The CICP program is structured somewhat differently from a traditional call for proposals, because in a traditional case there will often be a government department that identifies a specific need and therefore a specific set of requirements for the technology.
In the case of CICP, they were not prescribing what sort of technology they were willing to fund. They basically went out to small and medium enterprises and asked, what technologies do you have that meet a minimum level of technology maturity but that you have not yet brought across the commercialization line?
From our perspective, when the call for proposals came out we basically looked at our technology portfolio and identified which technologies were sufficiently mature to go into testing with a government department but had not yet been sold commercially. That's how we narrowed down the list of technologies for submission, ultimately to one particular technology, which we submitted.
I think there's some merit in that approach, if the intent of the program is to try to jump-start the ability of small and medium enterprises to commercialize the activity, because it allows a very broad cross-section of enterprises to respond with whatever technology they feel is most promising and whatever technology they feel will have the greatest impact and return for their company.