Meet the economist calling for a culture shift in Canada’s innovation economy

Does Canada’s innovation sector need to borrow some of that brash American confidence to fix our productivity woes?

Canadian-American economist Rob Atkinson wishes Canada would embrace big business—even foreign firms—as “beautiful,” and called for a culture shift in the country’s innovation economy.

Atkinson, who has spent the last 18 years in Washington, D.C. running the think tank Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, helped launch an Ottawa-based affiliate last Tuesday: the Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness. Coinciding with the launch was the release of a nearly 70-page paper dissecting Canada’s perennial problems around productivity and innovation. The evening ended with a panel discussion.

“The US, we’re still not even sure we have a problem,” Atkinson said at the panel, adding that the American mindset of being the “greatest country in the world” is a double-edged sword when it comes to innovation. “At least in Canada, I see a growing, strong understanding [that] we’ve got some challenges here, we got to fix some things. That’s really the first and most important step, then figuring out how to do it is, frankly, not that hard.”

BetaKit sat down with Atkinson the morning of the panel to talk about why he thinks Canada needs more “killer instinct.”

Atkinson was critical of how the country that raised him has fallen so far behind others, especially the United States, when it comes to productivity. One positive highlight during our chat was Canada’s visa program; I don’t think he’d yet seen the news about new caps coming to the Startup Visa Program.

Thanks for reading on and ‘til next week, 

Bianca Bharti

Newsletter editor

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Funding, Acquisitions, and Layoffs

VIC – Save da Sea – $650K CAD
VAN – Netskrt Systems – $10M CAD
AB – Alberta doles out $57M to hydrogen power projects
CGY – Galatea Technologies – $2.7M CAD
TOR – BitBuy acquired Canadian customers of Bitstamp
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OTT – Versaterm acquires Mindbase
SHE – Biointelligence Technologies – $5M CAD
FRE – Potential Motors – $2M CAD
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The BetaKit Podcast

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B|K: The BetaKit Newsletter is powered by Osler

Osler releases multi-year study of 450+ Canadian VC and growth equity financings 

Osler’s Emerging and High Growth Companies practice has released its third annual study of 486 anonymized venture capital and growth equity financings from 2020–2023, valued at approximately US$8 billion, providing data and insights for founders, entrepreneurs, investors and advisors contemplating transactions this year and beyond.

The report is unique as it draws on both publicly available data on venture capital and growth equity financings, as well as Osler’s confidential anonymized data sources. The report authors have distilled actionable insights on the data, including on common terms and structural considerations.

Read the Deal Points Report: Venture Capital Financings