AURP Canada
The Canadian meeting of the Association of University Research Parks showcased achievements and challenges facing the science and technology park sector. Having attended other research park meetings, the local success story in Waterloo, Ontario was particularly refreshing – encouraging commercialization through a residential entrepreneurship program - VeloCity.
Marc Castel, from OCE - Ontario Centres of Excellence, listed a number of ingredients that he felt should be add to the commercialization cauldron. The listed items included: a dash of serendipitous meetings; a pinch of co-locating with partners; a drop of entrepreneurial events; a splash of social networks; a table spoon of major tech corporations; a quarter cup of favorable IP policies – including a strong Technology Transfer Office; a heaping of student programs; a tea spoon of mentors and champions; a pound of community goodwill. The content of Marc’s presentation wasn’t particularly novel, rather the list has been repeated at other AURP meetings. The delivery of the presentation was authentic, genuine and compelling. By adding the ingredients described by Marc, the VeloCity program, developed at the University of Waterloo has approached the challenges of commercialization with a forceful approach- eat, sleep and work together. Similar to Marc, the VeloCity managers have approached the challenges of commercialization with a cocktail of assumptions; namely, if you add all of the ingredients together, including a residential environment, innovation occurs.
The arguably misguided assumption that Marc and others have made is that proximity, resources are all necessary requirements for commercialization. Manoeuvring the commercialization hurdles in order to take a product to market is indeed a difficult task and investigating the assumptions is a worthy goal. The indispensable assumption which is frequently absent in these commercialization discussions needs proper addressing: trust. Trust needs be encouraged at every stage of the commercialization process. Trust is the linchpin of the whole process. Sure everyone can arrive at the proverbial water cooler, but unless you are able to trust the participants, the visit will not quench your commercialization thirst. Indeed the VeloCity program has generated success, but the presenters missed an opportunity at the AURP meeting to disclose the essential component to developing a commercialization program. How did the residential entrepreneurs develop trust? Was it washing dishes, passing the salt at the dinner table, or purchasing produce at the local St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market? The necessary requirement to trust is both competency and benevolence. Competency usually comes from education credentials or resume experiences. Benevolence, very simply, is not doing harm to one another; this can be more difficult to foster in an entrepreneurial adversarial community. NDA – Non-Disclosure Agreements, for example can be used to hasten the process as it would compel an individual to enter a contract of tight lips; however, coercion does not result in iron clad obligation in the context of trust. Building trust in the commercialization community takes uncalculated time and patience.
Waterloo has many innovative programs fostering the commercialization community. The VeloCity program is only one of many creative approaches to building a foundation of entrepreneurs for the region of Waterloo and southwestern Ontario. It is the hope of many commercialization programs that the issue of developing trust within an adversarial community of innovation can be discussed and duplicated.
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