E-business boon

National Research Council’s new facility is set to boost Canada’s technology potential

By John Cooper

A federal initiative aimed at driving Canada’s e-business potential forward is making strong gains from its home base in New Brunswick.

The National Research Council Institute for Information Technology — e-Business (NRC-IIT-e-Business) is located at the University of New Brunswick’s Fredericton campus. Supported by smaller research centres in Moncton and Saint John and linked by a high-speed broadband network, the service also has links to the New Brunswick Community College in Miramichi.

Research at the facility focuses largely on e-learning, e-health, Internet logic and e-government; many of its projects focus on the security of electronic health records, managing digital rights and effective on-line ordering and supply for businesses using the Web.

The aim of NRC-IIT-e-Business is to create economic wealth through research and development. It works in partnership with IT companies, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), that are developing innovative research projects. The facility’s laboratories house the most advanced testing technology available and provide infrastructure that may be beyond the economic scope of many Canadian SMEs.

According to Christian Couturier, director of Atlantic Research Programs at NRC-IIT, “the emphasis here is on ‘e-business’ as opposed to ‘e-commerce.’ We are presenting this as a transaction between people, and not just business transactions. E-business is really a channeller and an enabler.

“Our goal is very simple. With industry leaders and SMEs, the different parts of government, and, of course, academia, we’re going to create value by enhancing economic opportunities, economic growth and social impact.”

Though in active operation since October 2002, the institute was officially opened this past March by Industry Minister Allan Rock, Dr. Arthur Carty, president of the National Research Council, and Fredericton MP Andy Scott.

“The National Research Council, through its cluster strategy, is developing the kinds of communities that become magnets for investment and opportunity,”  Rock said earlier this year, adding that the centre gives an important economic and technical boost to the New Brunswick economy. “This e-business institute is an important new element of the New Brunswick innovation climate and has a unique role to play in building an internationally competitive technology cluster in New Brunswick.”

More than $37 million will be allocated to the e-business research program over the next five years, with an annual operating budget of $7.8 million. Partners in the venture include the Atlantic Investment Partnership and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). NRC-IIT-e-Business employs 40 full-time NRC research, technical and support staff in New Brunswick.

The facility has attracted more than 20 guest workers, visiting scientists and co-op students. A part of the facility is devoted to an Industrial Partnership Facility, allowing companies to co-locate research staff with NRC researchers for the duration of specific collaborative R&D projects. It also complements other NRC-IIT programs in Sydney and Ottawa and boosts the NRC’s operation of world-class research facilities as well as information, technology and innovation support networks from coast to coast.

The project follows the NRC mandate of developing an innovative, knowledge-based economy through science and technology by working with partners in industry, government and universities. The aim is to give Canadian companies a competitive edge in the marketplace.

One such successful project partner is Mosaic Technologies Corporation, an advanced educational technologies company headquartered in Miramichi, New Brunswick.

Mosaic is actively involved in classroom-based training through its Applied Multimedia Training centres in Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg and at Vancouver-based Pitman Business College. The company designs and develops world-class products and services for its customers and clients by integrating traditional teaching methodologies with technology-enhanced interactive learning activities. The company joined with NRC-IIT to initiate scientific research for the development of educational courseware.

Don Whitty, president of Mosaic Technologies, says his company’s involvement underscores “the kind of serious support and respect for what New Brunswick and Canada have accomplished. It’s a serious quantified existence and tells us clearly that there’s good support for (our company) and that the government sees value (in what we do).”

The company is currently involved in several “transitional pieces right now. (We) will be putting a lot more horsepower into research and development and our commercialization efforts,” says Whitty.

Among its projects, Mosaic is developing tools that will enable people to automatically ‘tag’ learning objects as they surf the Internet, “and sift through them and reassemble them on their own.”

For instance, if you are a student and you go onto the Internet and you want to define for yourself a course of study, instead of searching for hours, soon you will be able to define it in loose terms using Mosaic Technology and pull it together for yourself. “The whole idea is to give the learner entire and absolute control over the       learning experience,” says Whitty.

And that’s a tall order, given that there are an estimated 60 trillion learning objects throughout the worldwide web. 

The company has invested more than half a million dollars in this technology to date, and has annual revenues of $6 million. “At the risk of sounding hokey, what we’re working on right now is really quite revolutionary,” adds Whitty.

The relationship between NRC and companies like Mosaic is essential to Canadian technology industries, especially when it comes to taking risks to get products ready for market, says Couturier, adding that NRC is clearly “here to take risks. More than 75% of SMEs have fewer than 15 employees, and investing in just one person per year can cost $80,000 or more — and that’s on top of the investment needed to create a new product or service.”

“The cost can become overbearing,” says Couturier. “We take an approach where we partner with the company and invest our own infrastructure and time. We also share in the benefits gained after the prototype is integrated into their product or offering.” Those revenues are then recycled back into the organization and serve to attract some of the greatest minds in R&D, said Couturier.

Whitty agrees. “There are all kinds of enhanced benefits to working with the NRC. You’re tapping into some terrific brains right at the NRC. The inherent value is that you’re tapping into the network as well. There is a connection to universities.”

The NRC’s technical expertise is respected all over the world. “If you talk to people in the UK, they recognize it and respect it as well,” notes Whitty.

Most of the SMEs currently assisted by NRC are New Brunswick-based, “as we want to grow locally and become strong and then go global,” says Couturier, adding that the organization had been “unofficially” operating at a quieter level for three years before the institute’s official launch.

Over the institute’s early growth period, a great deal of community consultation went into its development, says Couturier.

“We understand that an organization might be good at something but not necessarily at everything,” he notes. “We have well-defined research programs and are building a stake in the research and development community. (Companies) may not have the proper environment to do their research in. We are doing the proper marriage of these initiatives in the stakeholders community and it’s something we’ve been working very hard at.”

With researchers from around the world currently working at the facility on close to 100 separate R&D projects, the atmosphere is nothing short of dynamic, Couturier says. “It’s vibrant and exciting. The best example is that it’s almost a small United Nations. We have people from China, England, Germany, France, Thailand, Belgium, the U.S. and more.”

John Cooper (tymelco@sympatico.ca) is a Whitby, Ont.-based freelance writer.

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