Transforming science and technology into innovation The challenge for Canada's S&T enterprise is to enhance both relationships, and to move past debates on the value of basic and applied research. Without both, Canada's innovation system will continue to underperform. By ELIOT A. PHILLIPSON Published November 16, 2009

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"Well informed people know that it is impossible to transmit their voices over wires and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."—Boston Post, editorial, 1865

OTTAWA—Recent reports and editorials have highlighted Canada's lagging performance in science—and technology-related innovation and competitiveness. Analysis reveals that, despite a strong science base in the nation's universities, colleges and research hospitals, our record of turning new knowledge into products and services—a critical component of innovation—is modest, at best.

This discrepancy has given rise to calls for a shift in R&D priorities from basic discovery or "curiosity-driven" research to applied research and technology development that is targeted to industry needs and market opportunities.

Underlying these calls is the assumption that the closer R&D aligns with the needs of the marketplace, the greater are its chances of producing commercially successful results. This model of "market pull" has considerable validity when R&D is designed to solve a specific challenge and results in an improved product, process or service.

But truly innovative inventions—or "disruptive" technologies—more often than not originate with inventors or scientists "tinkering" in their laboratories. Such inventions are often met with initial resistance, precisely because they represent an entirely new concept or paradigm, rather than advance an existing technology.

The Boston Post quotation is a good example of the early response to a disruptive technology—the telephone. Even experts in communications technology could see no commercial value in the telephone after it was patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. When Bell offered to sell his patent (ultimately the most successful patent in its day) and telephone company to Western Union, the response was that "this 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. [Therefore] the device is inherently of no value to us." Thus the ultimate commercialization of the telephone did not originate from a market pull, but rather from a science and technology push. The same is true for many of the most innovative and commercially successful disruptive technologies to date.

The value of an innovative technology can be met with skepticism, so it is understandable that there may be even greater skepticism regarding the value of basic scientific research, given that such research is designed to answer a question, not solve a specific challenge or produce a widget. And yet, the flow of such knowledge and ideas into the innovation system often leads to the most profound—and often unpredictable—technological developments. For example, a large American study in the 1970s demonstrated that 62 per cent of the knowledge required for several major advances in clinical medicine, including open heart surgery and development of the polio vaccine, was derived from basic, not applied, research. But when the research was being conducted, its objectives were completely unrelated to its eventual clinical application.

To illustrate, look at the 19th century British physicist James Tyndall, who was interested in determining why the sky is blue—an esoteric question that would not have even been perceived by Tyndall as having any practical importance. But within a few years of publishing his research on the physics of light, French chemist Louis Pasteur applied the work to establish the germ theory of disease, one of the most important advances in biological science. Not long after, Joseph Lister, the father of modern antisepsis, applied Pasteur's theory to the problem of surgical wound inflammation. Lister found he could prevent wound infection by applying carbolic acid spray to the skin before making an incision.

No one could have anticipated that the technology—an antiseptic spray—to prevent what was a frequently fatal surgical complication would arise from the curiosity of a physicist studying the blueness of the sky, nor would any amount of applied research have led to the same result.

Debates on the relative importance of basic versus applied research are based on a false dichotomy—both are required for effective innovation. Therefore, the S&T enterprise should focus its attention first, on how to better translate knowledge derived from basic discovery research into new products and services; and second, on how to promote applied research that will respond to industry needs.

One approach to this exchange, strongly promoted in a recent report of the Council of Canadian Academies (Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short), is through meaningful linkages and collaboration between the post-secondary and private sectors. Such relationships must not only identify and mobilize new knowledge that is potentially commercializable as it emerges from discovery research (science push), but also facilitate applied research and technology development in response to industry needs (market pull).

The challenge for Canada's S&T enterprise is to enhance both relationships, and to move past debates on the value of basic and applied research. Without both, Canada's innovation system will continue to underperform.

Eliot A. Phillipson is president & CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

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