'Capacity to innovate'

A friend of mine just linked me to an article that was circulated around Simon Fraser University. It's about a project going on across Canada called, “Innovation Systems and Economic Development: The Role of Local and Regional Clusters in Canada.” I don't know how common these kinds of studies are, but this one strikes me as being very cool.
Here's an excerpt from the article:

Researchers from the Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec and western Canada will study 22 clusters within seven newly emerging and traditional industry sectors across five different regions. Industry sectors will include biotechnology, multimedia communications, photonics, wood products, and the wine industry.

"By pin-pointing the synergies between business, government, and research institutions, we hope to be able to improve a region's capacity for innovation," says [Adam] Holbrook, who will lead the national team investigating aids and barriers to innovation in biotechnology. "At the end of the day, this study must come up with specific results that are of use to policy makers. If, as previous research suggests, the approach to innovation varies across Canada, we must determine how to help those regional systems work together rather than fracture apart. We must be sure that a one-size-fits-all policy to promote innovation does not hinder this across the country."

The whole article can be found here.