A costly gap: The neglect of the demand side in Canadian innovation policy

Canada's Innovation and Skills Plan is meant to tackle the country's triple innovation challenge: decreasing productivity growth, a growing gap in R&D investments, and the need to better harness innovation for the good of society. But it offers only part of the solution. As with previous policy, it is overly focused on the generation of knowledge, technology and innovation, and it does not directly address the issues of business readiness and the market's ability to absorb innovations. For innovation policy to succeed, government must acknowledge the need to intervene on the demand side to accelerate diffusion, adoption and market creation, and must act on it.