Industry committee  Thank you. I'll read my prepared remarks. Thank you sincerely to the committee for inviting me to share my views today. The subject on the table, technology transfer, is an area where I have deep interest, many years of experience, and a strong desire to see improve. I've been

Industry committee  That's correct.

Industry committee  The simple answer is I'm not sure why you wouldn't compare. It's a global economy. Those universities are the same as ours. The University of Utah receives about $400 million a year in research spend—

Industry committee  I don't accept the premise. It's a university. This is Utah, right? We have the University of Toronto, in the fourth largest city in North America. Utah is in the middle of nowhere and they're able to produce $52 million a year in licensing income. We can do that as a country. Ut

Industry committee  I've had three specific experiences with universities in Canada and none have been good. I can tell you that in our portfolio, our Canadian portfolio, which includes some U.S. companies, we have three university-led initiatives that we've licensed out of the universities in the U

Industry committee  At the end of the day, the input into the universities from the government is cash. That cash is used to do fundamental research. I would allow that not all fundamental research should or could be commercialized. It's probably 10%, 15%, or 20%. The money is going in, but the ques

Industry committee  First of all, I'll echo some of Jeff's comments. I think standardization is an obvious lever, in the sense that, once you've gone through the process, you've been through the learning curve and you can do it again and again. That facilitates the industry's going back to that well

Industry committee  You touched on a number of things. At the end of the day, it's a large ecosystem. Capturing the knowledge from the university graduates as they leave is really important, and obviously there's a brain drain problem. My view is that industry will always pick the best minds. If it

Industry committee  I think it might be a challenge, candidly. Just by example, there's one thing we've done recently. We licensed some technology from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. The researchers who built it seven years ago had no interest in participating. They had no time.

Industry committee  There's no question there's a cultural disparity between Canada and the U.S. I don't think that's a secret to anybody. Yes, we had a situation like that where the professor didn't want to give up the IP, and he had a say, and he was blocking the university from licensing it. I th

Industry committee  Well, I think so, absolutely. There are two things, and they're in my recommendations. One is to tie a specific percentage of your research dollars into technology transfer. Call it half a per cent.

Industry committee  Well, yes, that's the second piece. In other words, now let's measure you, and if your results aren't up to par and up to the industry standard or improving or some other KPI, then the dollars are going to flow to this university that is making a difference, that is licensing mor

Industry committee  That's a great question. Within the first 30 days after we make an investment, we create a road map for the next 12 months. We do that because, with our seed investment, the company needs to raise a much larger amount within 12 months or they die. It's that simple. They run out

Industry committee  It's less about that than about tangible business milestones that need to be achieved. There are two simple ones: what's your revenue today and what's it going to be tomorrow, and what's the delta between those? What's your growth rate and what is the revenue that you're at? In

Industry committee  That's scary ground. I don't know if I want to touch that.