Industry committee  Thank you for the opportunity to provide input to the committee's study of intellectual property and technology transfer from post-secondary institutions to companies. While I'm representing NSERC today, I have a strong personal interest in innovation policy developed through 13

Industry committee  The short answer is “yes”. The TACs started about five years ago. They're modelled on the network in Quebec that's been running for 30 years. Our expectation was that after five years they would have about as much revenue from clients as we gave them. They've exceeded that benchm

Industry committee  Yes. The colleges have a broad spectrum of capabilities. We need to help them grow their capabilities, but once they have good capabilities, the TACs are a great way to continue to deliver that to clients.

Industry committee  As you've heard in this committee, the best way to transfer technology is on two legs.

Industry committee  The short answer is “yes”. That's from my personal perspective, clearly, but yes.

Industry committee  Again, the next-biggest way of doing that is through collaboration. The more we can do to enable companies to access and collaborate with researchers, the better we're going to transfer the knowledge and expertise at universities and colleges. It's about collaboration more than i

Industry committee  I think that's essential. Typically we have eight students involved in a collaborative project.

Industry committee  Yes, per project, and one in three companies actually hires somebody from the project.

Industry committee  That doesn't work. As a researcher, I've experience that. A patent is like a publication. It attracts the attention of companies. These people might have expertise, but what they want is not actually the patent; they want some version, some modification, or some adaptation.

Industry committee  The majority of the money is in training. It's again that you're training the next generation who will actually have the expertise and go to companies and help them innovate.

Industry committee  About 20% of the $1 billion or the $3 billion dollars together goes to funding the indirect costs of research, on average, to universities. The smaller institutions get a higher fraction, but on average, it's about 20%.

Industry committee  As you heard in previous testimony, other countries actually have a higher rate. The government has funded increasingly strategic—that is, grouped—research activity. “Grouped” means organized. It takes more effort to organize activity than to go off and individually explore all

Industry committee  I'd like to add the fact that patents are like publications. They are a marker of achievement. Here's some knowledge that I've realized. Researchers who collaborate with companies better understand the opportunities for innovations and therefore better align the research to the o

Industry committee  I'd just add one thing. About 20% of the collaborative projects that we fund result in tangible IP; probably 80% result in knowledge transfer; and 90% result in interactions that the company values enough to recommend to its peers.

Industry committee  NSERC funds a program that provides support for equipment at colleges. The money we have for colleges is about the same as the amount we spend on university equipment in NSERC. The problem is it's a small budget and there's limited access. Selfishly, if we could grow that budget,