CFI launches a search engine for Canadian commercialization

Canada plays host to an exciting variety of research projects. Many of them could be of use to commercial partners, but how can companies find them? The Canadian Foundation for Innovation hopes it has the answer.

The CFI has launched a search engine designed to help companies find research projects that they could use commercially.

Called the Research Facilities Navigator, the site lists 300 labs and facilities across Canada. Companies can search by topic (such as ‘engineering’, ‘environment’, and ‘health’), along with keywords. They can also narrow the focus down to a province, a city, or one of the 59 institutions included in the database.

The Navigator came out of a strategic roadmap developed last year by the CFI, a non-governmental organization that funds research facilities across the country. “One of the strategic directions is to promote strategic partnerships between institutions and users of research,” said Pierre Normand, VP of external relations at the CFI.

Labs will have their own fee structures for companies wishing to those their facilities, but there are also opportunities for deeper collaboration between researchers and commercial organisations.

The research landscape in Canada is shifting quickly, says Maria Lantin, director of the Intersection Digital Studio at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She was among the first to register on the search engine, and hopes that it will be a useful tool as she pursues commercial partners for her facility. IDS’s Variable Frame Rate Technology was used for the Desolation of Smaug, the second film in The Hobbit trilogy. Her studio also collaborates on rapid prototyping and 3D printing with commercial partners.

Research cycles are speeding up thanks to tools such as social media, which are making technology conversations more visible, says Lantin. “Going from idea to product is faster, so companies have to respond with that same kind of speed,” she points out. “A lot of companies don’t have many resources to devote to research and development.”

Companies won’t be the only organisations using the site to find researchers. Eric Bosco, chief business development officer at Mitacs, says that he has a pilot team of business directors that will be testing the system in its work with clients. Mitacs specializes in connecting researchers with commercial partners.

“The more searches we can make and the more data points we have got, the better a match we can make,” says Bosco.

There have been other efforts to connect researchers with commercial organizations using technology. The Alliance for Commercialization of Canadian Technologies (ACCT) provides a members-only tool enabling companies to search for 110 technology offices in Canadian research institutions. ACCT spoke to the CFI in the early days of the Facilities Navigator project and had hoped to collaborate, but the CFI initiative was already too far advanced, says ACCT president Janet Scholz.

But building relationships goes beyond technology. Scholz says that connections between researchers and commercial organisations are made in two broad ways. One is on a scientist-to-scientist level. Many longer-term collaborations result from a chance meeting at a conference, or one scientist seeing another’s published work. The other way is via the marketing of the technology via an institution’s technology transfer office.

“I would always caution people to pay attention to the detail,” she continues. “Sometimes, scientists get very excited about doing something, and then go home to their organisations and find that they can’t.” IP transfer rules, freedom to operate and privacy rules can all get in the way, she says.

Academics with experience of commercial partnerships are already aware of such potential pitfalls. Dr. Jurgen Rehm of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health highlights avoiding conflict of interest, clearly defining both sides’ objectives, and sufficient dialogue as three critical success factors in any relationship spanning the commercial and academic research worlds.

But it shouldn’t stop people from forging those partnerships, says Rehm, who runs a Mobile Research Lab that companies can use to assess employee health status. “We should not restrict ourselves to the ivory tower, but systematically explore how much we can change in the real world,” he says.

Being able to connect companies, institutions, and researchers so that these changes can begin is an important step toward the goal of commercializing Canadian research. It isn’t the only one, though. It paves the way for sophisticated relationships between two different worlds, that can be challenging to build and manage. Technology may help make the connection, but beyond that, the challenges are intrinsically human.