ANALYSIS

Higher education institutions trying to commercialize research and intellectual property into innovative technologies lack funding and expertise and doing so is not an institutional priority, according to a Statistics Canada report.

Eighty-seven percent of universities, colleges, university-affiliated research hospitals and other specialized postsecondary institutions faced at least one obstacle to IP commercialization in 2023, the report found.

Lack of funding was the obstacle for nearly 70 percent of all institutions, while lack of expertise was the obstacle for just over half of them.

The obstacle that IP commercialization isn’t an institutional priority was an obstacle for just under half of the institutions.

For universities, lack of funding was the most important obstacle – for 58.8 percent of them.

A higher percentage of universities (21 percent) also reported that lack of expertise was the most important obstacle compared with other institutions.

More than 53 percent of universities also said that the obstacle for IP commercialization was “uncertainty and risk” – a higher percentage than other institutions.

The data gathered by StatsCan – as well as past research and reports – raises questions about the effectiveness of university technology transfer offices in commercializing IP and research.

StatsCan released the data on March 17, 2026. However, StatsCan had released an earlier report, Survey on Research Activities and Commercialization of Intellectual Property in Higher Education, 2023, on September 29, 2025.

But StatsCan removed this report from its website shortly after its release.

That previous report included much more data and explanatory text, including the percentage of institutions that held R&D contracts and/or partnerships; the number of IT disclosures; the kind of help provided by institutions to small and medium-sized enterprises; and the number of all licences granted by institutions to foreign organizations.

However, the subsequent report released on March consisted only of tables of data, without any of this other information or explanatory text.

“Estimates on support for small and medium enterprises in Canadian higher education originally released on September 29, 2025, will not be included in this release. New information received indicated reporting issues for this survey item,” according to the report released in March.

In presenting much less and more narrowly focused data, StatsCan’s new report didn’t paint as comprehensive a picture on research activities and commercialization of IP in higher education as did its initial report in September 2025.

That earlier report, based on the results from the Survey on Research Activities and Commercialization in Higher Education, “was withdrawn based on new information, necessitating a review of the data,” Carter Mann, chief of media relations at Statistics Canada, said in an email to Research Money.

“New information received after the initial release indicated reporting issues. As a result, the tables were withdrawn and a thorough review was conducted prior to the re-release,” he said.

Asked why the new report didn’t included all the data that was in the previous report, Abord-Babin said that the Experimental estimates for research and development activities in Canadian higher education (2023) is “a new exploratory program. Statistics Canada is engaging with stakeholders to improve future survey cycles. Consultations will help refine the questionnaire, develop new indicators, and ensure the survey continues to evolve.”

University technology transfer offices have a long-standing problem in commercializing research

StatsCan’s report points to a long-standing problem that Canadian university technology transfer offices (TTOs) underperform in commercializing research compared to their U.S. counterparts, with U.S. institutions licensing patents at roughly three times the rate.

Key issues in Canada include low licensing revenue, limited industry collaboration, high operational costs and, at times, acting as bottlenecks for startups. 

Despite high-quality research, TTOs often fail to move technologies from academia to the market effectively. Canadian top performers often generate less than half the licensing income of their U.S. peers.

Past research and reports have shown:

• In some cases, the costs to run the TTO nearly equal the income generated from commercialized intellectual property, resulting in a negligible net return on investment.
• TTOs frequently struggle to attract staff with strong private sector experience, leading to poor marketing of inventions and difficulty identifying the right industry partners.
• Startups report that navigating the complex, lengthy IP processes of TTOs hinders their growth, often leading them to circumvent the offices entirely.
• There is often a mismatch between where technology is developed and where its best industrial partner is located, with limited licensing of Canadian university inventions to Canadian firms.
• There is a tendency to focus on generating patent applications rather than securing lucrative licensing agreements or driving successful spinoffs. 

But Gabriel Miller (photo at right), president and CEO of Universities Canada, said in an email to Research Money that universities and their technology transfer offices continue to play a vital role in commercializing research and intellectual property in Canada.

“They are a critical bridge between discovery and real-world application, helping move ideas from the lab into the economy,” he said.

Recent data on this issue should be interpreted with caution, Miller noted. Statistics Canada’s survey on research activities and IP commercialization is still considered experimental and does not yet provide a complete picture of the work taking place across Canadian campuses, he said. Universities Canada is working with Statistics Canada to strengthen future iterations, he added.

