I need to go back to the challenge of recognizing that it's not a disruption, in my view anyway, until it's in the marketplace. I think it's okay to ask how do we understand the potential to either create a new market, or to displace technologies that are in an existing market. Normally the way most of the business assessments start is by asking if there is a market demand.
In the deck I presented there are a couple of diagrams. One of them.... Where we like to start is by asking: what are the market opportunities? If we understand market opportunities then we can ask what the technology gaps are that are preventing us from accessing those markets. If we understand the technology gaps then we can ask what the knowledge gaps are that are stopping us from inventing that technology. That's where the collaboration comes in.
One of the things I said in my remarks was that it is dangerous to try to pick the horse, but I think it's okay to pick the race.
When I say it's okay to pick the race, what I mean is that I'm reasonably sure there are going to be significant disruptions around the human-machine interface. I think artificial intelligence is one of those areas where Canada needs to build some good platform technologies because that's one of the places where we expect technologies to emerge that will be disruptive.
We can say the same for robotics and for additive manufacturing, with 3-D printing being one example.
When I look at the world, and if I look in the short term.... First you need to understand from the NRC perspective. We have work that is absolutely geared to support companies in the two- to five-year timeframe and sometimes even faster. We have work that is really in the midterm, although my particular division is trying to look a little more over the horizon. I learn from the markets that we currently understand, and that allows us to look forward and ask what the emerging market opportunities are.
That may be an indirect answer to your question. The disruptiveness of a technology has to do with our ability to think about how it's going to be used.