nrc: focused on commercial success and tangible impacts commentary on “the innovation continuum:...

NRC: focused on commercial success and tangible impacts

Commentary on “The Innovation Continuum: Moving Technologies Off the Shelf”

NRC: focused on commercial success and tangible impactsThese materials and the speaker’s remarks are personal opinions and may not reflect the

position of the NRC, its management, or the Government of Canada.

Margaret McKay, Program and Project Services and the Industrial Research Assistance Program, National Research Council of Canada

5 November 2012


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Commentator’s Context

Career Focus: building viable commercial products from Canadian research

Roles along the way: private sector intellectual property lawyer & patent agent, government (NRC) business advisor, corporate advisor; NRC IP Policy author, strategic planner

Frequent Public-Sector Challenges:• Ensuring researchers do not move beyond proof-of-concept

without industry buy-in• Ensuring technology is commercialized only by an entity with

experienced and appropriate management


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Framework for Commentary:

1. Does the paper reflect a consideration of past studies on commercialization of the products of research carried out in the public-sector?

2. Does the paper clearly identify the major issues affecting commercialization of this type in Canada today?

3. Does the paper provide and briefly discuss the major policy options currently available in Canada to address the issues from question 2?

A note on vocabulary: I have interpreted “commercialization” to mean all the steps involved in moving an initial invention into commerce for profit, including further research to support intended commercial uses, establishment of networks for industrial-scale production and distribution, and development of the final saleable product.


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Review of Background:

Does the paper reflect a consideration of past studies on factors affecting the degree of success of commercialization of the products of research carried out in a public-sector or not-for-profit context?

Yes• Subdivide the types of public-private interactions examined in

the literature wherever possible, because the timing of the public-private relationship’s initiation and the type of public lab(s) involved will have at least as much impact as the industrial sector of the technology


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Does the paper clearly identify the major issues affecting commercialization of this type in Canada today?

No, not entirely. • Operational polices within individual institutions:

-Top-down (TCOS) will support this

But:• High-level policy-makers need to know what

organization types are having what kinds of issues, so they can propose wider programs to address those gaps:

- Bottom-up categorization of issues and their incidence and severity by organization type required to address this


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Are Current Issues Discussed? - Suggestions

• List all major issues all along the commercialization path, broken down by:

• type (e.g. financial, institutional policy, etc.) • stage where they begin (e.g. pre-research, technology

transfer, development )• Type of organization where they are most seen

(university, government, etc.)

• Note: an examination of a number of unsuccessful technology commercialization efforts should be included to ensure that the most critical issues are documented – early-stage killers need to be identified


Operational Policy Discussion: Some good insights

• Provides best practices useful to individual institutions in developing internal operational policies regarding technology transfer

• More discussion of issues relating to management failures and building the commercializing team

• No indication of how the inventors in the case studies will fund commercial-quality prototyping, scale-up and distribution – might reveal more issues

• How do different university IP policies (inventor-owns vs. university owns) correlate to the rate of commercialized products from their labs? Which policy works best?


Strategic Policy Options – what can government policy makers do broadly to mitigate issues?

E.g.• What policies would help universities and public labs

incentivize industry engagement by their researchers?• What policy approaches are available to increase mutual

awareness between universities and private industry regarding new genomic technologies and developing commercial needs?

• What policies can be used to encourage public research organizations to develop levers for legitimacy?

• What foreign policy approaches should Canadians consider? E.g. policies implemented by BusinessLink (UK), Skills & Commercialization Australia, TEKES (Finland), etc.


Thank-youMargaret McKay

National Research Council of Canada

NRC Program and Project Services & Industrial Research Assistance Program

[email protected]

All materials and remarks are the personal opinions of the presenter and may not reflect the position of the NRC, its management, or the Government of Canada

nrc: focused on commercial success and tangible impacts commentary on “the innovation continuum:...

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