Technology transfer offices are doing important work, but many operate with limited resources and short-term funding models, Miller said.

Commercializing research – through patents, licensing or startup creation – requires sustained, long-term investment, he said. “Without it, it becomes more difficult to support researchers, partner with industry and fully realize the economic potential of Canadian innovation.”

At the same time, universities’ role extends beyond traditional tech transfer offices, Miller pointed out.

Institutions across the country are building strong commercialization ecosystems, through initiatives such as Dalhousie University’s Lab2Market, Simon Fraser University’s Invention to Innovation program and the University of Calgary’s UCeed fund, which support researchers in developing and scaling new ventures.

There are also broader structural challenges, Miller said. Canada’s economy is largely made up of small and medium-sized businesses, which often lack the capacity to invest in early-stage innovation.

Combined with a relatively smaller and more risk-averse venture capital landscape, this can make it difficult for promising discoveries to scale domestically leading, in some cases, to Canadian-developed intellectual property being commercialized abroad, he said.

Robert Asselin (photo at right), CEO of U15 Canada, which represents Canadian research universities, said an email to Research Money: “Leading research universities support Canada's innovation ecosystem by generating new knowledge, serving as hubs for hands-on collaboration with industry, and developing highly qualified talent that empowers Canadian firms to innovate and commercialize groundbreaking solutions. "

"This is a priority for U15 universities," Asselin said. "Each year, they are among the top patent filers in the country, illustrating the depth of their contribution to Canadian innovation. At the same time, responsibility for commercializing IP also rests with the business sector and more work is needed to address barriers to bringing Canadian technologies to market.”

Universities Canada and U15 Canada both ae working with Statistics Canada to help improve the survey and strengthen future iterations.

Universities “contribute far too little to innovative Canadian firms”

The Centre for International Governance for Innovation said in a 2019 report that Canadian universities “contribute far too little to innovative Canadian firms” and that universities “need to get out of the patent business.”

Many examples of successful Canadian innovation are controlled by foreign firms, the report pointed out. “While there are examples of successful transition of university research to firms, none have resulted in a long-term, large Canadian technology firm.”

University patenting represents a cost that hinders Canada’s already lagging innovation performance, according to the report. “It lessens investments in innovation, lowers innovation outputs for Canadian firms and delays or kills promising innovation.”

First, because of these policies’ focus on gaining IP rights and revenues, it takes months, often a year or more, to even enter into an agreement with a university.

Second, universities commercialize technology too early on, wasting time trying to identify a potential licensee rather than spending their energies on advancing the technology to the point where it is ready to move forward.

Third, they share knowledge too narrowly, creating delays in getting that knowledge into the hands of those who can best deploy it. Collectively, these costs constitute a significant tax on the Canadian innovation system.

“It is not necessarily true that universities are any worse at IP management than most firms. The real issue is that universities suffer no adverse consequences for producing so little IP that stays in Canada,” the report said.

While there are certainly indirect benefits from university technology transfer offices (for example, through spin-offs), the overall picture is underwhelming, the report said.

“Rather than seeding the growth of a large Canadian technology firm that would bring in revenue and be controlled in Canada, the Canadian innovation ecosystem faces higher expenditures, a crowding of the patent space and slow translation of ideas into innovation.”

“To reverse the last 40 years of failure, universities and colleges need to structure their relations with industry – and each other – around collaborations rather than IP,” the report said.

Canadian universities don’t align research with industry needs

Research Money reported in June 2024 that data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) show Canada is capturing less than half of its technological potential, allowing groundbreaking research and innovations to sit unused or be scooped up by foreign companies.

As noted in a Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness’ recent report, it is not enough for Canada to simply focus on basic ingredients of innovation like scientific publications or STEM graduation rates and hope that technologies and firms come out the other end of the innovation assembly line.

Lawrence Zhang (photo at right), head of policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation’s Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness, said in a 2024 commentary. “National success comes from alignment between research and industry needs.”

One reason for Canada’s “disheartening” results on commercialization could be that the country has a great deal of potential to commercialize technology from academic research, but universities are doing a poor job of it, he said.

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s data could suggest that Canadian universities are doing a poor job in transferring technology to companies compared with universities in other jurisdictions, Zhang said.

In fact, according to data from AUTM, an association that includes university tech transfer professionals, U.S. university tech transfer offices licensed patents at, on average, three times the rate of Canadian universities in 2022.

Canada’s top-performing tech transfer office at the University of Toronto made in licensing income less than half of what New York University – by no means the top performing university in the U.S. – by commercialization.

