Breznitz (pictured), professor and chair of innovation studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, told the Market Research Society’s Impact 2022 conference that “innovation is not invention”, with invention more focused on ideas or prototypes than putting products to market.  

“The moment we take that idea and try to put it into a market or an economy, that’s the moment where innovation starts to happen,” Breznitz added.

Putting an idea into the market, improving it, figuring out innovative new ways to produce it, combining it with other products, distributing, selling and servicing the product were, according to Breznitz, “much more important in the long run for human welfare, growth and prosperity”.

Breznitz said that the West had become obsessed with creating new Silicon Valleys, replicating a model that does not work in practice and creates widespread inequality, with most other innovative cities and regions looking nothing like California’s economy.

“The reality is there are multiple models,” he explained. “Most places will never become Silicon Valley and nor should they aspire to be Silicon Valley. They have other options that we have stopped talking about.”

Covid-19 also underlined weaknesses in current western thinking about the nature of innovation, according to Breznitz.

“We shipped everything we thought was not glamorous to Taiwan or China assuming that it is not important as long as have ‘the brain’, and everything will be fine,” he stated.

“When Covid-19 hit, we realised we didn’t have masks, we didn’t have ventilators and a lot of other stuff. We don’t know anymore how to produce it or innovate in its production. Maybe we need to revisit what innovation is all about if we care about the most prosperous UK.”

Breznitz added that “for most people on earth, each different model of innovation and different stage means different distribution of the fruits of success”, and decisions should be taken locally on what industries suit each city and region.

This means government intervention. “Without government, there is zero innovation,” said Breznitz. “You must have intervention. We can talk about how deep we go.”

Breznitz said government intervention could be as simple as regulation or involve comprehensive industrial policy. It could also see government as a junior partner supporting local innovation.

“Government can also be a tool or a partner – it does not need to be a leader in this transformation,” he concluded. “The transformation can come up from other actors within the community who then recruit and convince government to do the right thing.”