Achieving excellence: investing in people, knowledge and opportunity

Canada's Innovation Strategy is a national project to build a skilled workforce and an innovative economy. This paper is one of two papers released as part of this project. Both focus on what Canada needs to do to ensure equality of opportunity and economic innovation in the knowledge society of the 21st century. This paper recognises the need to consider knowledge as a strategic national asset and focuses on how to strengthen Canada's science and research capacity so that this knowledge contributes to building an innovative Canadian economy. It provides an assessment of Canada's innovation performance and proposes goals and targets in the areas of knowledge performance, skills, the innovation environment and community-based innovation. The contents are: Introduction; How is Canada doing in a world driven by innovation? Government support for innovation: 1995 to 2001; An innovation strategy for the 21st century; The knowledge performance challenge; The skills challenge; The innovation environment challenge; Sources of competitive advantage are localized; A call for action; Building a more innovative Canada: next steps. Also included are two appendices summarising the goals, targets and priorities of the Government of Canada, and outlining the innovation strategies in the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and Sweden. Show less