The risks of being a nation of R&D junkies
As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we solicited this opinion piece from the dean of Ottawa’s technology sector, Denzil Doyle. We welcome comments on Denzil’s commentary.
By Denzil Doyle
Anyone who is involved in high technology in Canada would have to agree that the country has a very strong R&D lobby. Politicians and policy makers are bombarded with messages from both industry and academia on a daily basis saying that we need more of it, even though our incentives for doing it are already among the best in the world. And everyone in the debate is frustrated because they know that we are not getting the appropriate economic results from the R&D we are doing. As evidence, they point out that our economy is still too dependent on the sale of raw materials like lumber and minerals and that most of the technology that is developed for those activities tends to get developed elsewhere. They argue that if we were better at innovating, economic diversification would be automatic. And there is a broad consensus that R&D is the engine of innovation.
But a closer look at those incentives will reveal that they may be a little too focused on R&D and not enough on other things that go into the commercialization mix, like marketing (and particularly market research), selling, raising risk capital, and product management. The country’s two most popular incentive programs are NRC’s IRAP and SR&ED, but in order to use them effectively, a company must have a pool of its own cash to perform the other functions. And that money is hard to come by.
