the university as a catalyst for innovation: a view from ......the university as a catalyst for...

The University as a Catalyst for Innovation: A View from the University of Toronto

An address by Professor David Naylor President of the University of Toronto

to the Rotary Club of Toronto

Friday, April 26, 2013

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The University as a Catalyst for Innovation, President David Naylor, University of Toronto April 26, 2013 2

Thank you, Dr Simmie, for that generous introduction. It’s a point of pride for us that, earlier in your very successful career, we benefited from your wisdom when you taught at the University of Toronto. And it was a pleasure at lunch to learn about your early engagement with the co-op program in Management and Economics at our east campus. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the members of the Rotary Club of Toronto, as you celebrate your centennial year. And I would also like to thank your President, Neil Phillips, Peter Simmie, alumnus Brian Westlake, and the members of the program committee for inviting me to speak with you today. I am delighted to congratulate Souleik Kheyre, the first Rotary Club of Toronto and Toronto Argonauts Community Champion Scholarship winner. Souleik, we are honoured that you chose to attend U of T, and grateful to the Rotary Club and the Toronto Argos for supporting great students like you. I also want to acknowledge the outstanding work of the large and dynamic Rotaract Club at U of T, and thank this past year’s president Susan Hwang and acknowledge the incoming president Agustin Dominguez Iino. The U of T Rotaract Club mirrors the wonderful ideals of Rotary Clubs worldwide. Building community and advancing the next generation through generous financial support, and most importantly, giving to others what is – for each of us – our most important non-renewable resource: your precious time, committed through voluntary service. Universities world-wide share Rotary’s commitment to making a difference by empowering the next generation. And, in a world where change has become the only constant, we are particularly focused on our social role as catalysts for innovation. In this respect, while I’m going to draw examples today from the University of Toronto, the same story could be told by representatives of many of the world’s major research-intensive universities. Let me pause on that terminology – research-intensive. Universities differ in many ways. Research intensity is one of those differentiating features. And it is what sets the University of Toronto apart. You may be surprised to know that, in total research output, U of T is 2nd worldwide, surpassed only by Harvard. [See Figure 1, below]


Figure 1

And then again, you may be skeptical and say: “All right, Mr President, you’ve got a very tall Ivory Tower there. What’s all that research got to do with innovation, let alone with your institution’s primary job, educating young people?” And here let me give you the gist of my speech in brief. It turns out that great research is a wonderful catalyst for innovation – not some $2 app designed to report all the latest scores from the NHL to your smart phone, but ideas and inventions, technologies and services that really make a difference. It also turns out that research changes an educational environment. I’m not saying that a research-intensive environment like ours is better for every student. It’s simply different. It’s very rich in ideas, but demanding. The opportunities are fantastic, but things move fast, and there’s not a lot of hand-holding. I certainly don’t think it’s at all efficient or effective to have every Canadian university adopting the Toronto model. Quite the contrary. But I do believe this country needs a few research-intensive universities that can innovate at a world-class level – and in the process, attract world-class talent, and provide unique opportunities to a particular type of

Top Ten Universities Research Productivity, Current Article Performance 2011 Publication counts, all fields. InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2012)

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student – the self-starter, the young person who wants to be challenged intellectually, and to innovate and lead based on original thinking. Against that background, let me begin by addressing a myth: that research-intensive universities are ivory towers, producing nothing of practical benefit to the real world, let alone to the business world. This is certainly not the case with any major research university I know. Let me give a few examples involving students, alumni and faculty from U of T’s history. There’s an oldie but goodie, the discovery of insulin. It wasn’t just discovered at U of T. All the early development and commercialization was done through the University, not for profit, but for purposes of quality control. And here [right, Figure 2] are Till and McCulloch, who discovered stem cells.

Figure 2

Dr. James Till and Dr. Ernest McCulloch Discovered stem cells

Sir Frederick Banting and Dr. Charles Best Discoverers of insulin


We can go from the infinitesimal… decades ago U of T scientists developed the first electron microscope.

Figure 3

To a different scale of visualization… the biggest movie screens in the world, IMAX, in which our alumnus Graeme Ferguson played a pivotal role.

