NSERC introduces dramatic new measures to increase flexibility and improve linkages to innovation

Canada's largest research granting agency is forging ahead with a series of new initiatives that mark a major overhaul of the 22-year-old organization, moving it further than ever into the cycle of innovation. The changes being developed by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) are designed to seize breakthrough opportunities and enter into flexible partnerships with external organizations, as well as the more traditional functions of increasing the number of researchers receiving support and easing administrative burden.

NSERC received approval from its governing council earlier this month to implement several elements of the initiatives, which represent a determination to enhance its client focus while delivering on its two-pronged mandate of serving the needs of the research community and realizing government policy objectives. The changes also include a re-branding of the NSERC name with the inclusion of the slogans "Smart Canada" "the SmartCanada people" after its acronym, in a bid to heighten its image and more accurately define its objective of supporting research for the benefit of the nation.

The strategy is to phase in the initiatives over the next four years. But NSERC is implementing the transformation in an atmosphere of funding uncertainty, as the government has yet to respond to its request for a doubling of its $520-million budget over the next four years (see chart next page). The proposed new funding would increase the success rates of research applicants and also increase the size of grants awarded - just two of the objectives that NSERC president Dr Tom Brzustowski has been championing for the past several months. It will also help in the implementation of the new initiatives and a surge in new applicants for NSERC funding. Regardless of whether the government provides new funding or not, Brzustowski says it won't hold back further development of the initiatives and at least make a modest start for some of them.

"NSERC council has unanimously given us the approval develop these initiatives for implementation. And we will increasingly start to refer to ourselves as NSERC - the Smart Canada People, identifying us as people with a particular vision rather than an inanimate organization," he says. "We will not put this aside to say 'great idea, we're glad council approved but without new money we're not going to try it'. We're committed to doing as much as we can with our present capabilities."

Another change approved for implementation is the doubling of NSERC's Intellectual Property Management Program from its current level of $3 million annually to $12 million.

DISTINCTIVE INITIATIVES

Perhaps the two most distinctive new initiatives are the creation of an Opportunity Fund aimed at a rapid response to a radical basic research discoveries with commercial potential, and NSERC Innovation Platforms (NIPs) allowing the agency to enter into flexible collaborations with outside groups.

The Opportunity Fund will be launched at about $2-3 million annually and would be used to provide funding for discoveries at the pre-commercial stage. Uses for the funds would include demonstration of the discovery's innovation potential and protecting or improving of intellectual property (IP) prior to seeking early-stage financing.

Much more ambitious are the NIPs that NSERC is planning to introduce to emphasize and accelerate areas of national importance. NIPs would be created on an as-needed basis to interact with external organizations in areas of overlapping or mutual interest. Each would have a scientific director and a research director, and implement a governance model that best suits the type of collaborative endeavour.

Leading the NIP initiative is Bill Coderre, NSERC's director of corporate development. Coderre says that concept for NIPs was developed by the NSERC management committee and incorporates the granting council's previous experiences with collaboration, notably in the areas of fuel cells, lithoprobes and microelectronics and elements. The initiative was also inspired by the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program and the Canada Institutes of Health Research, in particular the concept of self-identification, allowing researchers to choose how they want to interact.

"We were looking for ways to work more flexibly and imaginatively with other groups but it evolved out of a lot of other concepts," he says. "The NSERC Innovation Platforms will allow us to work with other organizations that share at least some of our missions, and cut down on the number of new research groups and new processes. This isn't new but it does represent a new package and label."

Several areas where NIPs may be appropriate have already been identified, including the grid research proposal by CANARIE Inc, the proposed eMPOWR Canada, nanoscience with the National Research Council, polymer electronics and the BIOCAP Canada Foundation.

"We're looking to bootstrap Canada in key areas and in that sense it's not a program but a statement of flexibility," says Coderre. "They are stand-alone entities which are independent or quasi-independent like Genome Canada. They would be larger than an NCE, but smaller than a CIHR institute. A nominal size would be $10 million."

In addition to the creation of NIPs, it will add a "Benefit to Canada" clause to all of its applications, in which a researcher whose work is commercialized will commit to obtaining the greatest feasible benefit to the nation. The latter provision stems from one of several recommendation contained in the so-called Fortier report on the commercialization of university research. Prepared by the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (ACST), the controversial report has been languishing since its release in 1999, which was followed by a cross-Canada consultation process led by Brzustowski that same year (R$, April 28 & September 15/99).

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