Deep Dives: Six Months & Beyond
Happy Tuesday! This week marks a significant milestone for me: six months of the Deep Dives newsletter and seven months of Orbit Policy. It’s a moment to reflect on the newsletter so far and outline my vision of its future.
Looking Back
Photo by Michael Skok on Unsplash
I’m honoured and grateful for the engagement and support of nearly 300 subscribers across the Canadian innovation ecosystem. From executives and senior leaders to government officials, technology pioneers, leading academics, and beyond, your readership has helped build a community focused on improving Canada’s innovation outcomes.
The driving force for me behind Orbit Policy and this newsletter has been the need to seek out — and seek to understand — the vast range of differing interests, perspectives, and uncomfortable truths that are intertwined with any public policy question. We are in a period of unprecedented disruption and change. Challenges from technological disruption, geopolitical conflict, economic dislocation, and climate change have made this a profoundly challenging moment. The Trump administration and its disruption and chaos have only made that even more true.
A consistent theme in my writing, including a recent report for the CSA Public Policy Centre currently being edited for publication, is the belief that we possess the power to shape the outcomes we desire from innovation. Innovation should not exist for its own sake, detached from its effects on real people. It must serve tangible societal and economic outcomes.
This has resonated with readers. The feedback confirms the value of timely analysis, international perspectives, and the newsletter’s role in an ongoing, critical conversation. Writing the newsletter has definitely enriched my understanding of these issues and sharpened my ability to provide advice and analysis to clients through Orbit Policy (you can read about the kind of services I provide here).
Looking Forward
Looking ahead, I want to expand my work on the newsletter. The current political and policy climate, both domestically and internationally, calls for both deeper analysis and broader coverage.
To achieve this, I will be changing up the content strategy for Deep Dives. As of next week, expect:
Increased Frequency: I will be returning to three posts per week, delivering more timely and comprehensive insights.
New Interviews: I will be aiming to regularly feature in-depth conversations with practitioners across the innovation ecosystem, exploring critical issues and opportunities.
Curated Content: I will introduce book reviews and change up how I do reading recommendation round-ups to help readers stay ahead in a rapidly evolving field.
To sustain this expanded offering, I will introduce paid subscriptions next week. Two posts per week will remain freely accessible as they are now, and the third post will be exclusive to paid subscribers. These subscriptions will enable me to dedicate the necessary time and resources to continue to deliver the Deep Dives newsletter.
If you recognize the value of my work here, please consider a paid subscription.
I'm excited to share this next chapter with you, and I hope you'll join me.
Top Posts From The First Six Months of Deep Dives
Until then, here is a round-up of some of the most-read posts and a few of my favourites from the first six months of the newsletter.
Where Can Canada Win in AI?
18 October 2024
This is the first of many pieces relating to AI. In this one, I began to flesh out some of my arguments that we need to make some real choices about the direction of AI policy that is more realistically grounded in where Canada can be a leading player and where this matches up with the vision of what we want our economy and society to look like.
A defence and a criticism of FDI in Canada
18 November 2024
This piece tried to take a balanced look at the evidence for the pros and cons of FDI. The role of foreign investment in Canada has always been a hot topic, and the temperature has only increased since I wrote this one. FDI is an area where we really need to be clear in articulating the outcomes we are after to enable us to shape policy to deliver them.
An Agenda for an Inclusive and Innovative Canada - Part 1
25 November 2024
The first of my three-part series was on building an inclusive and innovative Canada. We need a more coherent vision for Canada’s economy and society to help provide the guidelines for policymaking and the trade-offs necessary across multiple domains. We also need more detailed analysis and recommendations that really get into the weeds. This was my starting attempt to flesh out the vision. Over this and the following two posts, I explored some of the pillars of a more inclusive and innovative Canada, such as abundance, not scarcity, the importance of intentional innovation, and the need to focus on place before diving into seven different policy domains. My thinking has evolved since I wrote these, but they nonetheless remain foundational to a lot of my work.
The Stories We Tell Create And Sustain Our Agency To Make Change
7 Jan
Not one of the most read, but one of my favourites, this piece looked at how narratives and storytelling create agency and shape policy. This is a key thread of my work and my thinking. The sheer amount of horror in the world and the scale of challenges we face can be numbing. But we can tell different stories and build different narratives to shape different outcomes. Two other recent pieces very much pick up on this theme and expand it further: "Hope as Prologue and Hope as Epilogue" and The Opening Policy Window.
Yes, we have an innovation paradox, but we need to address our policy paradox first
21 Feb
If you have followed Canadian innovation policy long enough, you will begin to see the same topics repeated again and again. In this post, I tried to examine in more depth why that is and why we haven’t been able to make any real dent in Canada’s innovation paradox in decades. Understanding not only the underlying problems but also the structural barriers to good policy is essential to making change happen.
The End of Business as Usual
28 Feb
Finally, this is my most-read post of all time. As much as we were already in a moment of challenge and change, Trump and his administration’s actions have really turbocharged that. An authoritarian and expansionist United States upends all assumptions. Yet too many people still seem to not understand the gravity of that. This was my attempt to dissect how things have changed and how we need to begin looking at policy choices differently in light of what is happening south of the border.
I hope you have enjoyed reading all of these and my other work and I look forward to writing more for you over the coming months!
