Canada is home to world class researchers and institutions. But that potential doesn’t always translate into commercial impact. Not because the technology fails, but because the lab-to-market handoff breaks down.
For researchers building climate solutions — battery chemistry, carbon removal, advanced materials — it means negotiating licensing terms with your university, securing early capital, and picking up a whole set of business skills academics rarely get exposed to.
Dr. Kyle Briggs has seen this challenge from the inside. He founded Northern Nanopore Instruments, a nanotechnology company that was acquired in 2023 after bootstrapping from idea to acquisition without using dilutive investment.
That experience led to SAIL — the Simple Agreement for Innovation Licensing — a standardized alternative to the ad hoc equity-and-royalty deals Canadian universities cut with startups.
Kyle is now the co-founder of the SAIL Fund, a venture philanthropic fund that supports companies turning publicly funded research into socioeconomic impact. He also writes about Canadian innovation policy at CanInnovate.
We unpack each step of the R&D pipeline and where things break; the often conflicting incentives at play from universities, VCs, and public funding bodies, and what it would take — structurally and politically — to turn Canada's climate R&D strengths into working companies.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
TALKING POINTS
Where a researcher's idea gets stuck on the way to becoming a company
Why U.S.-style tech-transfer licenses backfire in a market without deep risk capital
How SAIL's convertible-debt structure realigns incentives for founders, universities, and investors
The case for venture philanthropy — and what the UK and Alberta already prove
Why targeting a 98% failure rate can be sound policy, not a red flag
Why tracking inputs instead of outcomes is holding Canadian innovation policy back
What has to change first — and who has to move — to stop losing IP abroad