Senior university and private sector personnel, all engaged in the commercialization of research projects, experience a common set of innovation ecosystem key challenges.
Interviewees responded to a set of common questions, leading to valuable insight. Respondents include a research park CEO, a university Director of Research and Innovation Partnerships, a Vice President at a supercluster, a university Technology Transfer Officer, a university Innovation Director, and a sector nonprofit Policy and Stakeholder Relations Director.
1.0 Focus
What defines the parameters of our innovation project? The key to any successful project is definition, understanding what is not included in a project is often as important as defining what is included.
Based on our applied research strengths, where can we win? Major challenge is matching resources to emerging opportunities.
Once you pick where you can win: what are the practical next steps to grow a nascent research, innovation and commercialization ecosystem? Which prospective partners offer the pieces you need?
What do we need to do to align our key actors? Government, industry, academia, and entrepreneurs often express very different needs, from timing to decision making processes.
Determining limits, parameters and constraints leads to focus: investment decisions become more clear, partners understand where and how they fit.
Questions practitioners should consider: What products or services will your innovation group offer, to whom, where? Which value-creating activities will leaders focus on producing?
2.0 Investment
If “innovation is a contact sport,” i.e. the volume and quality of interactions* matter, and investment is an interaction accelerant, then what do we need to do to (a) turn the investment tap on, and (b) secure investment to sustain and grow momentum?
What are the immediate and intermediary proof points we can offer to commence investment?
What is the process to scale investment? Speed and scale of technology investments matters. Absent speed, interest and investment heads elsewhere. Absent size, projects may ramp more slowly.
How do we remove investment as a limiting factor? Limited access to investment sources constrains regional growth. There is a perpetual need to attract investment in the form of government, private equity and cornerstone industry players.
* Interactions in this context are any combination of researcher, administrator, entrepreneur, industry/private sector, capital provider, association or government personnel.
Per “The new paradigm of economic complexity“, Balland et al, “Smart investment for economic development involves identifying the foundations of existing strengths and mapping potential pathways towards a more complex set of capabilities.”
3.0 Talent
A relative dearth of skilled personnel constrains growth and may have an inflationary effect on local wages as competition increases for limited available talent.
Are local universities and colleges producing graduates in required fields of expertise? Have those graduates been exposed, via labs on other forms of hands-on training, to the requirements of local industries? Are there labs, research parks, industry partners, government initiatives etc. that attract students to universities and colleges in the region?
Attracting top tier research talent to post-secondary institutions is also vital. These researchers attract funding, create new IP, set up new labs, empower university Offices of Research and Innovation to establish local industry partnerships and programs, and attract top tier students.
Talent is not just limited to research practitioners: administrators spark a two-way conversation between industry and academia. Industry brings its own skilled resources, investment, and specific challenges in need of remedy. Academia brings cutting edge research that is often in need of in-field testing and experimentation, the results of which can offer tremendous competitive advantage to industry. Skilled administrators are difference makers in this context, managing a two-way conversation of inbound projects and outbound commercialization initiatives.
4.0 Awareness
Are important stakeholders external to the organization, e.g. the general public, aware of what we’re doing?
Example 1: are “non-coastal Canadians” aware of the extent and impact of ocean technology and the blue economy?
Example 2: people are not aware how cyber attacks work, and how easy it is for malefactors to introduce ransomware or other malicious software into an organization. And the threat is only increasing.
What more can we do to reach stakeholder groups who are positively impacted by our work?
If economic complexity is the product of the “interaction between skilled individuals leading to increasing sophistication and volume of production”, and “the whole knows more because individuals know different, which is to say that the growth of know-how happens thanks to specialization,” then does it follow that awareness activities need to follow the same specialization arc? Is there an opportunity to augment traditional marketing activities (including social) with new approaches, leading to greater chances of harnessing network effects?
5.0 Interdependence
The research, innovation and commercialization ecosystem is a product of, and dependent upon, the surrounding regional infrastructure.
Access to transportation, condition of airports, quality of education, presence of well-developed local services, culture, quality of life factors (arts and activities) are all determinants that future entrepreneurs, investors, and both domestic and international potential partners are continuously assessing.
There is an opportunity for regions/municipalities to spark greater “economic complexity” by taking advantage of this fact, but practitioners are concerned that decision makers may not be aware of the “1+1=3” nature of this form of investment.
Interdependence between the overall socio-economic system (regional or municipal) and the research, innovation and commercialization ecosystem was a subject of much discussion. It is a 2-way, 3D-chess causal relationship, i.e., complicated but highly productive when done right.
National, regional and local politicians need to be more aware of this dynamic, which is not only observed by practitioners firsthand but is also supported by empirical research.