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INNOVATION

Taking Breakthrough Ideas
to the Masses

INNOVATION

Taking Breakthrough Ideas to the Masses

INNOVATION

Taking Breakthrough Ideas to the Masses

Elicia Maine is arming Canada’s researcher-entrepreneurs with the tools they need to turn their inventions into consumer-ready innovations.

Scientists and engineers are usually more comfortable in the lab than they are in the boardroom, lacking as they are in the expertise to navigate the early-stage decisions that can make or break a venture. Luckily, Elicia Maine, associate professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at SFU's Beedie School of Business, is an expert in both the management of technological innovation and in the commercialization of advanced materials. It is her passion to enable the success of a new generation of Canadian science and engineering entrepreneurs.

“There are many pressing global issues that can’t be solved by a new app,” Maine explains. “Clean water, curing cancer, zero-emission transportation, personalized medicine, and clean energy require complex science, and the current innovation ecosystem overly constrains the commercialization of potential scientific solutions.”

Maine has been studying the proliferation, formation, and growth of science- and engineering-based ventures since 2001, particularly in emerging sectors such nanotech, biotech, cleantech, and advanced materials. With a trend that has seen corporate research labs downsizing and a larger share of breakthrough inventions coming from universities, Maine aims her research and teaching at empowering university-based innovators. “University spinoffs are becoming very important in our innovation ecosystems–they are becoming the originators of radical innovation,” she says.

Notably, Maine led an international collaboration which identified, classified and analyzed over 500 firms that were making a go in the global nano-bio sector, an industry which includes sub-sectors such as biopharma, drug delivery, diagnostics, bioinformatics and medical devices. This research was the first to focus on this new sector and to identify the particular factors that stimulate or suppress innovation as ventures increase in size. Findings were published in the journal Nature in 2013.

Turning some of this research into practice, in 2015, the Beedie School of Business launched a graduate certificate program to cater to scientist-entrepreneurs. The Graduate Certificate in Science and Technology Commercialization, an SFU Innovates program that is for credit and counts toward an MBA, will strengthen a researcher's product development, marketing, leadership and financial know-how to advance their industry and innovation idea. Maine who helped develop the program for research scientists at SFU and UBC, is the program director. A major differentiator of the program is the co-development of a customized business plan, accounting for both technology uncertainty and market prioritization.

Maine has spent years analyzing nanobiotechnology (the manipulation of living matter on a molecular–or smaller–scale) businesses in particular. She aims to improve understanding of the barriers and challenges they face during the commercialization process so that technology which often has extreme social value, such as stem cell medicine, can make it to market. These are inventions which often also have major potential in contributing to our economy.

Maine credits her motivation to highly-nurturing parents, including her father whose own career titles included engineer, PhD chemist, director of R&D, Member of Parliament in Pierre Elliott Trudeau's government, inventor, entrepreneur, and member of the Science Council of Canada. “He demonstrated to me that you can accomplish most things if you put enough of yourself into the attempts,” she says.

Given the inherent high risks, high costs, and long development and adoption times for applications based on university research, attempting to take them into the marketplace is an all-to-often treacherous venture. By sharing her expertise, Elicia Maine is enabling Canada's scientist-entrepreneurs to better navigate the business world so their radical inventions can take hold, and change our lives for the better.  

References

 Dr. Elicia Mainestudies the commercialization strategy, business models, entrepreneurial decision-making, and knowledge integration practices of entrepreneurs and ventures in the advanced materials, nanomaterials, fuel cell, biotechnology, and nano-biotechnology sectors.  Along with her international group of collaborators, Dr. Maine is active in the Advanced Materials Commercialization Research Collaboration and the Global Bio-Nano research group. She has published in leading technology management journals, such as Research Policy, R&D Management, and Technovation, and in top science and technology journals, including Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Materials.  

Q & A with Elicia Maine

What motivates you as a researcher?   Making a positive change in the world through research, educational innovation, influencing innovation policy and by teaching and mentoring students. It makes my day when, sometimes 5 or 10 years after graduation, former students return and tell me about an innovation course concept that still influences them!

Putting one’s work out into the world often requires a leap of courage. Where do you find your courage?
  From a place within, created by my parents and refilled by family and dear friends. My father taught my three brothers and I to strive for positive impact on the world and my mother loved us unconditionally and fed our curiosity.

What do you see as the most noteworthy emerging trend that will shape the direction university research and innovation over the next 50 years?  

University spinoffs are becoming very important in our innovation ecosystems. Large multinational firms are monitoring university spinoffs in emerging sectors, such as in clean energy, nano-biotechnology and personalized medicine, and are acquiring the successful experiments. If national and regional policymakers want university spinoffs to be better at this translational role, innovation policy and technology transfer office mandates need to be more strongly aligned.