The Emergence of the Personalized Medicine Innovation Ecosystem in Canada

Project leader: Prof. Elicia Maine, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University

Confirmed partners: Prof. Anita McGahan, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Prof. Nancy Gallini, Department of Economics, University of British Columbia; Prof. Patrick Cohendet, Department of International Business, HEC Montreal.

4POINT0 theme: Emergence, Health, Personalized Medicine
Start and end dates: March 2019 to March 2022 (3 years)

We aim to study the emergence of the personalized medicine innovation ecosystems in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal to inform Canadian innovation policy and practice. Using a novel methodology and a purpose-built dataset, we aim to provide rich longitudinal evidence on this important emerging and potentially disruptive science & technology innovation ecosystem. With the unique dataset collected – consisting of all personalized medicine firms in the regions of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, along with their founder, patenting, revenue, employee, and financing data, and their subsector focus – we can examine questions of importance to innovation policy, such as 1) more efficient translation from invention to innovation to knowledge economy jobs and 2) the benefits and drawbacks of open innovation regimes. We take advantage of a natural experiment of an open innovation ecosystem around genomics in Toronto to compare and contrast the emergence and evolution of Canadian personalized medicine innovation ecosystems at the firm level. We aim to contribute to the literature regarding the role of universities in seeding regional innovation ecosystems by studying the emergence and evolution of personalized medicine spin-off ventures.

This content has been updated on 2024-01-30 at 19 h 03 min.