Engage program seeks to meet surging demand for new business-academic links

Part of NSERC engagement strategy

A new program designed to foster new linkages between industry and university researchers has exploded out of the gates, far surpassing initial expectations and triggering positive feedback from both sides of the collaborations. The Engage initiative — launched in November/09 by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council's (NSERC) Strategic Partnerships Program (SPP) — has made nearly 250 awards to researchers that partner with companies to tackle specific problems.

The program's success has pushed its anticipated budget of $2-4 million to $6-8 million as companies flock to take advantage of the opportunities presented by partnering with the deep expertise that can be marshaled for short-term problem-solving.

"We underestimated the demand and enthusiasm that we had anticipated for the program," says Janet Walden, NSERC's VP research partnerships. "It has to be a researcher working with a company for the first time so two thirds of the businesses are new to NSERC partnership programs."

For NSERC, it's an early win for its recently launched Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation (SPI), propelling the granting council into the front ranks of organizations fostering commercialization amongst small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

"Engage provides opportunities to stimulate a new relationship and focus on a particular problem, challenge or interest and put $25,000 over six months in the hands of researchers to develop relationships," says Walden. "It changes the discussion. Researchers approach industry from the point-of-view of developing trust. It addresses the industry need to find expertise in academia and streamline access."

Engage was designed and implemented following extensive consultation with industry and other stakeholders that pointed to the need for a program featuring quick turnaround that focused on problem solving rather than technology generation. It is part of the SPI program which was launched late last year with a five-year goal of doubling academic-industry partnerships from their current level of approximately 1,500 to 3,000 (R$, December 9/09). SPI allocates approximately $310 million annually when included with the Networks of Centres of Excellences Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) and Business-Led NCE programs.

The Engage program is also unique in that it takes intellectual property off the table as part of NSERC's new flexible IP policy, leaving IP with the participating company. It also commits to responding to applications within six weeks. The processing time for applications was initially about two weeks but as the volume of applications increased, the turnaround time has increased to five weeks.

The key delivery agents for the program are the five NSERC regional offices, which were recently re-oriented towards becoming commercialization centres focused on industry-academic partnerships. In addition to promoting Engage and NSERC's other industry-engagement programs, the regional offices review the proposed management of the proposed projects with the managers of the regional offices discussing each project on a bi-weekly basis.

"The regional offices have made a huge difference for the visibility of these programs and working with companies to take up these opportunities," says Walden. "It's really early days but many companies have lauded the Engage program and its rapid assessment of proposals."

Of the 250 grants awarded to date, 55% of participating companies are from the information and communications technology (ICT) and manufacturing sectors and 90% of those firms SMEs.

"We are tracking this program closely," says Walden. "We're looking at which sectors and what size of companies are participating and the success rates for large and small firms … Demand is still ramping up."

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