Figure 4 And we can move on to a different type of screen… Bill Buxton, another alumnus, was a pioneer in user interfaces for touch screens of the type that are now ubiquitous in smartphones and tablets. [Figure 5, below]

Electron microscopy at the University of Toronto Left: Co-inventors E. F. Burton and J. Hillier (front right); Right: The 1938 U of T Prototype

Graeme Ferguson BA 1952

Co-Founder of IMAX


Figure 5

This ivory tower mythology occurs, I think, because people make a false distinction between basic and applied research. As Nobel laureate Sir George Porter famously pointed out, the only real distinction is between applied research and yet-to-be-applied research. Go back to Professors Till and McCulloch. I can tell you from my conversations with the late Ernest McCulloch that, at the time of discovery, he had no idea how stem cells might eventually be used. But we see now, decades later, that their discovery opened the age of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, in which Toronto is a global leader.

Bill Buxton MSc 1978

Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research


Or look at Geoff Hinton. His world-leading research – in machine learning algorithms and deep neural networks – may sound as theoretical as it comes. [Figure 6]

Figure 6

But it has led to unexpected advances, in computer vision, speech recognition, data mining, and – astonishingly – real-time language translation. Professor Hinton’s company, DNNresearch, was very recently acquired by Google. The point here is that great researchers are often the greatest innovators – even if their inventions are a by-product, if you will, of boundless curiosity, not some industrial mandate. With that, let me turn now, to illustrations of how research-driven innovation leads to a richer environment for students. Cynthia Goh is a great example of the scholar-innovator. [Figure 7, below] Professor Goh has helped create multiple start-up companies based on her renowned research in nano-chemistry. In her limited spare time, Professor Goh is working with partners to make Entrepreneurship 101 a standard credit course at the University, open to students across disciplines. She also mentors a small army of student start-up companies in our Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.


Figure 7

The pattern is clear: Great minds attract agile young minds, forming communities of learning and discovery that will spawn the next generation of great minds. Today students at all levels are part of those communities across disciplines and across the three campuses of the University. I mentioned DNNresearch. Professor Hinton founded it with two of his graduate students, Ilya Sutskever and Alex Krizhevsky. Those students are now in exciting roles at Google in California. This type of environment – one that stretches young minds – galvanizes creativity by students at all levels.


For example, in January, U of T undergraduate students Fahd Ananta, Guru Mahendran, and Thariq Shihipar launched a web services aggregator, called Chime – sophisticated and smart software. Within months it gained 30,000 users. And a few weeks ago Chime was acquired by Hubspot, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I suspect those three undergrads have not only done very well financially, but are already contemplating their next entrepreneurial venture.

Figure 8 Three of our recent alumni – Tom Rodinger, Gimmy Chu, and Yan Christian – recently founded NanoLeaf. Their company’s literally brilliant invention is the world’s most energy-efficient light bulb. Its LED circuit board uses 12 watts of electricity to produce as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. It turns on instantly, produces warm light, is cool to the touch – and will last for 20 years, an important innovation that will make a real difference on this hot and crowded planet.

Figure 9

Chime

NanoLeaf


Professor Khai Truong and graduate student Will Walmsley have invented an Android app – but it’s not designed to help you find the nearest liquor store. Their invention is a tiny keyboard, in a novel configuration that frees up screen space on mobile devices. It is also designed to work smoothly with a patented algorithm, allowing the machine to figure out what you meant to type and to correct errors automatically. The company developing and licensing Minuum has a chief executive, chief technology officer and chief of marketing – all of whom are recent graduates or current graduate students. And last month, when the company went looking for more operating funds from investors, they raised 873 percent of their target within 14 hours. Carlos de Oliveira and Michael Fray are co-founders of Cast Connex. The company produces standardized connectors that enable buildings to make it through an earthquake intact. The connectors are based on Mr de Oliveira’s Master’s research. They’re now in buildings all over the world, and will be part of the World Trade Centre reconstruction. Moreover, the company recently donated its products to help rebuild a trade school damaged by the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. The connectors are more economical than older technologies – and they’ll help save lives.

Minuum

Cast Connex

Figure 10

Figure 11


Ladies and gentlemen, I could offer many more examples. I hope, however, that these sketches give a sense of the innovation ecosystem that can develop around research-intensive universities. Above all, I would emphasize that great students are absolutely integral to those eco-systems. Now, at this point, you may reasonably say: “OK, Mr President, you’re cherry-picking. How generalized is this experience?” In fact our student and faculty researchers are increasingly on the cutting edge of innovation and commercialization. Data collected by the Association of University Technology Managers show that, compared to other major institutions, U of T and its partner research hospitals are at the centre of the fastest-growing cluster for academic entrepreneurship in North America. [Figure 12, below] And U of T faculty, staff, and students have started 45 companies in the past two years alone – serious companies, based on serious research.

