by Wulong Gu and Lori Whewell, Industry Canada, 1999
Introduction
The importance of knowledge in stimulating economic growth and driving higher productivity is increasingly being emphasized by government, academia and private industry in Canada and around the world. The goal of increasing the creation of knowledge, as well as the successful diffusion and adoption of new technologies throughout the economy, has become a global pursuit. This is especially important for Canada in light of our well-documented "innovation gap" (OECD, 1996) relative to the other major industrialized countries.
There is growing recognition that universities can play an effective role in promoting technical advance, not just through traditional mechanisms like the advancement of knowledge and education of a skilled labour force, but by actively engaging in commercialization activities. Furthermore, there has been growing attention paid to the quantity and quality of university-industry partnerships. Strong links between university and industry facilitate the transfer of technology from research laboratories to commercial markets.
The objective of this paper is to provide a statistical overview of Canadian universities' R&D activities and commercialization undertakings for the consideration of the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research. The existing data suggest that Canadian universities play a major role in creating knowledge and promoting the diffusion of new technologies. Although Canada lags other countries in terms of R&D per unit of output, the share of national R&D that is conducted by universities is among the highest in the G-7 countries. In addition, Canada has the highest share of industry-financed research in the academic sector among the G-7 countries, suggesting strong linkages between industry and universities.
Figure 1 illustrates the different paths that universities may take in diffusing the results of their research. Intellectual property created through university research may be transferred to the economy as a public good (through publication in an academic journal) or it may be transferred to industry through collaborative research effort. Alternatively, intellectual property is disclosed to the university, initiating the commercialization process (seeking intellectual property protection, and further development if necessary). The research is then brought to market by licensing the technology to an existing firm or creating a spin-off firm to further develop and commercialize the new technology.
To investigate the characteristics of university commercialization activities, the study draws heavily on the results of two surveys. The first is the annual licensing survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). This U.S.-based organization has surveyed major Canadian and U.S. institutions since 1991. Between 12 and 16 major Canadian universities have regularly responded to the AUTM survey which focuses on licensing, but also includes questions on technology transfer, personnel and patents.
The second survey was conducted by Statistics Canada — the Survey of Intellectual Property Commercialization in the Higher Education Sector. The pilot survey was issued to the 90 members of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) and responses from 81 universities from across Canada were received. Since this is a new survey, the data are only available for 1997–1998. While we also consider evidence from other sources, these two surveys are the most relevant background documents with respect to the commercialization of university research in Canada.
The outline of this paper largely follows the schematic presented in Figure 1. First, Section 2 discusses the role of universities in Canada's national R&D effort, including a depiction of trends in R&D investment by universities and other R&D performers in Canada and in other countries, an examination of the sources of funds for university research, and the identification of fields of research in universities compared to other R&D-performing sectors of the economy. Section 3 describes the output or economic benefits of university R&D. These include the contribution to the stock of scientific and technical knowledge; the training of skilled personnel; and the commercialization of intellectual property. Section 4 discusses the choice between licensing to an existing firm or starting a new company. In Section 5, we provide a brief discussion of the nature and profile of university-industry partnerships which help facilitate the effective transfer of technology. Our conclusions are presented in Section 6.