CANADIAN BIOTECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SCOREBOARD

Project - Towards a Canadian Biotechnology Innovation Scoreboard
Client - Industry Canada (IC), Life Science Branch (LSB)

Description -  Scoreboards can be useful science policy tools, highlighting areas of a scientific field where governments can act to improve the performance of a country’s scientific and industrial actors. In the case of biotechnology, the only published scoreboards are those produced by the EC and the OECD. The Life Science Branch of Industry Canada has been looking for a model to produce a scoreboard that would provide empirical evidence to guide its decision-making in the field of biotechnology. Such a scoreboard should not only be based on the pragmatic concerns of data availability represented in the EC and OECD work, but would should also have a grounding in the current body of knowledge on innovation.

This report addresses both these concerns in presenting the skeleton scoreboard, and providing guidelines and building blocks, including a list of tentative indicators. The report takes a three stage approach. Firstly, it briefly outlines the qualities of a good scoreboard, particularly in the context of Industry Canada’s objectives. Secondly, the literature on innovation is reviewed. Finally, the existing scoreboards on innovation and biotechnology are analyzed. These approaches are drawn on to produce a list of indicators combining theoretical justification with practical feasibility. The novelty of this approach rests in the attention given to justifying the choice of indicators with the various scientific studies on innovation, rather than taking as its starting point the data that are readily available data without quantifying which of these data are important.

Although the review of literature identifies a number of potentially interesting indicators, they cannot all be reasonably included in the scoreboard because of measurement or data availability issues. The final list of indicators proposed by Science-Metrix, which confirms the pragmatic approach taken by the EU and OECD and has a theoretical justification is:

Human resources

	R&D workforce in industry, government and universities;
	Total number of employees;

Companies

Number of DBFs.

Financial variables

	R&D spending in industry, government and universities;
	Venture capital;
	Value of publicly traded biotechnology companies;
	Company revenues;
	Size of the local market, imports and exports.

Scientific and technological outputs

	Number of scientific publications, number of citations per publication;
	Number of patents granted by the USPTO; applications for patents to the EPO; triadic patent families;
	Collaboration between sectors.

	Brunelle C., Campbell D., Côté G. and Archambault É. 2006.
	Canadian Biotechnology Innovation Scoreboard. Prepared for Industry Canada (IC), Life Science Branch (LSB), 60 pages.
	[PDF] - Full report

	Archambault É., Vignola-Gagné É. and Bouffard D. 2005.
	Towards a Canadian Biotechnology Innovation Scoreboard. Prepared for Industry Canada's Life Science Branch (LSB) by Science-Metrix, 55 pages.
	[PDF] - Full report