Figure 12

Toronto Spin-Off Growth

Published AUTM Survey FY 2010, 2008, 2007. AUTM STATT data for FY2009. BioDiscovery Toronto 2010 Summary Report on 'AUTM Compatible' Indicators FY2009. Partner hospitals included where possible. Note: University of California data available only in aggregate and is omitted.

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Top 25 North American Universities Total number of spin-off companies formed,

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Earlier, I mentioned the Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Those buildings were built for medical research decades ago in honour of the discovery of insulin. [Figure 13]

Figure 13

As the facilities became obsolete, we found the highest demand for the space was from young entrepreneurs and young companies. Indeed, the Centre opened last September and is already near capacity. Fortunately, those buildings are right across the street from MaRS. MaRS is the largest, most diverse, and most influential high-tech business incubator in Canada, and we are proud that U of T was one of the founding partners and first investors in this initiative. MaRS has helped more than 2,000 start-ups since it opened its doors in 2005. [Figure 14, below]


Figure 14

There are approximately 1,000 firms on its active roster now. It’s set to more-than double in size with the opening of an additional, 20-storey building this fall – a good thing, as new clusters are emerging in unexpected areas, such as educational technology where MaRS now has well over 100 companies in its portfolio of clients. Of course, the most important factor in the positive cycle of innovation is attracting and nurturing talent. Research-intensive universities attract a disproportionate number of talented professors from outside Canada. They attract international graduate students – the best and brightest from around the world. And some 50 percent of them stay in Canada – a huge bargain given that their first 15 or more years of education were underwritten by other nations. Much of the energy in Silicon Valley comes from international graduate students who came to the US to attend Stanford and Berkeley. Above all, research-intensive universities offer opportunities for smart and ambitious undergraduate students who want to be challenged. At U of T, we know that large classes are a challenge for undergrads in big research-intensive universities. That’s why we’ve worked hard to develop and implement our ‘Big-and-Small’ strategy.


This means putting our very best communicators in front of the really big classes, while ensuring that small seminar courses and research opportunities abound for undergraduates. Those seminars and research experiences are intense and personal, for the professor and the students alike. [Figure 15]

Figure 15

We’re also very serious about bringing research into the classroom. There are some universities where the top researchers skate away from undergraduate teaching. But at U of T top researchers don’t simply hide out with post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. We have hundreds of professors who have won prestigious research awards. And fully 90 percent of those professors in any given year are engaged in teaching undergraduates. In sum, ladies and gentlemen, innovation isn’t about patents; it’s about people. It isn’t about technology; it’s about talent. We hear, all the time, that universities ought to produce more job-ready, skills-focused graduates. But let’s remember that many of the jobs that will be filled by the next generation have not been invented. In this time of accelerating change, what universities contribute, uniquely, is not primarily skills and job training, but an experience through which students gain what one might call ‘renewable competencies’.


Quantitative reasoning; critical thinking; effective writing and communications skills; problem solving; and ethical and social reasoning – these are competencies for a lifetime, for any job, and for every citizen. Today’s students will confront problems – everything from climate change to cyber security – that are more intertwined, complex, and social than ever before. Universities – especially research-intensive universities – enable them to acquire the tools, if you will, to find solutions to such problems. Of course, not every student is meant to be an entrepreneur. But we must help all students develop the creativity and capacity for original thinking that will enable them to be successful in whatever path they choose. In closing, whether they are research-intensive… or more vocational in their orientation… whether they are focused primarily on undergraduates… or have a strong mix of graduate and professional programs… Canada’s universities play an essential role in building a culture of innovation and a climate for economic growth. Our very large college sector, too, plays an important role. But today, in the presence of the Education Premier, William Davis, it seems only appropriate to acknowledge that institutions of higher learning are much more than economic actors. Among other roles, they are gateways to equality of opportunity – and therefore pillars of a meritocratic democracy. And they are also forums of dialogue and discovery, in which individuals can realize their potential and contribute to our society and to a better world. In that, as I said earlier, we are joined in common cause with Rotarians world-wide. Again, I congratulate the Rotary Club of Toronto for its outstanding contributions to our common goals, especially as you look ahead to your second century of service. I thank you for inviting me to join you today. And I thank you for your kind attention.

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