“Universities putting more emphasis on commercializing technologies could go a long way toward ensuring that Canadian technological potential is harnessed,” Zhang said.

The simplest thing the federal government and provinces could do is tie a meaningful portion of university funding to commercialization results in Canada, he said. “Universities that succeed in this would get more money, while universities that do not would see funding cuts.”

There are few incentives structurally for universities to commercialize their research to the benefit of the university, the academic entrepreneur and the research funder, Neil Desai, board chair at Solace Power and former leadership team member at cyber-forensics firm Magnet Forensics, said at Alberta Innovates’ 2025 Inventures conference.

Most university tech transfer offices don’t have entrepreneurs or people who’ve actually started and run businesses on staff, he said.

This means ideas and IP generated by universities often get sold to the highest bidder, including foreign entities, Densai said.

For example, substantial public funding went to support research at Dalhousie University to develop lithium-ion battery technology for electric vehicles. The research funding agreement between Dalhousie and Tesla gives the technology’s IP to Tesla.

The technologies that enabled artificial intelligence and the creation of AI large language models were developed in Canada, but sold to Google for a few million dollars, Densai noted.

“The rents [on the ownership and use of the IP] are being generated to the benefit of foreign investors on the backs of Canadian taxpayers. That’s charity,” he said.

 Universities need better ways to commercialize their research and turn it into valuable technologies

Canadian universities attracted $8 billion in research funding reported by 31 institutions – a 5.6-percent increase – driven in part by a 15.4-percent rise in industry-sponsored research, according to the AUTM 2024 Canadian Licensing Survey – the most recent survey available.

Gross licensing income increased by 13.5 percent (the specific amount of income wasn’t publicly reported), fuelled by gains in royalties and other revenue sources, despite a 45.2-percent drop in equity cash-outs, the survey said.

Startup formation declined by 14.5 percent, but most ventures remained rooted in their home province.

Technology licensing staff grew by 3.5 percent, while overall staffing levels head steady.

AUTM publicly reports only these high-level statistics; full Canadian data must be purchased.

“Canadian universities need better ways to commercialize their research and turn it into valuable technologies,” according to a 2024 study, published in The School of Public Policy Publications, by Randall Morck (photo at right), professor of finance in Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta.

University TTOs handle everything from IP evaluation and marketing to negotiating and managing licences, he said. On average, Canadian university TTOs handle 5.11 invention disclosures per year, execute 2.93 licences and manage 3.83 university spinoffs, his study said.

“However, figures vary wildly between institutions, ranging from zero to double digits. Income from TTOs is just as variable, with some universities earning millions while others report net losses,” Morck said.

Fewer than one-third of one Canadian university’s licences are with companies in this country, he noted.

This is because each technology has a best receptor in the private sector, and each business has a field to which it is best suited, he said. “To maximize the value of commercialization, technology should be developed by the entity with the highest values use case.”
The wide variety of research at any university makes it unlikely that a small TTO can support commercialization properly, Morck pointed out.

“If governments are determined to use university research to grow the economy, they need to prepare the ground so there are local receptors,” he said.

Areas with a lot of receptors need access to capital in the form of startup funding. If a technology requires continual input from its creators, capital and receptors are more likely to move to where the researchers are based.

“The solution is to increase technological inertia and the agglomerative nature of local tech ecosystems. The key is creating university spinoffs and keeping them local.”

The way forward involves creating a provincial office of scientific research and experimental development, using budgetary carrots and sticks to convince universities to change how their TTOs work and developing university programming to enhance the commercialization skills of subject matter experts, Morck said.

Creating a provincial-level refundable commercialization expense program, providing a well-curated portal listing funding and commercialization support, mandating registration/licensing of all fee-taking entrepreneurial support services, and educating potential local angel investors all factor into the equation for success as well, he said.

University technology transfer offices weren’t built for modern innovation

“Technology transfer offices (TTO) were designed for an era when knowledge could be codified, patented and licensed,” Andrew Maxwell (photo at right), the Bergeron Chair in Technology Entrepreneurship in the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University, said in an email to Research Money.

“But today’s innovations rely heavily on tacit know-how, iterative development with users and partnerships that must manage uncertainty – a fundamentally different challenge than the TTO model was built to handle,” he said.

Universities are not failing at commercialization – they were never designed, or “architected” to do it, Maxwell wrote in a post on his substack.

