To increase its capacity to innovate, Canada needs to move away from simple resource extraction in favour of valued-added design and the production of new products and services for global markets. Against a background of climate change, this pivot is essential: lowering carbon emissions is commensurate with moving to a green or even low- or no-growth economy.
Change of this nature reinforces the importance of public investment in science and technology and private investment in R&D. Robust investment in basic research (fundamental science) is essential in order to supply the pipeline of ideas that will eventually be articulated through applied research and experimental development as practical innovations that impact the world. This continuum is important.
A current challenge is that Canada is not valuing the full spectrum of its research capacity. Two gaps exist in our support of the move from research to innovation: we fail to recognize the role of design research and we insufficiently support experimental development.
OCAD Univ’s submission to the Fundamental Science Review articulated a gap in Tri-Council programs that exclude design disciplines:
Other countries have long recognized and supported design research as key to innovation policy. The Nordic countries are perhaps best known for their focus on design; the US, UK, Australia, South Korea and China have design-driven industrial innovation policies, recognizing the role design disciplines have in national economies.
A positive step has recently been taken by SSHRC to update its discipline taxonomies, a welcome development that will help modernize our approach to supporting not just design disciplines but also others that have emerged in recent years. SSHRC’s leadership will ensure that the many design researchers in Canada’s universities are able to access funding via appropriate assessment committees established with clear disciplinary expertise in these important areas. This will go a long way toward supporting diversity of research activity and output. For example, OCAD Univ’s researchers produce many outputs not typically tracked in research metrics, such as social engagement, Indigenous knowledge, diversity & equity, cultural engagement, curatorial practices, commissions, performances and sound, images and text.
While design research operates within basic and applied research, it is particularly relevant to experimental development. Experimental development is vital to ensure we take those final steps on the Technology Readiness Level scale—the steps that support market entry of new products and services.
Support for activities during the experimental development and market scale stages is important. On this Canada lags. An example is found in what the Canada Revenue Agency funds within the remit of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit system. The SR&ED guidelines do state they fund the span of activities of basic and applied research through to experimental development, using the OECD Frascati Manual definitions. Design is included. But two things stand out on the list of activities that are explicitly excluded from SR&ED support: market research or sales promotion; and research in the social sciences or the humanities.[1] Yet the Frascati Manual (2015) specifically outlines examples of basic research, applied research and experimental development in the humanities and social sciences across a range of disciplines. The examples even point to potential commercial applications.
On the face of it, those activities taught by entrepreneurship organizations for hypothesis-driven market entry (customer discovery, market research, iterative prototyping and agile design) seem excluded from those deemed legitimate under SR&ED. Very likely this is a historical artefact: our understanding of agile methodologies and the deliberate deployment of design in these development contexts is too new for the SR&ED regime. It is time to update the SR&ED criteria to bring it in line with current methods and disciplinary approaches to the research-to-innovation continuum.
Design disciplines employ multidisciplinary approaches to grand challenges. Explicitly supporting the translation of ideas into invoices will ensure that our capacity to produce new knowledge and ideas is correlated to our contribution to social, cultural and economic outcomes.
[1] See https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-research-experimental-development-tax-incentive-program/claiming-tax-incentives.html
Robert Luke is the Vice President Research & Innovation at OCAD University.