Deep Dives
A quick recap and a request for feedback
Tomorrow marks one month of writing Orbit Policy’s Deep Dives! In that time I’ve covered a fair bit of ground, posting 11 different pieces, some longer essays as well as a few shorter Quick Hits posts.
I thought now would be a great time to recap those posts and ask for your feedback. The Deep Dives newsletter is a work in progress. It is partly a place for me to be able to explore issues and policy areas through writing - that is how I think best. But I also want it to be a useful resource for folks working in, or thinking about, the innovation and technology space. If you can spare a couple of minutes to fill in a short survey then I would really appreciate it.
If you or your organization would be interested in collaborating on the kind of topics that I cover here then please do get in touch too! Whether it is trend research, landscape scans, and background briefings, strategic advice and stakeholder engagement, or some bigger research papers, then I’d love to have a chat with you! You can read a bit more about me and Orbit Policy here or just drop me an email at tom@orbitpolicy.com.
Finally, if you have been enjoying the newsletter then please do share it with colleagues or share it on social media!
Recap - Longer Essays and Select Quick Hits
My second Deep Dives post, this touched on an issue I’m very interested - state capacity. Taking a lead from Dan Breznitz’s series in the Globe & Mail, I also highlighted some of the other work going on in the UK and USA on how to build and exercise state power in an age we really need governments to step up to the array of challenges we face.
My first essay followed the excellent Global Ecosystem Summit held in Toronto at the start of the month. I zoomed in on one thread around what the aim of an innovation ecosystem is. Is it to “win” - with a focus on short-term competition and a zero-sum race for talent and funding for the companies in the ecosystem - or is it about building sustainable, long-term prosperity for a region as a whole, even outside of the innovation and tech sector?
The second essay covered policy coherence - the idea that if governments are going to achieve their goals, then they must have the capacity to design, implement, and monitor coherent and integrated policies and that requires identifying trade-offs and reconciling their impacts. This is one where I think Canada is really failing on a number of fronts. In this post, I looked at economic security and immigration as two examples, but later posts have tackled it from other angles.
A more thematic Quick Hits - this looked at a few different recent pieces that discuss how the established neoliberal, pro-market paradigm is coming under greater scrutiny, in Canada and internationally, but what replaces it is far from certain.
Currently my most-read post, this essay looked at Canada’s AI strategy and the need for some realism about where we can really win. Currently, a comparatively small pool of money is spread over a huge range of priorities - meaning that we might not be able to achieve much in any part of the AI value chain. Instead, I argue we need to approach AI (and other areas) with a clear vision of what we want Canada’s economy to look like in 10-15 years. For me, this should be grounded in the principles of building an inclusive economy. Taking that kind of framework helps us make some of the difficult trade-offs we need to make if we are going to succeed in any area of investment.
A Quick Hits/ essay hybrid - this post looked at the Adoption Readiness Levels Framework. Given commercializing innovations and inventions is one of our chief challenges in Canada, it is worth looking at other models globally and thinking through how they could be applied here. This is one that I think has a lot of potential. The rest of the post included some Quick Hits reading recommendations. I’d love to hear if you prefer this kind of short essay/Quick Hits format more than the other posts.
Finally, my most recent essay looked at the two newly launched AI adoption programs from the federal government. These, I feel, lack clarity about what their goals are and how they relate to other government initiatives that are somewhat at odds with speeding up AI adoption - another issue of policy coherence. Without clear goals, and an overarching vision of what we are looking to achieve, real accountability is impossible and we will remain stuck with programs that do not move the needle.
I hope you’ve been enjoying these posts. I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them. Again, any feedback through the survey is very welcome!
I hope you have a great weekend!