Canada is Missing an Important Trend: Design Research and the Role of Experimental Development

To increase its capacity to innovate, Canada needs to move away from simple resource extraction in favour of valued-added design and the production of new products and services for global markets. Against a background of climate change, this pivot is essential: lowering carbon emissions is commensurate with moving to a green or even low- or no-growth economy.

Change of this nature reinforces the importance of public investment in science and technology and private investment in R&D. Robust investment in basic research (fundamental science) is essential in order to supply the pipeline of ideas that will eventually be articulated through applied research and experimental development as practical innovations that impact the world. This continuum is important.

A current challenge is that Canada is not valuing the full spectrum of its research capacity. Two gaps exist in our support of the move from research to innovation: we fail to recognize the role of design research and we insufficiently support experimental development.

OCAD Univ’s submission to the Fundamental Science Review articulated a gap in Tri-Council programs that exclude design disciplines:

• Design research has an important role in fundamental science and knowledge creation. It comprises a set of disciplines that have inherent value as distinct areas of inquiry (research and knowledge creation), as well as being important inputs to downstream innovation capacity.  Design disciplines are key areas of research activity internationally. Design research focuses on the interaction between Human Behaviour, Artefacts, Nature, Material, and Systems.
• The Tri-Council does not have categories for design disciplines. They are either not represented or they are buried within other disciplines. This leads to a substantial imbalance in the ability of design researchers to obtain funding even while it undermines the legitimacy of these disciplines and their practitioners. For example, SSHRC’s list of sub-disciplines does not include the word “design” at all amongst nearly 500 recognized areas of investigation. Similarly, while NSERC recognizes “Engineering Design”, “Information Systems Design”, and “Computer Architecture and Design”, these categories fall within different “primary” subject areas, illustrating the failure to recognize the methodological approach that unites these apparently disparate subjects. These taxonomies are used to structure funding applications (and, therefore, review panels). They are historical artefacts that prevent the legitimization of design disciplines in the research sphere. This has a follow-on effect in the application and innovation spheres.

Other countries have long recognized and supported design research as key to innovation policy. The Nordic countries are perhaps best known for their focus on design; the US, UK, Australia, South Korea and China have design-driven industrial innovation policies, recognizing the role design disciplines have in national economies.

A positive step has recently been taken by SSHRC to update its discipline taxonomies, a welcome development that will help modernize our approach to supporting not just design disciplines but also others that have emerged in recent years. SSHRC’s leadership will ensure that the many design researchers in Canada’s universities are able to access funding via appropriate assessment committees established with clear disciplinary expertise in these important areas. This will go a long way toward supporting diversity of research activity and output. For example, OCAD Univ’s researchers produce many outputs not typically tracked in research metrics, such as social engagement, Indigenous knowledge, diversity & equity, cultural engagement, curatorial practices, commissions, performances and sound, images and text.

While design research operates within basic and applied research, it is particularly relevant to experimental development. Experimental development is vital to ensure we take those final steps on the Technology Readiness Level scale—the steps that support market entry of new products and services.

Support for activities during the experimental development and market scale stages is important. On this Canada lags. An example is found in what the Canada Revenue Agency funds within the remit of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit system. The SR&ED guidelines do state they fund the span of activities of basic and applied research through to experimental development, using the OECD Frascati Manual definitions. Design is included. But two things stand out on the list of activities that are explicitly excluded from SR&ED support: market research or sales promotion; and research in the social sciences or the humanities.[1] Yet the Frascati Manual (2015) specifically outlines examples of basic research, applied research and experimental development in the humanities and social sciences across a range of disciplines. The examples even point to potential commercial applications.

On the face of it, those activities taught by entrepreneurship organizations for hypothesis-driven market entry (customer discovery, market research, iterative prototyping and agile design) seem excluded from those deemed legitimate under SR&ED.  Very likely this is a historical artefact: our understanding of agile methodologies and the deliberate deployment of design in these development contexts is too new for the SR&ED regime. It is time to update the SR&ED criteria to bring it in line with current methods and disciplinary approaches to the research-to-innovation continuum.

Design disciplines employ multidisciplinary approaches to grand challenges. Explicitly supporting the translation of ideas into invoices will ensure that our capacity to produce new knowledge and ideas is correlated to our contribution to social, cultural and economic outcomes.

[1] See https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-research-experimental-development-tax-incentive-program/claiming-tax-incentives.html

Robert Luke is the Vice President Research & Innovation at OCAD University.