National Centres of Excellence (NCE)

Joel Liederman, MaRS Innovation’s vice-president of Business Development and Physical Sciences, was quoted in a National Post article, published August 13, probing whether Canadian research is passing the commercialization test.

Here’s an excerpt:

While academics have often been accused of being disconnected from the real world and consuming themselves with the theoretical, it’s hard to imagine they would be able to get away with squandering funding dollars on things that make them go hmmm, particularly in light of the hyper focus on fiscal prudence.

Indeed, those who are intimately involved in attempting to bridge the commercialization gap agree that the old system of leaving university professors to their own devices had long ago been shelved in favour of a more judicious approach.

Joel Liederman, vice president of Business Development and Physical Sciences at MaRS Innovation, says there’s no doubt that much of the R&D being performed in Canada never makes it past the patent stage, but not because its origins were founded on theory instead of commercial need.