Agency

The Lab2Market (L2M) program was developed to address Canada’s research commercialization performance, which lags behind that of fellow member countries in the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD). A major factor in this performance is the lack of support for the commercialization of intellectual property created at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program in the United States and the ICURe Innovation to Commercialisation program in the United Kingdom have emerged as global best practices for commercializing academic IP, particularly university-based research. Over the next two years, the Lab2Market pilot program will apply and adapt these best practice models to the Canadian market in an effort to support Canadian researchers working to commercialize their technology. Our goal is to help develop a national research commercialization program on par with global leaders to better our society and economy.

Lab2Market is delivered by Ryerson University, Dalhousie University and Memorial University, three members of the Incubate Innovate Network of Canada (I-INC), a network of 12 high-performance university-linked accelerators and incubators. It is funded with the support of FedDev Ontario, ACOA and Mitacs.