A History of Success
Precarn was created in 1987 by a consortium of companies interested in fostering a unique new way to sponsor and accelerate R&D, specifically at the time, in the areas of robotics and intelligent systems. This new 'way', what we now call today the Precarn Model, was based on the belief that collaboration would generate better research, bring innovations to market faster, lower the risk of R&D, create highly educated entrepreneurial people, and lower the cost of research and development. The results from the Precarn Model have proven this hypothesis as demonstrated by the following discussions and summaries of successes:
A Summary of Precarn History
An unabashed and unofficial history of Precarn was given by Ron McCullough, on behalf of Gordon MacNabb, during a speech at the February 2006 celebration of CIAR Achievements. We have captured that speech here <<For a trip down memory lane click here.
Precarn and IRIS Projects Database
Precarn recently compiled a online database of all projects, over 220 in number, supported by Precarn over the past 20 years. <<Click here to learn more... coming soon....
Success Stories
Nothing demonstrates the success of the Precarn collaborative R&D Model then the successes resulting from the projects than the successful outcomes of the projects themselves. <<Click here to learn more...
Start-up Companies
Again, commercialization is the ultimate measure of the success of the Precarn Model. So far 40 companies have been started and at last count 28 of them are still in existence. <<Click here to learn more...
Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS)
Precarn managed the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) from 1990 to 2005, one of the federally-funded Networks of Centres of Excellence. IRIS brought together top Canadian researchers who collaborate on projects that focus on the essential elements of an intelligent system - the ability to perceive, reason and act.
For a brief History of Precarn and IRIS >> Click here
For Details of the IRIS funding programs and successes >>Click here
For the Network of Excellence website >>Click here
A History of Precarn & IRIS
Speech by Ron McCullough, Chairman of Precarn (1989), given at the CIAR Gala, on behalf of Gordon MacNabb, Feburay 2006, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
(Intro) In the few minutes available to me today I am going to race you through time and hopefully give you some idea of the ripple effect of CIAR over the past 20 years, noting at the start that this is only a small part of the overall impact of the Institute.
(Slide 1) I will start back in the period that has been covered by Geoff’s comments and the very considerable success of the AIRS program during its 12 years of operation and its abrupt termination in 1996. If that had been the end of the story it would have been a sad one indeed. But that is not the case. Only two years after it was formed, the success of the highly talented AIRS team gave rise to one of those frustrations of Fraser’s (Mustard) that usually results in some new and novel initiative.
(Slide 2) At one of Fraser’s infamous arm-twisting sessions, usually called a breakfast meeting, he outlined his dilemma as follows: Gordon (MacNabb), I feel like a quarterback with a damn good play, I drop back to pass and look downfield and all I see are the players of the other team no receivers of my own. It was his graphic way of saying that he had harnessed a remarkably talented team of researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics, but he saw no industrial receptor capacity in Canada to effectively capture the results of some of that research and transform them into economic benefit for Canada. My mission, if I wanted to accept it (and Fraser never understands the word NO) was to crisscross this country knocking on doors like a carpet salesman and urging Canadian industry to cough up an annual memberships of $25,000 to join a non-existent industrial consortium to do long-term, collaborative and pre-competitive research with other companies and university researchers. Need I tell you how many of those adjectives were missing from industry’s lexicon at that time. That was in early 1986, 20 years ago, and by the following spring PRECARN (Pre-competitive Applied Research Network) was newly incorporated and was issuing calls for its first round of research proposals. Being the first of its kind we had also completed the long and sometimes frustrating process of obtaining federal government acceptance and funding for this entirely new form of alliance and had passed the scrutiny of my friends at the Competition Bureau.
(Slide 3) So PRECARN came into being with some ambitious and, at the time, novel networking objectives. Our collaborative research efforts were to involve potential industrial developers and users of the target technology as well as scientific partners coming from our universities (that was a must) and possibly from government agencies.
(Slide 4) I only have time to show you a brief summary of performance indicators for PRECARN’s 19 years of operation: 125 research projects; about 300 organizations involved at any one time; 20 universities involved on average; $65 million of grant support from the federal government and about $200 million of cash and in-kind support from other sources.
(Slide 5) While PRECARN is a direct result of a CIAR initiative there are other networks that exist in large part thanks to the influence of Fraser Mustard and his band of disciples. They played a key role in promoting the launching in 1987 of the Ontario Centres of Excellence program and some of us used our PRECARN experience to help guide some of the initial network proposals by stressing that research collaboration really meant research collaboration and that the incorporation of a network was highly advisable.
(Slide 6) These were not easy sells at the time, but the Ontario program has been highly successful as this slide indicates.
(Slide 7) And success breeds success. With CIAR and the Ontario program as examples, and again helped by the push of Fraser and his collaborators, the National Networks of Excellence came into being in 1989.
(Slide 8) Just scan down this table and look at some of the indicators of success in just the first five-year phase of that program; 238 letters of intent and 158 full-fledged proposals submitted and only 15 of those funded. There can be no better evidence that CIAR’s example of networking had taken hold in the academic community. 800 researchers, 1400 graduate students and 143 private sector partners were involved in the 15 funded networks in this first phase.
(Slide 9) The NCE program has now started its 16th year and look at the investment that has been made: almost $1 billion from the federal treasury and about $700 million in cash or in-kind contributions from the industrial and other partners.
(Slide 10) Now let me close by coming almost full circle. When the National Networks Program was announced in the late 80’s some of the leaders in CIAR’s AIRS network approached me to see if this new organization called PRECARN would assist them in putting a network proposal together. Our response was yes, we would help develop and present the proposal and we would also administer the network if it was funded. And so the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) became one of the 15 successful networks in the Phase 1 competition and went on to be one of the five out of those first 15 networks that were to be provided funding for two further 5-year periods. IRIS was unique in that it was a university research network administered by an industrial research consortium – a partnership that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier, but a partnership that was highly successful over those 15 years.
(Slide 11) Over that period IRIS was led in many ways by CIAR’s AIRS’ Fellows even after the AIRS Network was terminated in 1996. They and their colleagues undertook 156 research projects in areas of great importance to a broad spectrum of the Canadian economy, from underwater robots to intelligent analysis of gene profiles to medical robotics to name just three. 20 projects continued beyond the period of NCE funding with alternate sources of funding. Some 37 start-up companies were spun off from IRIS of which 28 are still in business; 50 companies or agencies participated on average at any one time and they made cash and in-kind contributions of over $26 million about half the amount that came from the Networks Program itself.
(Slide 12) It is interesting to note on this slide that as federal funding support for IRIS reduced over the 15 years (green bars), the support from industry rose, especially in the third and final phase.
(Slide 13) So I leave you with this view of the part of the CIAR family tree that I am familiar with, keeping in mind that there have been other highly successful NCE networks that can trace their excellence and successes back to CIAR parentage. The only discouraging part of this history of excellence is that no matter how successful the IRIS network has been, it is now being disbanded because of the 15-year sunset provision of the NCE program. PRECARN is attempting to keep aspects of IRIS alive, but some of the same bureaucratic barriers that I had to overcome when establishing PRECARN some 20 years ago appear to have resurfaced and will greatly limit what PRECARN can do. Hopefully PRECARN itself will survive and flourish into the future in spite of that all-too-Canadian tendency of building unique bridges between our silos of research excellence, nourishing them until they become highly successful, and then discarding them so that funds can be diverted to something new. Intelligent systems of all kinds are part of an enabling technology that will play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, whether it be at home, in school or at work. Hopefully the powers that be will appreciate that reality.
Thank you for your attention.
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