Thinking about... Shareholder Primacy and Innovation

Exploring Lenore Palladino's work in the Canadian context.

In today’s post, I’ll share some recent thoughts on shareholder primacy and innovation. As I mentioned in Friday’s book roundup, I’m increasingly convinced that tinkering at the margins and fiddling with our innovation programs is a near-useless exercise unless it’s part of a broader suite of economic reforms. 

I’ve long argued that we need to focus much more on the actual outcomes for people and communities. To do that, we must recognize some of the broader structural forces influencing our economy and hindering innovation that benefits everyone. As Lenore Palladino explored in her book Good Company: Economic Policy After Shareholder Primacy, the ways shareholder primacy creates specific incentives to extract rather than to innovate are a key part of that picture. 

If we want different outcomes, we need to explore how shareholder primacy and financialization more broadly influence the performance of Canada’s innovation economy. I’m still reflecting on this topic and haven’t fully developed my ideas, so it’s a perfect fit for this “Thinking about…” series.

This series is for paid subscribers only. If you’d like to support my work as well as get access to these posts and the full archive of paywalled essays, then I’m doing a Summer Sale on annual memberships right now:

It is the support of paid subscribers that enables me to spend the time needed to write this newsletter. For those of you who are already subscribed, a big thank you!

Shareholder Primacy and Innovation