Question and Answers

Alberta is building on the success of its economy and its flourishing high-tech sector. Building and growing knowledge-based companies is important to Alberta’s future success in the new global economy.

Alberta is building on the success of its economy and its flourishing high-tech sector. Building and growing knowledge-based companies is important to Alberta’s future success in the new global economy.

The plan focuses on support for companies developing ideas in the advanced technology sectors of information and communications technology, life sciences, nanotechnology, and clean energy.

The Action Plan will help Alberta entrepreneurs to get more of their ideas off the research bench and into consumers’ hands through nine initiatives within four priority areas:

The nine actions are at varying stages of development, but we anticipate that all actions will be fully implemented within the next year in this approximate order:

ACTION 8:	Expand the IVAC Capacity Builder Program investments for pre-commercial and seed stage technology companies
ACTION 5:	Offer innovation vouchers to assist companies access technology-specific supports
ACTION 3:	Strengthen access to regional business services by creating one-window access to improve your company’s investment-readiness
ACTION 1:	Implement a science and research experimental development tax credit
ACTION 7:	Create demonstration fund for testing new products
ACTION 4:	Introduce new technology development advisors
ACTION 6:	Prepare products for market through enhanced product development centres
ACTION 2:	Establish $100M Alberta Enterprise Corporation to attract and strengthen venture capital investments in Alberta. Work will commence to identify general and limited partners
ACTION 9:	Support Youth Technopreneurship project and other initiatives

Budget 2008 allocated $100M for the Alberta Enterprise Corporation and $78M over three years to fund the other eight actions.

All ministries play a role in this Action Plan, but Advanced Education and Technology has the lead and is directly supported by three other provincial ministries:

• Finance and Enterprise
• Agriculture and Rural Development
• Environment

Released in the summer of 2007, the report from the task force laid the ground work for the Action Plan. The task force had many good recommendations, almost all of which were accepted in principle. These recommendations were combined with those from other strategies and reports into one decisive Action Plan focused on creating and growing new companies in emerging high-tech sectors.

The global knowledge-based economy is intensely competitive, as countries, states, provinces and cities compete for the same ingredients: investment capital, highly skilled and innovative people, and successful knowledge-based companies. The Action Plan aims to create a supportive environment so Alberta can strengthen the quantity and quality of these ingredients within the province.

Technological innovation is widely recognized around the world as a key element in sustainable economic growth and enhanced quality of life. To speed up the pace of developing more innovations, Alberta is increasing its value-added and technology commercialization activities in targeted sectors. Alberta’s strength in the advanced technology sectors of clean energy, information and communications technology, life sciences, and nanotechnology holds great potential for jobs and economic success.

A knowledge-based economy can create products and services for global markets without dependence on non-renewable resources—knowledge is a resource that never depletes itself. Success in this kind of economy depends on building a community of highly qualified people, entrepreneurs and investors; establishing a world-class post-secondary system; and developing a supportive business environment.

The Next Generation Economy is Alberta’s way of describing what a knowledge-based economy will mean for the province, taking our economy to new levels of prosperity for generations to come.

Building our Next Generation Economy is a long-term strategy. Although we may see early milestones, we expect it may take 10 to 15 years to be fully realized. However, this is a much shorter time span than it took for Alberta’s energy resource economy to reach maturity.

The Action Plan is only part of Alberta’s plan to build the Next Generation Economy and provides a way to capture market value from the research generated by our internationally recognized research and development system.

All ministries play a role in building the next generation economy, but Advanced Education and Technology has the lead and is directly supported by seven other provincial ministries:

• International and Intergovernmental Relations
• Education
• Energy
• Finance and Enterprise
• Agriculture and Rural Development
• Employment and Immigration
• Sustainable Resource Development

Based on endowment funds of $2.5 billion, our investments in organizations like Alberta Ingenuity, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and iCORE will continue to attract international talent for research in advanced technology sectors.

Initiatives of the Alberta Association of Colleges and Technical Institutes (AACTI) will increase the level of applied research work at Alberta’s colleges.

In the future, Alberta is also in the process of establishing a new innovation framework and a new Premier’s Economic Council, all with a view to advancing our knowledge-based economy.

There any many benefits to developing a thriving knowledge-based economy in Alberta, especially diversification of the economy. The main risk is to do nothing and fall behind other jurisdictions in the world.

