Dr. Jeffrey Crelinsten is the publisher of Research Money — Canada's leading source of intelligence on science, technology, and innovation funding — and founder of The Impact Group, an innovation-policy consultancy he started nearly 40 years ago. Research Money's readership is more than half government, plus university research leadership and the broader innovation ecosystem, and he runs its annual Ottawa conference, now heading into its 26th year. Most recently, with the Council of Canadian Innovators, he co-authored The Scale-Up Gap: From Value Creation to Value Retention, a study built on interviews with 31 founders of 30 Canadian companies that had reached real traction — customers, growth — and then sold to foreign buyers, asking them directly why. In this conversation, Dr. Crelinsten and Natalie start where the report starts: not with failure, but with founders who'd already succeeded, then hit a wall. They needed big capital fast and executive talent who'd scaled a company before, and Canada had neither in supply. Banks won't lend against intangible IP the way they lend against real estate, and Canadian VCs, founders told him bluntly, "don't lead rounds — they follow," waiting for a foreign lead investor and ceding control to whoever showed up first. His touchstone is Doug Barber's Genome Corporation, a Hamilton microchip maker that picked a niche too small for the giants — hearing-aid chips — and took 70% of the world market, proof a Canadian company can lead a global category if it's built to. The conversation turns to government procurement, worst of all in health: a medical device founder faces a different buyer, KPIs, and integration capacity in every hospital, and a different Ministry of Health in every province, so most give up and sell into the UK or US instead, where there's a single buyer. He traces the same failure into the university system: Canada leads the OECD in higher-education R&D spending but lags near the bottom in business R&D, because academic merit runs on peer-reviewed publications, and professors who help commercialize a student's idea are, in his account, penalized rather than rewarded — a sharp contrast to the US, where professors are paid only nine months a year and routinely take on industry contracts to cover the rest. On where the money is, Crelinsten is blunt: Canada is awash in capital sitting in pension funds, family offices, and RSPs, mostly parked in real estate. He points to OMERS Ventures under John Ruffalo — and the board fight it took to redirect even 3% of assets into venture — and adMare BioInnovations as proof the returns are there once someone commits. He also names the politics underneath every tax debate: politicians hear "help entrepreneurs build anchor companies" as "help people get rich," which capsized the capital-gains tax fight and keeps a siloed bureaucracy from acting on what its own frontline staff already know. He closes with a moonshot: federal, provincial, and municipal leaders publicly committing, Kennedy-style, to build five Canadian anchor companies in one sector — health and life sciences, since fixing that also fixes the healthcare system. This is Breaking Innovation Paralysis: research for a book on why Canada keeps losing the cures, capital, and companies it builds. Not a promotional platform, an honest look at the structural gaps: inertia, risk aversion, and diffusion of responsibility. If this shifted how you think about Canada's innovation gap, share it with someone who needs to hear it. 🎧 New episodes weekly. Subscribe for more honest conversations with the people building, gatekeeping, and navigating Canada's innovation journey. 🔗 Questions, feedback, or want to connect? https://augmentios.com/contact 📩 Subscribe to my LinkedIn Newsletter: https://bit.ly/BIPLinkedInNewsletter#BreakingInnovationParalysis #CanadianInnovation #InnovationEcosystem #LifeSciences #Biotech #Pharma #InnovationPolicy #EconomicSovereignty
