Stakes are high as NRC moves to complete long-term strategy for renewal

The National Research Council (NRC) is entering the critical phase of its renewal project that will determine the structure and priorities of Canada's premier R&D agency. Launched in February/05 after several abortive attempts to reinvent itself, the project has completed the essential groundwork and is now working to establish an operational plan for the next 10 years when the NRC will face an increasing competitive global knowledge environment.

Under the direction of NRC VP Dr Sherif Barakat - formerly DG of NRC's Institute for Research in Construction - the ambitious initiative is now in its third phase of strategy formulation, to be followed this spring by the final phase of implementation. To date, Barakat's team has completed a process of technology foresighting, a comprehensive examination of global technology trends, cross-country national strategy consultations with many of Canada's scientific leaders and an internal workshop on disruptive technologies (see chart).

With that insight in hand, the third phase will set the stage for what many anticipate could be a period of profound change at the NRC, hopefully followed by additional A-base funding once it can demonstrate the value of its new direction.

"A number of directions that NRC will go has been established with an increased emphasis on the 'D' of R&D and commercialization," says Barakat. "We want to align our research to the Canadian environment where we can excel and advance S&T in areas of future importance to Canada."

FOUR BROAD THEMES

To set the stage for change, the NRC undertook a series of working papers on the global S&T environment and future trends, categorizing its work into four broad themes: global context, global challenges impacting Canada, global economic competition and the evolving role of S&T. In the latter category, the NRC determined that, for the next 15 years, the primary transformative technologies will be information and communications technologies, biotechnology and energy and environmental technologies. Primary enabling S&T are anticipated to be nanoscience and nanoengineering, materials science, photonics, microfluidics and quantum information.

Convergence is expected to be a major trend within many of these technologies, fuelled by an unprecedented amount of multidisciplinary collaboration that is projected to be "the most important challenge facing the future of S&T development to 2020", according to the background report, Looking Forward: S&T for the 21st Century. That challenge will include a pace of change outstripping the ability of regulators to keep up, compounded by need for decision makers to increasingly rely on science.

Canada's also faces growing challenges in the global competitive environment, which are exacerbated by its reliance on US trade. While the economic benefits of S&T are widely accepted, other nations are moving more quickly and investing more heavily in S&T.

With emerging nations like Brazil, China and India moving up the S&G food chain, pressures are growing in Canada to find solutions for increasing industrial R&D, and getting researchers from all sectors to dramatically increase collaboration. It's becoming clear that, four years after Canada's so-called innovation strategy was launched, little progress has been made.

"Canada has poor coordination among the players in innovation policy, both provincially and federally. There is a lack of focus in innovation policy, strategy and execution - too many players working with different and sometimes opposing plans and policies," states the background report. "In the fast-growing innovation economies (e.g. Finland, Japan), integration, convergence and focus are key words representing action. They need to be made real in Canada, and some limited progress is now slowly being made."

Barakat says the findings of the renewal project indicate that the NRC has important strengths in many key areas that are becoming dominant in other advanced nations.

"There were no major surprises technology-wise. The major eye opener was when you look at how Canada compares with the rest of the world in productivity, innovation and competitiveness," he says. "Other countries are moving faster and it's surprising how fast India and China are growing and how the competitive landscape is changing. (In Canada) there's a lack of action in S&T policy in identifying niches and targets ... We need to connect people and work together and people are looking to the NRC for that leadership."

It's still too early to determine exactly what measures NRC will take to step into a leadership role, but some ideas are beginning to emerge. There's growing consensus that the agency, given its relatively modest size, must become more targetted and provide those areas of expertise with stable support. As a national player, it must increase its already extensive ties with other organizations and industry by pursuing more collaborations and joint projects than is presently the case. And once those decisions are made, it's almost certain it will have to implement its new strategy within existing financial means.

"We'll come up with major goals and targets but we have to work within our current budget. If there are new areas and more horizontal programs we want to move into, we will look inside for resources," says Barakat. "What areas can we do without? I expect a shift to start new initiatives and we will need to free up resources. That means cutting programs and areas, not institutes."

Given the vacancies in several key executive positions, and the deterioration of much of the NRC's infrastructure, the task ahead is monumental. Many observers say the NRC should be the number one S&T priority of the new government if Canada is to succeed in the world economic arena.

R$