Discover Business
At Mitacs, we embrace your innovation challenges, build ROI into your R&D strategy, think globally, and connect you with the right expertise for the right project at the right time
Solving the Talent Challenge
Finding the right people with the knowledge and skill sets to solve your innovation challenges is key to your success. But talent alone is only part of the solution. Ensuring that you have the right people in place at each stage of your innovation roadmap is critical. At Mitacs, over 100 advisors are ready to support you at every stage of that roadmap, helping you identify the right academic expertise and recruit highly skilled talent.
From Concept to Completion, Mitacs Embraces Your Innovation Challenges
Innovation is more than simply developing new ideas to launch new projects. Indeed, innovation comes in many forms: product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation and organisational innovation — all of these are important signposts on your roadmap. At Mitacs, we can help guide you at every stage of your project to aid you in achieving your business goals.
Expand Your Budget, Reduce the Risk
Depending on the scope of your projects, investment in R&D can run from thousands of dollars to millions of dollars and one way to leverage that investment is to seek funding. Mitacs can help. No matter the size of the project, Mitacs can work with you to ensure your budget goes further. And the bigger the budget, the more efficient the process becomes, while your contribution is reduced to 45% of the total cost of the project.
At Home or Abroad, Mitacs Expands Your Horizons
Innovation is a collaborative process and Mitacs has the connections you need — domestically and internationally — to help you expand your innovation ecosystem. From talent search to academic partnerships, from your funding quest to knowing who and what is available, Mitacs’s networks can help you achieve your innovation goals. Our relationships with governments, incubators, international organizations and key companies in every sector mean that no matter your focus or discipline, we have the partnerships and expertise to support your research projects.
Digital
Whether it’s building Canada’s 5G network, developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology or advancing the scope of quantum innovations, Mitacs can help businesses evolve in a rapidly changing landscape.
Cleantech
At Mitacs, we shape a sustainable future with advanced cleantech solutions. Get the funding and expertise you need to advance your cutting-edge research and help your innovation journey succeed.
Health & Life Sciences
Transform Health & Life Sciences with Cutting-Edge Collaborations via Mitacs. With over 20 years of experience in the innovation landscape, we can help you build capacity for research and development by providing access to tools and talent.
Agriculture & Agri-food
At Mitacs, we can help you harvest innovation. Discover your company’s capabilities in leading the future of agriculture and agri-food. Get the support you need for sustainable growth and global food security.
Assess, Access and Build
the Right Team
Launching a new project often means racing to hire the expertise you need right away. But there are ways of accessing the people you want, and the communities they are part of, before you post a job. Bringing on board a qualified intern — a graduate student or postdoc — means you get an expert at the beginning of your project, providing you with insight into the kind of qualities you’ll eventually need.
By building that approach into your overall innovation strategy you not only get the benefit of the intern’s knowledge, you also reduce your risk knowing that when you do post a role, you are targeting the right audiences and asking for the right expertise.
Your Customers Know What They Need—Do You?
All your customers need solutions to their challenges, but do you know what those challenges are? One key piece of advice is to involve your customers when launching new initiatives. That’s the antithesis of what some companies do, which is to create a product, then determine whether there is a market for it.
By regularly integrating your market — whether they are internal or external — into your R&D strategy, you’re able to understand what their needs are at every stage, allowing you to develop the right solutions. That means checking in frequently with your customers to track the process, test ideas, and collect data. It requires being agile enough to adjust your project to refine the product, tweak the process, and efficiently manage the budget.
Spending Smartly Beats Spending More
Research and development, according to The Conference Board of Canada, “improves only when businesses start spending more.”
Just spending money, however, does not make you innovative. Spending it smartly and constantly re-evaluating does.
Putting processes in place to ensure you are continually getting information and feedback means you can adjust your budgets as you go, ensuring your capital is being spent in the most efficient way. Spending smartly is also understanding that there are methods of making your budget go further. Both government and non-government sources have funds available to support your research and innovation projects, so it’s important to know what is out there to assist you at the right time in your process.
Build An Ecosystem That Works
Overcoming challenges isn’t just a series of unrelated tasks. All the players in the ecosystem — the talent, the market, the financing, stakeholder buy-in — must be integrated into your overall strategy. The Harvard Business Review puts it simply: “Strategically aligned enterprises have a much better chance of winning in today’s challenging business environment*.”
To do that, you need to make sure that no one works in a silo; that you have a cohesive strategy and that your entire organization — HR, R&D, and finance — understands it.
Externally, too, your ecosystem must be connected: from your talent search to your academic partnerships to your funding quest – all need to be seamlessly integrated. And the final key piece? Make sure your internal strategies and your external strategies are aligned.
*How Aligned Is Your Organization, HBR, February 2017
Mitacs’s research collaborations connect organizations with the skilled talent they need, and foster mutually beneficial partnerships between industry and academia.
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Mitacs has fostered thousands of successful collaborations between organizations and researchers.
Open Projects
Work with top-ranked talent on collaborative research projects, and discover advanced solutions to your innovation challenges.
Completed Projects
Explore a range of successful Mitacs projects that led to game-changing discoveries, collaborations, and initiatives across Canada.
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