Industry committee  I'll pull on a thread that Jeff mentioned, and that is, after spending 20 years in the U.S. and the rest of my career in Canada, one thing I noticed is that Canadians love to compete with Canadians, but they're afraid of that imaginary border just south of us, and I find that iro

Industry committee  I'll give you a flippant answer, and then maybe a more thoughtful one. I would create high-speed rail between Montreal and Toronto.

Industry committee  Windsor? Okay. That connects people. I was in China recently, and 10 years ago the fastest train in China went at 46 kilometres an hour. Today, they have 22,000 kilometres of high-speed rail, at 500 kilometres an hour. That enables people in rural China to commute to downtown Sh

Industry committee  It's tough. I don't envy you your job, honestly. My job is much easier. I get a dollar, I have to give back three. It's very clear. In my experience so far on this subject, a lot of statistical wrangling goes on. We created these jobs, we're claiming attribution for this, and so

Industry committee  That was me.

Industry committee  I think that's a tactically specific thing within the broader context. My view is that we should enable universities to essentially do it however they find works best. By that I mean specifically take 1% of research dollars, of the $7 billion that goes into universities—so $70

Industry committee  I'll take a stab at it from this direction. Our investment strategy is based on a statistic. You can tell I'm a pretty numerical guy, but it turns out that fewer than 10% of Canadian start-ups get capital from outside of Canada. Of all the exits, 33% of the exits and 40% of the

Industry committee  Just to clarify, you mean that the businesses create contracts a certain way and that the universities do it a different way.

Industry committee  I see. I think it's a combination of both of those. I think the collision between academia and industry is a powerful one, because academia can have a much longer-term view and go much deeper on the research side. Industry, obviously, has a much more near-term focus on products a

Industry committee  I think that's true.

Industry committee  One was a difficult time dealing with a tech transfer office. It was a regionalized tech transfer office, and we just couldn't get time from them. It was difficult to get documents moving and flowing back and forth. We're no longer involved with that company, but I think they wer

Industry committee  One that pops to mind is an MIT experience where the professor, if I remember the structure correctly, was paid, the university was paid. It was a template of how to do it: yes, we welcome your interest in this technology. The whole thing took about four months, which was quite r

Industry committee  I think it was the research professor who had a vested interest in getting it out. He wanted to see his work in the market.

Industry committee  I would just add pure business development. One of the things you'll hear from me as a VC is that universities need to be a bit more business oriented. Your tech transfer office could have BD—corporate development people who run around doing business development. I distinctly r

Industry committee  I'll be good.