Dr Alexandre Navarre, VP, Numinor Conseil Inc.

Why research and innovation are such a difficult balancing act?

By Dr Alex Navarre

The Trudeau government has decided to make innovation one of its priorities in the next Budget. Expectations are therefore high. A corollary to innovation includes research activities leading, willingly or by accident, to it. Thus, it gets the attention of universities, colleges, government research centers and industry. So whatever the announcements to come, it will be difficult to please each and every of the above stakeholders. Therefore, lobbyists are at work.

Paul Dufour's recent column in (R$, August 18/16) was a reminder of the 1977 Lamontagne Committee report whose main recommendations were to encourage quality research, multidisciplinarity and projects relevant to Canadian needs. It also pointed to the need for improving the peer review system. Since we are still discussing the same weaknesses today, have we failed over the past three decades? Perhaps a number of reasons are taboo, and at the risk of being provocative, it is my intention to express the inaudible, away from the politically correct.

Let me first qualify my previous statement since all policy since the Lamontagne report has not been bad. For instance, NSERC, under the leadership of Peter Morand and Tom Bruzstowski, saw the creation of the Networks of Centers of Excellence and the Strategic Partnership programs. SSHRC has also been active in promoting multidisciplinarity.

Colleges and polytechnics have been the center of considerable transformation, growth and effective partnering with industry, mainly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this period, we have seen the creation of major university-industry consortia such as CRIAQ, genome centres and the stem cell discovery program. Equally noteworthy is the Industrial Research Assistance Program that has served as a constant source of technological services for striving companies, mostly SMEs. Against such achievements, why are we still at the tail end of the OECD ranking for innovation?

The cultural factor

The culture of innovation has traditionally been resisted by universities, which consider it more of an industry approach with a potential risk for overemphasizing directed research. The concept was viewed as an encroachment on sacrosanct academic freedom, part of the fundamental culture within universities. However there may be a confusion between freedom of expression and freedom of action.

Since the 1960s, Canadian universities have developed their research activities considerably, benefitting from both a shift and disengagement from large companies. This was often due to the branch plant syndrome and from the injections of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) whose billions have made a real difference in upgrading campus facilities. So industry contracts with public funding enticement were welcomed as a means of research expansion and further publications, but not necessarily as a means to inventions leading to disruptive innovations.

The university-industry divide

In fact, industry contracts, often leading to defensive patents and parallel consulting contracts, induce productive linkages with industry. But industry's vision is for incrementality and continuity in its suite of products, not for radical changes which are often the result of pure research and lead to long-term investments and high-risk rewards.

So while part of the science-driven departments were welcoming partnership contracts with industry at a time of grant reorientations, other parts of the university were resisting this invasive activity. This has been at the heart of the cultural issue, with presidents entertaining the ambivalence due the collegiality they have to rely upon. I am therefore suggesting that it is the governance which has lead the cultural divide.

Perhaps this is a moot issue in view of larger initiatives such as Future Earth that rely on more holistic approaches driven by multi-disciplinary projects. However, the destructuring of universities will take time to implement. In the meantime, university echelons, whether deans, VPs, provosts or presidents, are all positions that have been earned by prominent researchers chosen by their peers. Few of them have had any administration or business training. I am not suggesting that all university administrators should have such qualifications. But isn't a university a business? It does have all its characteristics without the name, even if we have no private universities in Canada.

Similarly to airport authorities, should we leave airport administration to pilots? Some universities have developed a solid core of administrators, but without any real power to enforce good management practices. Good management is generally arrived at by comparative statistics between universities and not through hardnosed business-like considerations reaching out to other sectors. Some will argue that universities have managed some drastic cuts over the years.

Having been associated for decades with several administrations, I've seen that cuts rarely affect academics or research facilities, but rather silence administrative staff. My suggestion would be to professionalize the governance of universities and hospitals. It may also be time to revisit their governance structure. One way could be to have an academic college for academic orientations and an administrative college to effectively put public funds and priorities to work.

Research focus in fields of excellence

Having participated remotely in the initial CFI strategic planning exercises in the late 1990s, it marked the beginning of the realization that one cannot just be excellent in all fields. Some fields may be more regionally important, such as aquaculture and fishery studies at UBC or the Univ of Quebec at Rimouski. This need for specialization has been pursued with some success, but was resisted in some quarters.

The good news is that Canada has pledged to improve its GERD (Gross R&D Expenditures over GDP) which is currently at 1.6%. Sweden is an EEC leader with a GERD ratio of 3.4%. So the question in the coming Budget is going to be how to allocate research funding? An even distribution across fields seems to be from the past. But what will be the political and societal priorities? And why should we be surprised that the state, representative of society, may decide which priorities will impact us all in the future?

Research also means a funding race. This is particularly true in the health domain, not only for drug development but for many other related clinical materials, prosthesis and monitoring devices. Hospitals have become massive technological machines with related management, privacy and security challenges. ITC has become just as critical a challenge as fundamental bio-health sciences. Having been at the receiving end of commercially viable results both in Canada and in Europe, I have been stunned by the differences of approaches.

Research efforts have been considerable in the US, France and Canada. Germany has a more selective and balanced strategy including many other research priorities. With much duplication of good research projects among those countries, it may be time to consider alternatives. For instance, in view of the considerable costs incurred, the creation of an international funding agency — at least initially between North America and the EEC — could pool resources in fields that require collaboration. We have started on that path when major epidemics occur. I suggest it is a direction to explore. This might also provide some answers to the peer review process.

My suggestions are meant to look at some issues with a different lens. Novelty is a long process and ideas have to simmer before they germinate. Innovation can take place at different levels and hopefully our educational institutions can reinvent themselves as well.

Dr Alexandre Navarre is VP of Numinor Conseil Inc.