Bell Canada replaces Bell University Laboratories fund with targeted program

Seeking higher return on investment

Bell Canada's Bell University Laboratories (BUL) program has been cancelled and replaced by a smaller fund that targets academic research with greater potential for a return on investment. The new Bell Innovation Fund (BIF) has been implemented in Quebec and negotiations are ongoing with institutions in other provinces to expand it nationally.

The change to one of Canada's richest corporate-academic funding programs comes as Bell seeks to re-orient its corporate strategy following last year's failed attempt to go private, which raised the ire of shareholders seeking to maximize their return on investment. It also follows a marked decline in Bell's R&D spending, which fell 13.6% in FY07 to $1.26 billion.

At its height, BUL was one of Canada's top industry programs supporting university research and was often used by universities to leverage government funding for major projects such as the Univ of Waterloo's BUL at Waterloo. Complete data are not available but between 1999 and 2004, BUL had committed more than $38 million to institutions across Canada. At one point, more than 40 institutions were conducting in excess of 80 R&D projects with BUL support.

"It's still a national program but not at the scope it used to be. Before it was way too generous which was nice for universities but … a lot of the research was not aligned with our core businesses, which is telecom technologies," says Francois Morin, Bell's senior VP communications. "For Bell it makes more sense now. We want programs that we can leverage."

BUL's greatest presence is at the Univ of Toronto, where it supported approximately 30 projects simultaneously, coordinated through a dedicated office headed by an executive director and academic director. That office is in the process of disbanding although several projects are still ongoing.

"It's a disappointment of course but Bell has been a good partner over the years. BUL allows graduate students to interact with companies in an environment that is real. We will miss it," says outgoing executive director Leslie Dolman. "We were the largest BUL program in the country and had two BUL staff on the premises. BUL staffers managed the program and made sure the projects made sense using business rationale."

Dolman says that BUL money was initially used for projects in electrical and computer engineering and electrical engineering science. More recently, BUL funding went to support projects involving management policy, medicine and health. The Bell funds were often critical in obtaining support from federal and provincial government sources ,including the Ontario R&D Challenge Fund and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Another organization that enjoyed extensive collaboration with Bell through BUL is MITACS, the mathematics Network of Centres of Excellence. Dr Arvind Gupta, MITACS' CEO and scientific director, says it's too early to determine how the change to the BIF program will impact future collaboration but he's confident it will continue.

"It may not have too much of an impact for us. We're not looking for contributions from companies as much as research relationships," says Gupta. "Bell wants to see a business case for new projects (and) our relationship has been beneficial for them as well as us. All the projects we did with them have come back with rave reviews from Bell."

new tighter focus

The expanded range of R&D projects supported by BUL has been cited as a primary reason for BUL's revamping into the BIF, even though the greater scope was beneficial to the university and reinforced the recent trend towards collaborative, multidiciplinary research projects, .

"It was not an easy decision because there's tons of value collaborating with universities. But we needed return on investment and with the Bell Innovation Fund we are sure that we invest in things of value to Bell," says Morin. "With BUL there was a lot of slippage over the years. A lot of research was not aligned with our core businesses such as research into governance, legal and even literature."

With the BIF, Morin says projects must be "totally aligned with what we do" and related directly to the technologies underlying Bell's business lines. The BIF has identified three R&D platforms for university research collaboration:

* Information Technology (IT) skills: It's estimated that the IT sector will require 90,000 people over the next several years;

* Green IT: Developing and implementing new systems and technologies to reduce power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; and,

* Technology Advancement for Prosperity (TAP): Technologies for improving productivity and ultimately the corporate bottom line.

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