By Ishpreet Khanuja
Canadian creativity and entrepreneurial resilience have never been short in supply. Across industries and throughout history, innovators have consistently endeavoured to solve real-world problems with bold, new ideas. The greater challenge, perhaps, has been how the country’s institutions can foster an environment that allows those ideas to take flight with confidence and support. When all is said and done, access to funding, expertise and decision-makers determines whether a promising concept remains merely an exciting possibility or becomes capable of creating a larger impact. Few can sustain with passion and a good idea against such harsh realities.
In a recent session by Sarah Larose, Manager of Community Outreach and Engagement for Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS), we explored the question of what it takes to remove barriers to true innovation and help creativity intersect. IDEaS is a Department of National Defence program designed to connect Canadian innovators with some of the country’s most pressing defence and security challenges.
The insightful conversation that followed offered a series of valuable lessons about innovation ecosystems, and the role institutions can play in creating pathways for ideas to emerge from unexpected places.
Innovation Beyond Traditional Boundaries
Historically, defence innovation has often emerged from government research laboratories and established contractors. But in reality, technological development in Canada is increasingly originating at the intersection of seemingly different sectors. Universities, startups, researchers, small businesses and entrepreneurs are driving advances in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to advanced materials, giving way to fresh perspectives and unique solutions.
Established in response to a changing landscape, the IDEaS program is part of Canada’s defence policy with a long-term mandate and more than a billion dollars in funding dedicated to supporting innovation. Designed to engage participants across the innovation ecosystem, the program welcomes researchers, academics, non-profits, individual innovators and small and large-scale organizations.
“The IDEaS program was born from a need to be agile in responding to crisis and globalization of science and technology,” explains Larose. “To date, we have provided over nearly $500 million in funding to the community to innovators across Canada.”
What is particularly noteworthy is the diversity of participation the program has already attracted. Larose shared how small and medium-sized enterprises account for 55 per cent of funded projects, alongside significant participation from academic institutions and other organizations across the country. The geographic spread is equally broad, with funded projects emerging from communities across Canada.
Creating Room for Ideas to Grow
An open invitation is only the first step in identifying talent across a broad ecosystem. Supporting creative solutions requires a deliberate process for connecting problems with people capable of solving them.
Larose explains how the program spotlights challenges identified by the Canadian armed forces. The need originates from the army, navy, air force, cyber operations or another part of the defence community, with a clear problem that requires a solution. Instead of trying to expand pre-existing technologies to possible military applications, the program works to articulate specific challenges that allow guided development efforts and encourage targeted innovation.
Those challenges then move through a multidisciplinary ideation process that helps refine and shape them before they are released to the broader innovation community. From there, IDEaS offers several pathways that support different stages of development, including:
- Innovation Networks to support university-led research collaborations in areas such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and advanced materials.
- Competitive Projects to provide development funding across multiple technology readiness levels, helping innovators advance solutions from concept toward maturity.
- Contests inviting innovators to tackle specific challenges and compete for funding and recognition.
- Sandboxes, where technologies can be demonstrated directly alongside military experts and potential end users.
- Test Drive, allowing more advanced solutions to be assessed in real-world operational environments.
The mechanisms create a larger infrastructure for innovation, facilitating structured opportunities for ideas to be developed, tested and refined long before they reach the point of procurement or commercialization.
Real-World Validation
Labs, models and simulations are important, regulated spaces that help teams fine-tune concepts in controlled environments. But can technology truly be perfected, without exposure to the very imperfect world it aims to excel in?
Larose shared an example of an urban sandbox in Ottawa where innovators demonstrated drone technologies in a real-world setting near some of Canada’s most recognizable federal landmarks. The event provided companies with an opportunity to observe how their technologies performed beyond laboratory conditions while gathering direct feedback from military experts and potential users.
Beyond visibility, real-world testing exposes technologies to variables that are difficult to replicate in controlled environments. Assumptions can be challenged, unexpected limitations can surface, and new opportunities for improvement often emerge. The process creates a continuous feedback loop between innovators and end users, helping solutions evolve alongside the challenges they are intended to address.
Dual-use Innovation
As new technologies mature, questions of ownership are bound to arise. In fact, for many innovators, concerns around intellectual property can influence decisions about partnerships, funding and commercialization from the earliest stages of development.
“The way that IDEAS works is by seeing you thrive and not just survive,” says Larose. Honouring a broader commitment to supporting dual-use innovation, technologies funded through IDEaS are encouraged to pursue opportunities in commercial markets while continuing to support defence and security objectives. This flexibility creates opportunities for innovators to build sustainable businesses while expanding the impact of their work.
The approach also helps explain why the program has attracted interest from investors. Larose shared the example of Prandtl Dynamics, a company that was able to turn their $375,000 winnings from IDEaS into a significant cash influx from VC groups, demonstrating how validation, visibility and credibility can often create value that extends well beyond the initial funding.
Ingredients of Innovation
Artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, autonomous systems, drones, energy solutions, space-based communications and life sciences all fall within the current and emerging scope of challenges. The program’s involvement in initiatives supporting NORAD modernization and Canada’s sovereign space capabilities further illustrates the diversity of opportunities being explored with IDEaS.
However, the true value of innovation ecosystems, in all their abundance of success stories (which in IDEaS’ case are many), lies beyond the solutions they support. Every transformative solution begins with a good idea, but good ideas require launch pads. The session powerfully reiterated how programs like IDEaS seek to create those environments by widening participation and connecting innovators with relevant and meaningful opportunities. By creating pathways between discovery, development and adoption, they take instances of individual ingenuity and cultivate the talent, creativity and problem-solving capacity that it takes to strengthen a concept. And one concept at a time, they equip Canada’s innovation landscape to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the future.
If you are interested in learning more about these programs, resources are listed below:
- Innovation networks – up to $3M to stimulate the free flow of ideas critical to innovation
- Competitive Projects – up to 6.75M in phased development funding
- Contests – competition between innovators
- Sandboxes – bring your technology to defence experts to demonstrate capability
- Test Drives – Department of National Defence will test drive your technology