“And the economic, cultural, and institutional systems surrounding them make large-scale commercialization structurally unlikely,” he said.

Most research starts with one of two things: curiosity or funding opportunity, Maxwell said. “Neither begins with a validated market problem.”

But commercialization requires problem-solution fit, he said. “If research originates without a defined user, the probability that it naturally aligns with commercial demand is low.”

Maxwell said that commercialization requires integrated competence across:

• Technical understanding.
• Market framing.
• Adoption psychology.
• Decision-making under risk.
• Behavioral economics.
• Business model architecture.
• Capital strategy.
• Supply chain integration.
• Team governance.
• Regulatory navigation.

“That is not one skill. It is a capability stack,” he noted.

However, most research groups possess one component: technical depth, he added. “Few possess the integrated stack. Commercialization failure is not an IP problem. It is a team capability density problem.”

University policy still treats patents as primary assets, Maxwell said. Equity splits are negotiated before customers exist. Ownership debates occur before value is created. Licensing terms are structured around hypothetical upside.

But in most modern sectors, he noted, advantage comes from:

• Tacit know-how.
• Speed of iteration.
• Execution quality.
• Team resilience.
• Adoption velocity.

Maxwell pointed out that university faculty incentives reward publications, grants, citations and reputation.
“Commercialization requires time, risk, and reputational exposure – with uncertain institutional reward,” he said, adding that these incentives are misaligned with commercialization.

Commercialization also requires staged capital: market validation capital, early venture capital and scale capital, Maxwell said.
In contrast, universities provide research funding. “Then a gap. Then perhaps some proof-of-concept funds. Then another gap. Between lab and venture lies a capital desert.”

“Technologies do not die because they lack potential,” he said. “They die because there is no structured pathway to fund uncertainty reduction.”

Universities track patents filed, licenses signed and revenue generated, Maxwell said. They do not track:

• Time to first user.
• Time to validated problem-solution fit.
• Adoption readiness.
• Iteration speed.
• Competitive differentiation.
• Team formation stability.

“We measure activity proxies. Not progress indicators. And when you measure the wrong things, you optimize the wrong behaviours,” he said.

Transformational impact from university research usually occurs through venture creation, not passive licensing, Maxwell said.

But venture creation requires: entrepreneurial leadership, capital fluency, operational governance, market literacy, and long-time time horizons.

University faculty often do not want to become founders, Maxwell said. Graduate students often do – but lack ownership clarity, capital access, and structured support. “The system misaligns motivation and authority. Then expresses disappointment with outcomes.”

TTOs operate inside governance systems optimized for risk avoidance and administrative compliance,” Maxwell said.

They do not control research framing, faculty incentives, capital markets and team formation

“Yet they are expected to generate venture-scale results. This is not a resource problem. It is a mandate misalignment problem,” he said.

Maxwell said a major overhaul is required, and 10 things much change:

Structural redesign.

1. Teach commercialization as a process discipline.

Every research-intensive institution should teach the full commercialization journey – from problem framing to venture scaling.

2. Build commercialization readiness metrics.

Before patenting, assess user validation, adoption motivation, competitive positioning, and team capability.

3. Replace patent count with progress indicators.

Measure speed to first user; speed to first revenue; adoption velocity; capital efficiency; and learning speed.

4. Separate inventor and entrepreneur roles.

Inventors should not be forced to become founders. Entrepreneurs should not be excluded because they are not inventors.

5. Align incentives with impact.

Promotion frameworks must reward venture creation and adoption impact – not just publications.

6. Redesign IP policy around momentum.

Prioritize probability of traction over maximizing ownership percentage.

7. Create dedicated venture translation units.

Separate from compliance-focused TTO functions, staffed by market operators, not administrators.

8. Structure capital continuity.

Build staged risk capital pathways that match commercialization milestones.

9. Protect intelligent failure.

Treat failed ventures as institutional learning assets.

10. Manage commercialization like a quality system

Map the full process. Identify bottlenecks. Track failure nodes. Refine continuously.

“If you cannot measure commercialization potential early – and track progress over time – you cannot improve success rates,” Maxwell said. “At the moment, most institutions do not measure the process. They measure artifacts.”

If commercialization performance disappoints, it is not because researchers lack ambition, Maxwell said. “It is because we have built an economic architecture optimized for scholarship –  and then asked it to behave like a venture engine.”

“If we want higher commercialization success rates, we must redesign incentives, metrics, capital pathways, and team formation structures.”

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