Blackberry founder says Canadian universities must support commercialization

In a piece published in the Globe and Mail, Blackberry founder Jim Balsillie argues that Canada is not well equipped to win in the innovation economy. Balsillie says that Canada must make changes to help entrepreneurs succeed on the global stage. He welcomes Canadian universities' recent emphasis on commercializing research, but says that they must create better incentives to encourage more researchers to do so. He says that tenure and promotion decisions for faculty should reward, not punish, faculty for pursuing commercialization, and that universities should play a more prominent role in a broader strategy to teach and encourage the commercialization of ideas. This includes teaching strategies to help protect Canadian intellectual property. Globe and Mail