The Valley of Never-Having-Lived: Canada’s innovation talent problem

As Canadian policy and investment encourages more innovative startups, we constantly hear about the “valley of death”: the point where a startup has some momentum but struggles for market traction. We hang lofty hopes on research-based startups getting past this to solve global challenges and grow into scalable companies. However, focusing on the valley of death will keep us ignoring a valley in even greater need of bridges: The Valley of Never-Having-Lived. This is where potentially world-changing startups and entrepreneurs never get the chance to realize their potential. In Canada, we boast about the science-based companies that have grown to make substantial impact, including: AbCellera, behind solutions used to treat COVID patients, and STEMCELL Technologies, Canada’s largest biotech firm. Such companies usually stay in Canada, create jobs to keep and attract talent, and provide Canadian solutions to pressing global challenges. We celebrate how we supported these companies, but in reality, our innovation system is structurally and culturally stacked against entrepreneurial scientists from the start. This begs the question: how many transformative ideas never got the chance to live? Dr. Sarah Lubik is the executive and academic director of the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship at SFU. Photograph courtesy of Sarah Lubik The federal government recently announced investments of more than $1-billion into world-class research, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers. But of these highly educated people working on transformational research, only about 20 per cent (generously) will get tenure track positions, and yet we train them as though they all will. Consequently, the remaining 80 per cent will pursue other careers, often with limited preparation in how to effectively apply their talents in industry, government, and other organizations, and end up changing careers without support. The failure to fully realize this potential represents a substantial loss of the full impact of that massive investment in talent, and ensures that the ideally placed people to take our research forward don’t have the opportunity or skills to do it. Just as tragic, when we lose those highly skilled people from their own fields instead of helping them move into relevant positions in entrepreneurship or industry, we also undermine our national capacity to absorb innovation into industry, further weakening our return on Canada’s substantial investment in research. We need to realize this is a people problem before it’s a venture problem. Many of these highly educated graduates have the tenacity, drive, and passion needed to be an entrepreneur or intrapreneur, but are not taught to communicate the potential of their science to broader audiences, or how to create a compelling plan for impact. They are rarely socialized to regard entrepreneurship or industry as an attractive path and, even if they are, they are often juggling their studies and several jobs to make ends meet, so lack the opportunity to focus or even try. Addressing these challenges requires a bridge over that valley and accessible on-ramps. In the national Mitacs Invention to Innovation (i2I) program, research graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members from any university in Canada learn to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, learn to translate between science and business, and link into national networks of mentors. During the program, Dr. Ben Britton, co-founder of rapidly growing clean-tech venture Ionomr, learned to explain how their membranes would change the fuel cell industry for partners and investors. NanoSentinel’s founder, Dr. Viridiana Perez, like many female scientist-entrepreneurs, didn’t realize she was an entrepreneur until i2I. She pursued training first but began to identify as an entrepreneur later. Many others do not get an opportunity to participate or focus where stipends, internships, and post-docs could yield incredible returns. In Simon Fraser University’s entrepreneurship Co-op (eCo-op) program, cleantech startup Moment Energy’s student founders were given non-dilutive $10,000 awards to spend a few semesters on their venture. With minimal investment, they pivoted into a cleantech company now working with Nissan and Mercedes-Benz. These experiences show the incredible potential in front of us to catalyze an exponential return on Canada’s investment in research and highly educated people by investing in targeted, insightful pathways, programming, and removing barriers for entrepreneurial scientists. With an early focus on people, Canada’s innovation ecosystem could ensure that the next transformative science-based venture not only gets the chance to live, it gets set up to thrive. Dr. Sarah Lubik is an award-winning researcher, ecosystem-builder, and educator focusing on developing the entrepreneurial mindset and supporting science-based innovation. She is the executive and academic director of the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship at SFU and the academic director of the national Mitacs invention to Innovation (i2I) Skills Training and i2I programming at SFU. The Hill Times

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The Valley of Never-Having-Lived: Canada’s innovation talent problem

In Canada, we celebrate how we support companies, but in reality, our innovation system is structurally and culturally stacked against entrepreneurial scientists from the start.

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