Dr. David A. Wolfe, Ph.D., is the Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He was the founder and inaugural Director of the Master of Urban Innovation program in the Institute of Management and Innovation at UTM. His research interests include the digital economy, innovation policy in Canada, the implications of artificial intelligence for Canada’s economic future, and the role of governance in local and regional economic development.
He has been a Research Associate for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and served as National Coordinator for the federally funded Innovation Systems Research Network from 1998 to 2011. In that capacity, he was the Principal Investigator on two Major Collaborative Research Initiatives funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the first on Innovation Systems and Economic Development: The Role of Local and Regional Clusters in Canada and the second on Social Dynamics of Economic Performance: Innovation and Creativity in City-Regions. From 2014 to 2019 he was the Principal Investigator on a SSHRC Partnership Grant on Creating Digital Opportunity: Canada’s ICT Industry in Global Context. From 1990 to 1993 he served as Executive Coordinator for Economic and Labour Policy in the Cabinet Office of the Government of Ontario.
Prof. Wolfe has published extensively on cluster dynamics, research and innovation policy at the federal and provincial level, and local and regional economic development. He was the CIBC Scholar-in-Residence at the Conference Board of Canada in 2008-2009 and published 21st Century Cities in Canada: The Geography of Innovation. In addition, he is the editor or co-editor of ten books and more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters. His forthcoming book is The Governance of Innovation Spaces: How Civic Capital and Collaborative Governance Shape Urban and Regional Development from Edward Elgar.