A quarter billion dollar payback for taxpayers

Research by a single NRC institute has helped Canadian high-tech firms earn almost a quarter of a billion dollars in estimated sales since 1990, a clear demonstration of the value for Canada from the transfer of technology out of federal laboratories.

A recent study by Ottawa-based Doyletech Corporation, commissioned by the NRC Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT), found that economic payback from NRC-IIT falls into two broad categories: sales and employment of firms that have licenses or have purchased technology from NRC-IIT; and sales and employment of firms whose origins can be clearly traced to the transfer of people and/or technology from NRC-IIT.

The Doyletech analysis shows that in the 16 years from 1990-1991 to 2006-2007, NRC-IIT received nearly $8 million from licensing and fee-for-service revenues. "While that figure is impressive, the real economic payback is from the sales and jobs generated in the licensee companies," says Denzil Doyle, Chairman of Doyletech Corporation. 

By applying appropriate multipliers to the NRC-IIT revenues, the study estimates that they translate into 1,215 cumulative person-years of employment – and cumulative sales in the receptor companies of more than $240 million.

The Doyletech study also looked at companies created since 1990-1991 as a result of the transfer of people and/or technology from NRC-IIT. In 2006-2007, 10 firms employed a total of 209 people and generated an estimated $54.65 million in combined sales. "They pay corporate taxes and generate sales tax, while the employees pay income tax, and this situation is not static – it goes on year after year," stresses NRC-IIT Director General Christian Couturier.

NRC technology supports Canada's indie musicians

A unique web portal used for rating and recommending music – inDiscover.net – is the first commercial web application of RACOFI Composer, a technology developed by NRC-IIT. The powerful RACOFI (Rule Applying Collaborative Filtering) Composer system takes what's known about a user and similar users to make tailored "word-of-mouth" recommendations automatically – sorting through over a million rated songs in a matter of seconds.

The inDiscover.net portal, which is licensed to Bell Canada and used on its MSN/Sympatico entertainment website, was created to help bring independent (or "indie") music to new listeners by recommending songs based on their tastes. The portal also offers independent Canadian music artists access to an effective distribution channel and a wider audience base.

"This portal is a central part of the Sympatico/MSN music strategy," says Veronica Holmes, senior director for broadband innovation at Bell Sympatico/MSN. "Working with NRC, we've added new functionality and features that allow us to host and stream artists' music, and allow users to build play-lists and share them with friends."

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• NRC Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT)

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