WestLink launches pilot internship program for tech transfer and commercialization skills

Two years after its formation, WestLink Innovation Network Ltd has launched its most ambitious project to date with an internship program to provide individuals with the skills required for technology transfer and commercialization of discoveries emanating from its 16 member organizations. The $2.1-million pilot program has generated considerable interest, with 20 openings for interns attracting more than 200 applicants from universities, the venture capital community and the private sector (R$, May 10/01).

Along with complementary initiatives being pitched from coast to coast, the WestLink program is indicative of the urgent need for specialized skill sets to deal with a growing volume of early-stage technology opportunities being generated by recent increases in research funding.

“There is a serious shortage of this type of personnel. It’s almost a national crisis and we need to train our own to meet this need,” says Dr Jim Murray, a veteran of the Canadian technology transfer scene in Alberta and British Columbia and WestLink’s interim president. “We have wonderful research programs in Canada but it’s still pioneer days in the area of commercialization ... We realized that we needed to bootstrap the skills of the university-industry liaison offices and try to develop more managers for evolving knowledge-based businesses, financiers and ventures capital organizations.”

The concept of a not-for-profit organization to encourage and facilitate commercialization activity in Western Canada goes back several years to a study conducted by KPMG. It demonstrated that such a networking body was both necessary and viable and it also confirmed a serious lack of early-stage capital to take promising discoveries to the marketplace.

As a result, the $30-million Western Seed Technology Investment Fund was established in early 1997 and is now fully subscribed. But it took another two years before WestLink came into being. Funded by Western Economic Diversification (WED) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), it has subsequently engaged in a variety of initiatives to encourage collaboration.

Murray says there is no shortage of activities that WestLink can engage in, ranging from the creation of a database of available technologies and other statistics to establishing best practices, and serving as a communications conduit for its member and outside organizations. The only constraining factor is funding, which is currently limited to WED and NSERC support, with smaller amounts from other sources provided for specific projects.

“In Western Canada there are approximately 400 discoveries being made every year, and that’s just university-based discoveries. Overall, there are more like 1,000 to 1,200,” says Murray. “If 50% fall off right away, and another 50% fall off after due diligence, that’s 250 viable projects each year. And if half result in spin-offs, that means up to 125 new companies annually. We need to have a major effort to build the management of these companies.”

The situation is similarly acute across Canada (not to mention internationally) and Murray has held conversations or fielded expressions of interests from various governments and organizations. The longer term objective is to expand the WestLink concept into a national program.

“I’m hoping that the Innovation White Paper will see the light of day on this issue and result in action,” says Murray. “We look at the internship program as a pilot program and the challenge is to develop into a major national program. That’s what we have to do.”

In the meantime, Western Canada offers more than enough potential for expanding WestLink’s operations, and Murray says it’s becoming increasingly involved in technology bundling. Many universities have large portfolios of patented technologies that remain unlicensed because they only represent pieces of a viable commercial enterprise. Through networking and the development of a searchable database, universities can bundle their technologies in areas of commonality to make packages that are more attractive for funding and start-up ventures.

“This is still a relatively revolutionary idea,” says Murray, adding that Europe is a step ahead of North America implementing the bundling concept. “Is it better to have 100% of nothing or 25 to 50 per cent of something that could be much larger? This is going over very well in the financial community and with the venture capital firms in BC and Washington.”

With the current need for skills and resources in all areas of commercialization, Murray says there’s ample room for several organizations working in specific niches. He sees Westlink as complimentary to proposed organizations like the national InnoCentre network (R$, January 15/01), the proposed national life sciences commercialization initiative (R$, April 4/01) and parallel organizations like the Bureaux de liaison Enterprises-Universités (BLEUS), which represents 18 Quebec-based universities and research institutes.

SPIN-OFF DATABASE COMPLETE

WestLink has also recently completed a survey and database of spin-off and commercialization activity at Simon Fraser Univ, the Univ of British Columbia (UBC) and the Univ of Alberta. The survey was conducted using software licensed from the UBC and the results are expected to show the benefits derived from spin-off activity (including venture capital funding), providing a bigger picture of commercialization. Plans are underway to get the software in the hands of all WestLink members as well as other universities and research institutes.

“UBC started doing surveys of spin-offs 14 years ago when I was there,” says Murray. “But now it’s much more sophisticated. It’s an excellent tool and we want to get more people using it.”

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