Who controls process remains unresolved

A draft report from a key Innovation Strategy workshop on developing commercialization capacity has established a course of action and a three-year timeframe to tackle what many consider to be the most pressing obstacle in Canada’s drive to become a truly innovative nation. The workshop deliberations and a resolve to advance its action agenda are part of a larger Industry Canada initiative to flesh out recommendations stemming from last year’s Innovation Summit.

The March 20-21 workshop brought together 35 selected individuals who participated in the Improving Research, Development and Commercialization session at the national Innovation Summit. It was co-chaired by Dr Arthur Carty, president of the National Research Council, and Dr Adam Chowaniec, chairman of Tundra Semiconductor Corp.

“There is a real feeling of energy in the room and a sense of the need to follow up and not just issue a draft report that goes nowhere,” says Chowaniec. “We’ll be forming a steering committee in the next couple of weeks to set priorities for the next step. How you fund companies and start-ups is a huge piece, and so is the question of how to fund university research. Commercialization and the bringing together of industry, government and academia is another issue.”

The commercialization workshop report will be augmented by the next annual innovation study from the Conference Board of Canada and work on commercialization being conducted by the Advisory Council on Science and Technology.

The workshop deliberations produced five theme areas and corresponding outcomes by 2005. These include

• increased commercialization of new products on international markets
• streamlined and effective access to federal and provincial support systems
• improved risk management for product development
• new risk financing mechanisms at key pre-commercialization stages
• increased commercialization resulting from new product and technology development
• move from pension to investment mentality
• innovation identified as a top 3 priority for Canadians
• development of a new generation of “serial” high-tech entrepreneurs
• a world-class commercialization system in Canada disagreement on role of universities

By all accounts, the workshop generated informed discussion on a number of critical points, including new financing mechanisms, enhancement of existing programs and new types of tax incentives to reduce investment risk. But consensus could not be reached on the divisive issue of who should engage in the commercialization of university-based research.

“The workshop brought clarity to the disagreement. The universities clearly feel they want to control the process of moving technology out,” says Chowaniec. “But there’s a growing body of thought around building relationships with industry and community organizations like OCRI in Ottawa and Communitech in Waterloo.”

Chowaniec says it makes little sense to entrust commercialization to a culture that has difficulty communicating with industry and has an incomplete understanding of its needs. But he doesn’t rule out the potential for compromise.

“I lean towards the demand-pull side of the argument. But my biggest issue is, you have to have both sides at the table,” he says. “We hope to follow up on how to bring the two sides closer together.”

The proponents of demand pull outnumbered the supporters of technology push at the workshop. But the fact remains that universities are a growing force in innovation and have received the lion’s share of federal and provincial research support in recent years. Those attached to academic institutions continue to assert that universities are a key player in commercialization

“There’s a role for universities to play and a role for private enterprise when they develop their own technology,” says John Molloy, president of PARTEQ Innovations at Queen’s Univ. “You have to break it down into parts and the workshop didn’t do this. It was a successful meeting but I would like to have seen more emphasis on technology development in the university environment.”

Molloy says the university system isn’t perfect and could use additional resources to add expertise to technology transfer offices and move intellectual property (IP) further downstream. But even on the issue of national standardized IP policies, he says the matter should be addressed on a university by university basis.

“If you take the emotion out of it, it doesn’t make sense to have anything else but institutional ownership of IP,” he says. “But standardization won’t improve commercialization in this country. There are bigger things to fix than IP policy. The federal government would be best advised to put the right kind of infrastructure in place that can operate on any IP policy.”

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