Alberta’s economy will grow dramatically for some time to come, but this growth will eventually decrease as our non-renewable resources are depleted. Using the strength of Alberta’s energy sector, our main economic driver, to diversify into a knowledge-based economy will help sustain our prosperity into the future.

No, a strong energy sector is crucial to the success of the Action Plan and will continue to be important to Alberta’s economy for many decades to come. Strength in the energy sector will help to grow the value-added and advanced technology sectors. This will make our economy less susceptible to economic shocks in any one sector and more sustainable in the long-term.

The oil and gas sector is an ongoing source of innovation and technology commercialization. Alberta has sometimes been referred to a world lab because of government’s commitment to technological solutions to global challenges.

Yes, a strong knowledge-based economy that develops many technological innovations will lead to a stronger energy sector that has benefited from new energy-focused technologies to increase efficiencies and productivities, decrease environmental impacts, and increase sales in global markets.

Knowledge-based companies and high-tech entrepreneurs tend to locate in jurisdictions that offer supportive business climates, a community of highly skilled people and investors, world-class post-secondary institutions and attractive lifestyles and amenities, all of which are readily available in Alberta.

We will be able to measure our progress through monitoring a combination of project milestones and key economic and system indicators such as:

• Level of investment attraction.
• Level of company formation and growth.
• Level of research and development undertaken by business and government.
• Level of productivity in traditional industry sectors as companies invest in new technologies.
• Level of venture capital investment attracted in support of technology companies.
• Number of skilled workers;
  • percentage of the population completing post-secondary education or
  • holding degrees
  • participation rate in formal job-related skills upgrading.
• Share of GDP coming from knowledge-based industries.

Growing and developing a highly skilled workforce is fundamental to success in a knowledge-based economy. As barriers to trade and travel come down, Alberta is increasingly in competition with other international economies for industry and people. To maintain sustainable prosperity in the global economy, Alberta must complement its focus on resource extraction with a “knowledge-based economy.” The ability to attract and produce highly qualified people in emerging high tech sectors remains key to extracting value-added ideas and implementing innovative solutions.

In a knowledge-based economy, ideas can be exported from anywhere. Alberta is ideally positioned as Western Canada’s main inland terminal and distribution hub with convenient road, rail, and sea access to a market of more than one billion people in western North America and Asia. We are strategically located along the northern stretch of the CANAMEX trade corridor, a 6,000 km high-priority trade route stretching from Mexico to Alaska. We also easily link to Pacific Ocean through the “Port Alberta” initiative.

Alberta already has impressive post-secondary education capability across a variety of formats from technical and trades training to applied and advanced research in its institutions. Alberta is making significant investments in post-secondary education to expand the number of spaces and enhance the quality of education offered. Our Campus Alberta concept will help more Albertans gain the training they want so they can quickly enter the workforce with valuable skills.

“Value-Added” refers to products and/or services produced through the application of additional processes or knowledge to a raw product to increase its market value. Classic examples of “value-added” industries include: bitumen-based petrochemical production, manufacturing, and food processing.

Technology commercialization is the process of turning new technologies or scientific discoveries into marketable products or services. CV Technologies is an Alberta-based success story. This company successfully developed and commercialized a technology that allowed for the standardization of natural health products that allowed for scientific verification of results. The company has commercialized a number of products including the commercially successful Cold-fX.

Our scientists are among the world’s best and brightest, and their ideas are ground-breaking, but developing the idea into a marketable product or service is not their area of expertise. Many of their great ideas get stuck at a point between research and commercialization where many ideas stall and die. This area is the focus of the Action Plan. The difficult transition between research and commercialization has often been described in literature as the “valley of death.”

No, we can’t compete with low-cost jurisdictions elsewhere in the world even though Alberta is the most productive region within Canada. What we are building is a province-wide test lab where companies can tap into a network of design, development and brainpower to transform ideas into new products.

No, it’s not a shift in policy. Alberta has been working to diversify the economy for many years with success achieved in many sectors including agriculture, energy, and tourism. Economic diversification is still one of the Premier’s top priorities. The Action Plan continues this work in a new way in the advanced technology sector. The Action Plan shows our decisive commitment for a value-added, knowledge-based economy.

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