Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures works to broaden collaboration, increase impacts

Nearly two years after its official launch, the Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures (AITF) continues to align its legacy organizations with the province's economic priority sectors, boosting a 12-to-1 return on public investment valued at $1.4 billion. The assessment of direct economic impact - derived from interviews with clients, partners and grant recipients - is an encouraging indicator that the province's chief commercialization corporation is successfully moving towards a demand-driven culture and is weathering the lingering effects of the 2008 economic downturn.

Under the leadership of Dr Gary Albach, AITF is working on several fronts to boost impact within the province's new innovation ecosystem and the economy at large. The revamped ecosystem encompasses other corporations operating under the umbrella of the Alberta Innovates banner - Bio Solutions, Health Solutions and Energy & Environment Solutions - as well as a number of technology centres spread across Alberta and the province's research-intensive universities. AITF also manages the provincial innovation vouchers program, which was formerly managed by Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology ministry.

AITF was created in early 2010 by combining the Alberta Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity, iCORE and nanoAlberta (R$, December 9/09). All the organizations have been consolidated under one roof and have a total staff of 575. Consolidation also occurred at the board and management levels, with the AITF board chaired by Dr Ron Triffo, chair emeritus of Stantec Inc, an Edmonton-based, internationally focused engineering and professional services firm.

"We're an outwardly facing organization that responds to the clients that we have. All four legacy organizations come from different places and have different views of how commerce is built ... The culture is the biggest ongoing change (and) return on investment is one of our primary measures," says Albach. "We've coordinated strategic planning, funding and the delivery of services ... It's now operating smoothly and we're working through the details."

In FY10-11, AITF operated with a budget of $156.4 million, with the province contributing the single largest share ($81.7 million). The leveraged private sector funding of $52.4 million (60.2% of which was derived from Alberta-based businesses), $14.9 million from provincial government contracts and $7.3 million from the federal government.

Albach says AITF's budget for FY11-12 will be slightly higher with "a little more from the province".

"The boards and senior groups have been put together. It started at the ministerial level and the CEO level as well. It's now operational and running smoothly ... We're combing through the details. Grants coordination took time ... They were consolidated and streamlined through a common focus to support the new AITF mandate which is composed of graduate students, chairs, centres and industry programs."

Unlike the other Alberta Innovates corporations, AI not only funds R&D but performs it as well. On the funding side, AITF has aligned its grants with at least one other corporation (Health Solutions). AITF also has Clinexus, an information and communications technology (ICT) commercialization centre that works with early-stage firms in the health sector developing and selling health technologies in Canada and abroad.

Other technology commercialization centres funded by AITF are ACAMP (Alberta Centre for Advanced MNT Products) focused on the microelectronics and nanotechnology sector, BioAdvantage (integrated biomedical technologies) and TECTERRA (geomatics for integrated resource management).

"We are a funder and a doer. They (the other corporations) are funding organizations so they don't have the same operating technical services we have ... With Health Solutions, we focus on commercialization and they focus on the research of health," says Albach. "It's an experiment in a new way of delivering innovation across the province."

The commercialization centres fall under the purview of the recently launched Alberta Regional Innovation Network (ARIN) which delivers commercialization services across the province and serves as the third leg of the AITF - the others being its laboratories and grants.

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