NSERC suite of programs making sizable gains in industry-academic collaboration

Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation

A new report on the first five years of a research strategy for industry-academic collaboration indicates that the suite of programs created by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is resulting in an unprecedented number of joint projects and activities, many of which have evolved into long-term relationships.

Over the 2009-2914 period that saw the fallout from the recession and shrinkage of the manufacturing sector, SPI programs increased their industry-academic projects from 1,500 to more than 3,000 annually for a total of 13,400 projects. Industry contributions also jumped to $195 million in cash and in-kind.

"We had no target going in but we see company involvement as putting skin in the game," says Pamela Moss, NSERC's acting VP research partnerships. "Even in-kind can be invaluable. It could be company software or data needed by the researcher."

With the majority of projects involving small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation (SPI) encompasses a suite of programs whose budgets have increased from $200 million to $300 million since 2009, primarily due to the introduction of $50 million in college-focused programs and four recent Budgets that provided NSERC with funding for industry collaboration.

SPI's tiered program structure allows firms to explore academic collaboration with support from the highly popular Engage grants to larger programs within the strategy, often resulting in companies hiring highly trained personnel from academia and expanding their businesses and markets (see chart page 2).

"Engage encouraged companies to come forward and changed things in the academic world. It shifted the academics' perspective to make those connections (with industry)," says Moss. "It's easy for some and difficult for others. We continue to educate" profiling successful people using videos and workshops."

The suite of SPI programs also coincides with a decline in the number of industry R&D personnel. A recent Statistics Canada report reveals that industry has shed nearly one quarter of its R&D staff between 2008 and 2012 — a period that roughly corresponds to the time covered by the SPI report (R$, December 22/14). But drawing any conclusions from the two sets of data may be misleading.

"We focus on the 3,000 companies that work with us and Statistics Canada tracks about 25,000 companies," says Bert ven den Berg, NSERC's director of colleges, commercialization and portfolio planning. "From a macro-economic context, a lot of manufacturing companies exited (Canada) due to the exchange rate and competition. Now there's a resurgence in manufacturing in North America."

SPI adheres to STI strategy priority areas

In addition, NSERC's SPI programs closely correspond to priority sectors in the refreshed federal Science-Technology and Innovation strategy (R$, December 10/14). SPI programs are heavily used by the automotive and aerospace sectors, for instance, especially in their use of Industrial Research Chairs, of which there are now 172 spread across Canada in many industry sectors.

"They can be very helpful to larger companies like IBM and GM," says van den Berg. "We work with most of the Top 100 (corporate R&D leading firms). If you take out pharmaceuticals, its up to 80%." ven den Berg notes that even in traditional industry sectors like construction, SPI funding has resulted in a significant increase in the number of Master's and PhD graduates working in industry.

"Twenty years ago, there were none. Other countries are doing this and we need to remain competitive," he says.

SPI's use of NSERC regional offices has also been instrumental in boosting the number of participating companies, Moss says. Colleges are making particularly good use of the offices as their projects tend to be smaller and more regional in nature.

Perhaps the most potent example of SPI's impact is the degree of follow-on from introductory $25,000 Engage grants to larger programs with more ambitious R&D targets. The SPI report found that Engage grant users make the transition to larger programs, with the most popular being the Collaborative R&D program.

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