Canada needs to up its game when it comes to solving some of the world's biggest social issues, according to a new report from a think tank in Canada.
The report from the Brookfield Institutes says that too often, innovation "fails to create prosperity for Canadians or drive social or environmental challenges," such as housing, health care, energy, pollution, and climate change, the Windsor Star reports.
"In an era of multiple crises, social innovation offers Canada support using a wide range of potential solutions," the report says.
"It will require policy shifts to get innovation together with solving the most pressing social, economic, and environmental problems that Canada and Canada's innovation policy framework does not sufficiently align innovation with solving the most pressing social, economic, and environmental problems."
The report says that Canada needs to do a better job of aligning its policies with those of the international community, including the World Intellectual Property Organization, which states that social innovation is "the development and commercialization of improved products and services," the New York Times reports.
The authors of the report say that Canada's current innovation system is " unwieldy, expensive, and underperforming" and that it needs to change.
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