Absolutely true. Since this ratio is probably the most critical metric of all to a healthy innovation system, one could cynically say that if the private sector isn't going to put up the R and D dollars, the government should put up less to bring that balance back to three to one, because that three to one, or in fact greater than three to one, has been shown to be absolutely optimal for an innovative economy.
But having said that, I'm not arguing necessarily for less contribution. It's focused contribution in the right way. If you involve the industry very directly in what the activity is, you will find that they will be willing to put more money into R and D. I don't think it takes any single policy--and again, I'm not a tax expert, but looking at, for example, SR and EDs alone, it's a non-holistic way of looking at it and all you will do is affect one portion of the supply chain. You have to look at the whole supply chain and see how you can encourage more R and D by the private sector.
A short-term move in the right direction would be to provide more private sector governance into some public sector funding such that you would have more market pull influence as well as technology push. You need both. You cannot do it with one or the other; you need both. But as I've shown, we have an imbalance between technology push and market pull.
So let me give you an example. I was at CANMET's lab in Devon yesterday, giving a talk there. I walked out with some industry people who said, “Fantastic facility. Great, extremely bright people. Not working on problems that are of interest to us. Why is it being done?”
So if you focused that money and that facility on more of a partnership and said, “We'll put in the money. You put in the money, private sector, but you get to drive the agenda that pulls the technology to answer the challenges you face”, I think you'd find they'd come on board pretty fast.