About This Report
Moonshot innovation policy is not a new idea —some of the earliest were the Manhattan Project and the original moonshot, the Apollo program—but they have received renewed policy and political attention in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and the global race to produce and deploy vaccines.
Canadian innovation has a vital role to play in tackling our world’s most pressing challenges. Yet, despite producing world-leading research, our current innovation policy framework does not support the conditions needed to catalyze breakthrough inventions and bridge them through the transformational innovation process— commercialization, scale, widespread adoption and global export.
Canada’s Moonshot: Solving grand challenges through transformational innovation seeks to better understand how Canada can best use its innovation policy toolkit to intentionally direct, support, and fund innovation that solves the big challenges we face as a society, from COVID-19 to climate change, and along the way, solidify our place in the global economy as a leader in innovation.
Guided by the project’s expert advisory panel, and informed by insights from interviews with innovation actors, and international case studies, Canada’s Moonshot offers suggestions on how Canada can use a moonshot approach to innovation that is cognizant of the barriers and opportunities that come from our particular Canadian context.
Read this report to help you understand:
- How moonshot innovation policies can help solve our biggest most complex social + environmental challenges.
- How policy can address specific obstacles to successful moonshots in Canada.
- Best practices + design principles for deploying moonshots, drawing from successful case studies around the world, including the US’s DARPA and Norway’s PILOT-E.
- Policy recommendations that address key governance + operational considerations when seeking to select and launch moonshots in Canada.
- How to take a more holistic approach to re-thinking Canada’s innovation policies by centering inclusion, equity, and reconciliation.
