10, November 2026

In 2026 THECIS celebrates its 25th anniversary. To celebrate this, we are starting a 25th Anniversary Blog series where we ask prominent individuals to write a blog to provide perspective on a topic related to innovation and entrepreneurship. This Blog is by Brian Wixted.  During the 1990s, Brian worked for the Australian government on measures of innovation and agricultural science policy. In the early 2000s, he worked for a university research centre on innovation studies. After moving to Canada, Brian has been involved in large university research networks on cluster, city, and digital innovation systems together with various contract research projects. His major works have focussed on the global architecture of trade. Brian has been a THECiS Fellow since 2005.

Blog 115:  Policy Blog.

So how do I understand the present?

1 Dominant feature of economic systems

It has to be admitted, that developed economies struggle to upgrade to the next technology platform. The USA seems obviously to be an exception for the past 60 years. But perhaps that has mostly been just one STEP FUNCTION and although it leads in AI, it is falling behind in many technology ecosystems including EVs, energy and numerous others.

In Clayton Christensen’s original 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, he describes “how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products but new companies’ serve smaller segments that grow[i]. I think this theory can also apply to whole systems. Canada and the U.S. are facing a National Innovation System Dilemma. We see it most obviously with cars and light trucks. These vehicles are huge sellers in North America, meanwhile China is now leading the world in EVs and that lead will expand further.

2 Global disorders

Meanwhile we face two global disorders.

  1. The mess we were already in. War in the Ukraine. China’s rising power and destabilising influence. Add in climate change and increasingly pushing the 9 boundaries of planetary order and poly-crisis is not too strong a term.

 

  1. Donald Trump’s transactional presidency particularly with allies and economic attacks on Canada. This is exactly the wrong time to have a Trump like president.

3 Strands of typical innovation policy

Typically, innovation policy has focussed on the university research system and promoting framework conditions for business.

Over many decades the third string of the mass education of the population has become more assumed than seriously analysed. With the advent of AI what now needs urgent attention is the development of an education system that avoids the escalating warfare of students using AI, and teachers using AI to detect AI. How can we invent and fund a new path?

So, what do we see if we look at the real economy?

4 Factor Innovation Dynamics

  1. Somewhere on Earth for a wide range of economic activities the future is already here.
    • From autonomous mining, robots, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, electric (battery) ships, (air, land and sea) drones, electric aircraft, rocketry, renewable energy grid technologies, renewable energy adoption, banking technologies, AI, data centres, digital streaming technology and so on. Somewhere on earth there are amazing technology companies and products available.
    • Don’t be too quick about guessing where it is happening – some of it is in the USA and China but not all of it by any means (some of it in very unexpected places[ii].
  2. Global Value chains domination of production
  • My thinking is that sometime during the 2010s the combinatory possibilities of technologies exploded leading to ever more complex value architectures linking the world.
  • There is currently not the data that would allow a full reconning of value chains.
  • However, in crises you can, if you are listening pick up on new insights such as the helium that is necessary for chip manufacturing might come from the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz.
  • My own work on value chains indicates that they follow a complexity hierarchy (in made stuff) – the more complex the product, the more global value flows of significance. Services are different.
  1. Space and place still matter, because we are not virtual beings. We reside, eat, are educated and are embodied in specific communities.
  2. Innovation policy should not be same old, same old – national, technological inventiveness or manufacturing focused. Or indeed not grab on to the latest apparent big thing like AI, as important as AI is. Because of A, B and C, above, institutions or research focus is not enough.

Future innovation policy

AI grabs the headlines and is important, but my emphasis is the future is arriving in every industrial ecosystem, and we need to see its arrival.

In the previous blog I suggested that the philosophy of innovation studies amounted to something like this: We understand the past and current patterns of innovation to inform innovation policy to create the future.

In the end because of the actual limitations of governments to shape firm and commercial behaviour the de facto policy lever was research funding to pump prime the system and STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) student places emphasised in universities.

Heading towards the 2030s we need a different mindset. In my view, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, the pump is primed and more!  There will always be research frontiers, and there are big contests ahead. However, perhaps research should not be the all-consuming focus it typically has been.

The NOW we face is multifaceted as indicated (1, 2, 3, 4) above. On the front end of government, we need policies for adoption, adaption, regulation, cybercrime policing, etc., while on the backend universities, applied colleges, and research funding systems need to be agile and aware of how fast the world is changing.

When Ukraine was attacked in 2022 it had a largely conventional military logic, today it is fighting a full 21st century war with land, sea and air drones and much else. How do we translate a similar mindset to civilian governing around National Innovating System Dilemmas – where whole production systems are one stage behind the leading edge? How can we experiment with regulation (social media, data centres, e-bikes) for this century.

Could we / should we create fast moving small module education packages to keep up with the 21st Century to help business navigate the world[iii]. Do we need technology navigators to help businesses – a kind of IRAP II?

How do we stop thinking like it’s the 1990s when the technology is more sci-fi.

With the future already here, every level of government and every ministry must actively navigate not tomorrows, but the yesterday’s disrupted technology economy.

 

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

[ii] For example, the largest electric battery ships in the world are being built in Tasmania, Australia (as of August 2026).

[iii] Finnish multinationals have established an office to research industrial developments in China https://chinaoffice.fi/