2 Innovation incarnate: NORCAT is a breeding ground for product development.

Ottawa and Queen's Park are ready to throw billions into research and development (R & D) as part of their innovation strategies.

But for Darryl Lake, there's too much emphasis on the 'R,' and not enough attention paid to the 'D.'

The affable CEO and founder of the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology Inc. (NORCAT) is on a mission to change attitudes about what Ontario colleges can produce, while creating jobs and growing a few Northern Ontario companies along the way.

He saw the potential years before while touring Finland's research parks and technology centres looking for ways to stop the exodus of talented young Cambrian technology grads from the North.

In that Scandinavian country, large government-funded, industry-specific places of innovation work in partnership with major companies to create leading-edge technologies.

"In Canada, we haven't gotten that far yet," says Lake. "We're really focused on commercializing research rather commercializing innovation and working with the private sector in doing things."

Lake, who sits on a Conference Board of Canada's roundtable on commercialization, admits one of his pet peeves is the province's willingness to invest $2 billion with the long view of commercializing research at the university level.

It's a "noble cause," but he questions putting all your funding eggs in one pharmaceutical basket in the hopes that, 20 or 30 years from now, a market-ready product will emerge.

"In the process they've forgotten the private sector and all the small and medium-sized businesses that create all the jobs."

For the better part of 10 years at NORCAT's helm, Lake has been shaking hands with backyard tinkerers with big ideas, making intros between small entrepreneurs and industry heavyweights, while amassing a weighty Rolodex of hundreds of industry partners and network associates.

His 50-employee, not-for-profit technology centre, on the campus of Sudbury's Cambrian College, is widely regarded by all who tour the 32,000-square-foot facility as one of the most innovative organizations in Canada.

Instead of taking on mega-projects, NORCAT's philosophy is to do the "quick hits" by working with mostly mining-related Sudbury companies and entrepreneurs "ready to take the next step." NORCAT provides the shop facilities, office space and the testing site at their Onaping underground mine to bring proprietary and intellectual properties to the prototype stage and beyond.

When an upcoming Conference Board of Canada report on innovation comes out in April, Lake says he fully expects the buzzwords "commercialization of innovation" to be on the lips of cabinet ministers and government bureaucrats everywhere.

NORCAT has been doing it for years. Since 1995, their track record lists more than 150 technology projects completed with about 80 per cent of those reaching commercialization.

Their work has pumped an estimated $80 million into the local economy, created more than 700 jobs with their clients, and spun off 41 new companies.

After generating $500,000 in revenue during its first year of operation, NORCAT's stream is today more than $5 million annually and the operation is largely "self-sufficient," says Lake.

Most of that money comes from their fee-for-services such as their on-line health and safety training programs.

In recent years, NORCAT has gained international notoriety for its involvement in NASA's RESOLVE project and the challenge of adapting a mining drill for space. Their CanaDrill, a miniature electric rig, may well be earmarked for a future Mars mission.

"It's good money, its publicity, and we're taking technology that can be applied (back) to industry," says Lake. "We're taking SMEs (small-space and space medium-sized enterprises) with us along the way."

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Lake says after the NORCAT staff's early struggles of trial and "mostly error," they decided to align themselves with reputable companies and dived into prototype development.

"We now have a handle on how we think it should be done, and we're now being recognized as one of the leaders in the innovation and commercialization puzzle."

They adopted a vetting process called Stage-Gate, an internationally approved product development model devised by renowned McMaster University marketing professor Robert Cooper.

"This is how we've been able to have such a high success rate in commercialization of our products."

He calls the creation of a new provincial Ministry of Research and Innovation a "step in the right direction" that, if done properly, can be a model for Canada.

Now Lake wants government to support SMEs by taking a share of the risk in developing new technology. He's been working on a proposal with his CFO and business manager, Norm Lavallee, to give the ministry some ideas.

"Quite frankly governments are leery about taking the risks that we take every day."

Lake says there's plenty of money available in the innovation pipeline, but colleges need to grab their fair share from the universities by concentrating exclusively on innovation and commercialization.

"You can't take a good researcher and make them an entrepreneur," says Lake. "You have to connect the research at the end of the day with the innovator who can take it and commercialize it. Overwhelmingly (they are) in the private sector.

"Research is institutional. Innovation is private sector, and we work with the private sector."

That's where NORCAT intends to stay.

www.norcat.org

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business 

QUICK FACTS

NORCAT

Greater Sudbury

Founded: 1995

Darryl Lake, CEO

No. of Employees: 50

www.norcat.org