Thank you for the question.
Two key elements stand out from the usual process for capturing the value of research.
The first one is including the entire innovation cycle value chain I talked about earlier, because you have to start from the beginning. Our mandate and that of Ms. Watts‑Rynard's organization are slightly different. Right from the start, we try to measure the market potential of a promising invention and possible spinoffs. We do so before moving on to the next step, which is to see whether we can register it as intellectual property.
We then move on to technological maturation and the pathway to the market, to potential buyers. We don't want to move too fast if we don't see potential spinoff. We have teams that do the analysis, and project managers to work on the pathway, and assess the real value and fair trade value between the public dollars invested in the technology and the investment that will be needed to get the technology to market. We need to strike that balance, and different types of expertise are needed. There can be only one pathway, though, one overall picture. We have to avoid breaking things up too much, with too many smaller mandates.
The second element is really important: the benefits. We don't measure the benefit to the research establishment transaction-wise. Obviously, there needs to be some value for the establishment, but what we're looking for are the benefits for society. Where could the invention have the most impact for society in order to justify the investment of public funds? Sometimes we could get more money dealing with a multinational, but we prefer to transfer the technology to a Quebec or Canadian SME, domestically, because it will have a greater impact nationally.
These are two fundamentally different elements.