The Innovation Superclusters Initiative in Canada: A new policy strategy?

The supercluster is a new initiative promoted by the Canadian federal government to strengthen Canada’s most promising clusters and allow innovative firms to operate more productively in sourcing inputs and accessing information, knowledge, and technology. This paper contributes to the scientific research on superclusters and pursues two objectives. First, we discuss the origins of the supercluster initiative and trace its roots back to major research traditions on regional agglomerations and territorial innovation models, in particular the cluster theory, the regional innovation system, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem approaches. Second, we conduct a critical analysis and identify four critical questions (or challenges) that need to be addressed to clarify the scope and objectives of the policy.