As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked Andrew Fisher, executive vice-president at Wesley Clover, to share his insights on public policy issues and the culture of entrepreneurship. This is the second of his commentaries and we welcome your feedback.
By Andrew Fisher
As someone who engages with entrepreneurs, investors, bureaucrats and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, it is clear to me that we don’t stimulate and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada and the U.K.
In my previous post, I questioned whether Canada’s rich buffet of government subsidies for technology companies, subsidies that focus far more on research than they do on commercialization, in fact weaken the entire eco-system. We need to support and encourage commercialization, an essential part of innovation, with tweaks to our current models that will also weed out those companies that use government subsidies as a crutch rather than doing what it takes to become a viable going concern.
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This is the 16th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
As we stated in last week’s post, government’s role in the commercialization eco-system should be to create that “supportive and normative framework.” The common sentiment among the various VCs, angel investors, accelerator and incubator executives, entrepreneurs and others we have interviewed is that government should stay out of the way as much as possible.
But before the big G steps back, what should it do to enable startups that are trying to get to market, or more established enterprises looking to break into foreign markets or migrate their product lines?
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, we asked Andrew Fisher, executive vice-president at Wesley Clover, to share his insights on public policy issues and the culture of entrepreneurship. This is the first of his commentaries and we welcome your feedback.
By Andrew Fisher
Businesses in Canada have a lot going for them. From the SR&ED program, to other services provided by Export Development Canada, the Business Development Bank of Canada and DFAIT, Canadian technology companies are certainly not starved for choice compared to most other jurisdictions.
Still, there are tweaks that could be made to improve the system and enable those areas that offer the greatest potential gain for the country as a whole. Nor is a rich buffet of government support and subsidy paid out of the public tax base necessarily a good thing.
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This is the 15th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
How much should government intervene in the process of innovation and commercialization? In a truly entrepreneurial culture that has healthy risk tolerance, one could argue that the government doesn’t need to play any substantial role at all. Entrepreneurs worthy of that title just get out there and do what they must to succeed.
In his book, The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada’s Productivity Challenge, Tom Brzustowski, RBC professor for the commercialization of innovation at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, wrote, “I believe that it is only the private sector that creates wealth.” The public sector, on the other hand, is a consumer of wealth in order to bankroll the two fundamental roles it plays.
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This is the 13th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our various interviews for this series, one of the most elusive topics of discussion has been culture of risk. Elusive in that it strays into the realm of stereotype and generalization.
Can it be defined by borders, or is that a naive misconception? Is it somehow encoded in the DNA of one nation’s culture more than another, shaped and influenced by how much public policy favours free-market capitalism versus socialism, or all of the above?
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By Andrew Fisher
