Good morning.
I did not submit any slides or opening comments in advance, but I am captivated by the conversation around the room, and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you folks.
By way of introduction we build start-up companies. We take great ideas that are often patent-protected, and we turn those into companies. Our KPIs measure investments that we secure with client companies, the revenues we generate, and how many jobs we put into this space. As everybody probably knows, Manitoba is not the biggest province in the nation, but we did manage to raise over $125 million in capital from the clients of our little operation last year. We created about 250 new technology jobs, and we generated over $35 million in revenue from concepts that were ideas three years ago. So we are starting to see the acceleration of these ideas. What I find interesting is that less than 10% of our client base is rooted in the intellectual property that comes from universities or academics. Most of the ideas we work to commercialize come from the private sector, or from individuals working on their own.
If the purpose of the committee is to understand how we can use innovation to grow Canada's commercialization and economic standing, one of the questions I would ask is for a review of the sources from which our intellectual property come from. In a regional and a national setting, if we look at the patents filed, I'd be curious to know the owners of those patents. I would argue that you could divide it into three categories: universities and academics, business, and individuals. If you were to look at the data that shows where our greatest flow of patent ideas come from, it would be very useful then to use that data to build policies to enhance their acceleration and commercialization.
I would also encourage the idea that there is more room for the private sector to work in the early stages of filing ideas and getting patents. There has been some conversation that universities should take a longer position as the ideas get formed and patented with the view of building businesses, but again I would come back to some of the comments that were objectives-based. Understand why patents or research is undertaken and the objectives of the patent, and one of the phrases that we often use is to put people to their “highest and best use”. I think that from ideation to company formation a multitude of skill sets are required to come into that process, and I would encourage the use of people and their highest and best use. It's not going to be one person or even one team that would likely be involved to make that transformation from ideation into technology that can build a company.
If I had opening suggestions to make, it would be to focus on data to make sure that we make informed decisions that are objectives-based.
I thank you for your time.