Article

Recruiting researchers is

cost effective and drives innovation

July 2019 · 2 Min read

Alejandro Adem
President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Takeaways

Many Canadian SMEs struggle to execute critical research and development (R&D) initiatives — which could benefit their businesses — due to budget limitations and a lack of resources.
Recruiting university researchers through internship placements is a cost-effective way to provide businesses with much-needed R&D talent to drive innovation.
Through a shared-cost collaboration with Mitacs, Canadian SMEs can maximize their R&D budgets by recruiting skilled researchers from universities across the country.

In an article for Canadian SME Magazine, former CEO and Scientific Director at Mitacs (and current president of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Alejandro Adem, explained how Canadian businesses can maximize their R&D budgets — and “de-risk” innovation — by recruiting researchers through cost-shared internships.

Through cost-shared collaborations with Mitacs, SMEs can recruit talented researchers for important R&D, thereby significantly lowering the financial risk associated with launching new innovation.

Many Canadian SMEs struggle to execute critical R&D — which can lead to future success and profitability — due to a lack of resources and finances. Finding the right talent while monitoring R&D expenses and staying within budget can be challenging.

For SMEs, partnering with academia can provide a key link in R&D. And Mitacs can help facilitate those partnerships.

Through cost-shared collaborations with Mitacs, SMEs can recruit talented researchers for important R&D, thereby significantly lowering the financial risk associated with launching new innovation. Mitacs helps businesses develop a unique “innovation road map,” and then assists in helping those businesses find the right research counterparts to drive development.

Over the past two decades, Mitacs has supported hundreds of successful collaborations between SMEs and university researchers, which have advanced pre-commercialized research and provided businesses with the boost they need to get to the next level of innovation. Among them:

Brasseurs de la Mauricie, a Quebec brewer (now called L’Hermite), which collaborated with Mitacs to recruit mechanical-engineering students to solve manufacturing and production challenges — the results of which also produced substantial energy savings.
Global artificial-intelligence-software producer Element AI, which has its roots in the 2016 merger of two Mitacs-funded start-ups. The company now boasts roughly 500 employees in five cities across three continents.
Pro Studio Masters, a firm offering a download service of high-resolution recording-session masters from record labels, which received Mitacs support in the form of talented interns with vital coding experience and broad musical knowledge.