On this concept that we're good innovators but not good at commercializing, we certainly believe that's very true.
There are two other points I'd like to bring up that we discuss in universities an awful lot. One is the procurement of devices and infrastructure that are made by our innovators. One of the great difficulties, of course, is they're not going to ramp up their profits or their sales internationally if the various provinces and the federal government don't bother to support them. If they don't buy it out of Canada, why would we invest it in another place? I would like to see some kind of policy that would lead to better procurement of IP that's generated at home.
The other issue we see—and perhaps this is peculiar to McMaster, because of its strength in medical research—is that there are a number of government programs that support the development of IP and commercialization. Many of these programs, however, are too short in duration for that to come to fulfillment. If you think about putting anything in a person's body—drugs, devices, or anything like that—there is an incredible range of analysis and hoops and jumps that you have to go through, particularly for things like clinical trials. These take years and years and many millions of dollars to do. Frequently it takes more than five years to run through all the clinical trials that are needed. By that time, the funding has run out and there's no place to go when the project fails.
Many of my colleagues in medicine say we need something like a seven-year runway on some of these programs before we can really figure out whether something is going to work or not. Five years is just too short.
As a contrast with other technical things, if someone is developing an app or a small technical thing in their basement, sure, five years is great, but in the more complicated things, you need more time.