The Importance of Basic Research

Verity Craig, Managing Director, CV Management, and Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Jason Yeung, Grade 12 Student, North Toronto Collegiate Institute; Rev. Canon Philip Hobson, Incumbent, St. Martin-in-the Fields Anglican Church, Toronto; Allan Oberman, President and CEO, Novopharm Limited; Seema Esteves, President, Circul Technology; Professor David Johnston, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Waterloo; Dr. Alastair Glass, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Research and Innovation, Province of Ontario; Sylvia Morawetz, Principal, S.A.M. Solutions, and Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Ken Knox, President and CEO, Innovation Institute of Ontario; Mary Jo Haddad, President and CEO, The Hospital for Sick Children; and Bruce Rothney, Deputy Chairman, RBC Capital Markets.

Introduction by John Niles

Wherever there is ingenuity there is intrigue. It happened a number of years ago when a lawsuit was launched accusing one innovator of another's ideas and profiting from it.

The worst moment in an entrepreneur's, innovator's or inventor's life is when he is accused of taking another person's ideas. Such was the case with Alexander Graham Bell who was born 159 years ago tomorrow. He was accused by Antonio Meucci, a Florentine inventor, of taking his idea. The truth was Meucci had built something similar to Bell. Bell, however, had begun his work, put his invention together and later made adaptations, changes, improvements and innovations and filed a patent March seventh, 130 years ago next week. Bell was granted the right to produce and profit from the device that obviously changed the course of history and the land for communications. You know the rest of the story.

Parallels are clear. However, in the case of Meucci, when he launched the suit he lost mainly because he died. I don't think there is anyone hoping that someone will die at NTP.

Mr. Lazaridis is here today to speak to us and his topic is entitled "The Importance of Basic Research." He certainly appreciates the opportunity to speak on a subject that is close to his heart. Research and innovation are buzzwords today. In February of 2002, the federal government launched its research and innovation strategy culminating in a national seminar on innovation and learning in November of 2002, which recognized the need to strengthen our science and research capabilities.

In Ontario the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund and the Ontario Innovation Trust were in the late nineties evolved into a newly formed and created Ministry of Research and Innovation whose Minister is no less than the person of Premier McGuinty, whose Deputy Minister, Dr. Glass, is at our head table today.

The bottom line is that there is an extensive public debate about what Canada has to do to foster and stimulate research and innovation. Mr. Lazaridis, however, has gone one step better than most experts. He has actually funded and participated in the start up of a research organization, the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, which was funded in October of 2000 with a $100-million endowment. It shows the fine hand of an executive whose company created and marketed and popularized the BlackBerry.

Michael Laziridis was born in 1961 in Turkey, moved to Canada in 1966, and received his education in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Waterloo of which he is now chancellor.

He founded Research in Motion Limited in 1984, which developed the well-known BlackBerry, a wireless handheld communication device which has, like Bell, changed the course of communication on this planet with sales ranging to $1.5 billion with 3,500 employees. In addition to funding the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics with a $100-million endowment, Mr. Lazaridis and his family in April of 2004 and May of 2005 made donations totalling $50 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

Mr. Lazaridis was named Canada's "Nation Builder of the Year" in 2002 by the readers of the Globe and Mail newspaper and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada this year.

Please join me in welcoming Michael Lazaridis, President and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Research in Motion, to our podium.

Mike Lazaridis

Dr. Niles, thank you for that kind intro and to the RBC Financial Group for sponsoring today's luncheon and for the opportunity to address the Empire Club this afternoon.

One of the things that just happened that I don't want to get forgotten was that we were asked not to clap for the people you introduced until the end, but when a student was introduced we all clapped and it was instinctive and that's very important. I think that one of those things that we need to remember and nurture is how important our students of the future are and how important we consider their education. That is why I've become a champion for education and the basic research that drives education in this country and around the world.

I find myself in a strange situation because every day I wake up and find myself in a surreal environment. On the one hand I've got this great family. I've got an amazing spouse and accomplished children. I am surrounded every day by some of the brightest people in the world and I lead an organization that is driving a market segment that is revolutionizing the way people communicate.

A lot of business people find themselves in this position and we take it for granted. We find ourselves in positions where leadership is something that we do every day without thinking about it. We find ourselves in a position where the challenges of the day provide a constant stress in our lives and we take it all for granted. We consider it normal. We see these challenges every day. We see competition whether real or imagined because we are creative. We want to succeed. We are competitive and stress drives us. It drives us to excel. It drives us to accomplish, but most importantly it drives us to make decisions and stick by them and invest in them and make sure that they are the right decisions and that they are well-funded and that we see them to the end.

That's very important because I'm not sure if that is the general situation out there and there are days when I wake up and I wonder why I am doing this. Why am I working so hard? Why am I involved in so many things that I care about? Why do I allow it to intrude on my personal life? Why is it so important to me? Why would I put my family through what it goes through every day? Because it is absolutely the right thing to do and what's interesting about this is that that stress, that challenge, the sense of competition is something that is very real and it drives us to greatness. It drives us to exceed our ordinary bounds. It drives us to extend beyond our fears and our belief of our boundaries and discover new areas and unchartered territory and invest in those things and drive success and accomplishment for ourselves, our family, our employees, our shareholders and the world.

Now why is this important?

I've spent a little bit of time studying this and what I've discovered, and I'm sure this is not news to anybody, is that mankind really has this ability under stress to exceed its own limitations. If you look through history at great historical events that have produced crises, that have produced global conflict, you find that they have driven us to solve unimaginable technical and scientific problems and industrial problems and increased productivity to unheard of levels. After the conflict is gone, there is this momentum that's created and that momentum carries through to industrial progress. It carries through to a new-found appreciation for science, both basic and applied, for engineering and industrial capability and infrastructure building.

Now what I believe and something that I'm trying to understand is why we don't carry through what we learned into times of peace. Why don't we as a country work that hard in times of prosperity and peace?

Imagine what we could accomplish if we take that and make it our culture. That we are always going to excel. We are always going to operate as if we are under stress. If we are not under stress, we are going to create our own stress through the belief that we can accomplish great things if we work together and we invest.

Now the other thing that I've realized when I look back at my history with the privilege of 20/20 hindsight, is that there were certain things that were pinnacle moments and certain things and institutions that contributed to my abilities and to the way I see the world today and led to the ability to build the kind of company and products that we have today.

Twenty-five years ago I went to the University of Waterloo. I didn't know what to expect. I arrived there like everyone else--a Frosh--and immediately was immersed in a different world. And in this world of stress and competition I had to learn to use the tools to accomplish what I needed to accomplish. Some of those tools were mathematics, experimental procedures and techniques, the scientific method, language and creativity.

There were other tools that I just took for granted like e-mail. How many of you knew about e-mail in 1980? Those of you who were in school probably experienced it. Of course, that e-mail was running on something called Arpanet, the beginnings of the Internet, but it was a research tool. It was used by physicists, by the Defence Department and by universities to communicate and collaborate and send and receive information. I took the e-mail system, I took the documentation, I read it, I learned how to use it and I discovered it was a very useful tool. But I didn't take it any further than that at the time. It was a tool that I took for granted.

But along with that I was also exposed to something called computer networking. From 1980 to 1985 computer networking was a research project. E-mail was a research project and in high school I worked with wireless communications, also a research project. Wireless data was one of the last things I remember when I was in high school because to become a ham radio operator at the time you had to learn Morse code. What I discovered was you didn't need to pass the Morse code test if you built a wireless data communication system instead of a voice communication system.

When I started Research in Motion as a small company, one of the things I took with me was the e-mail. I put e-mail on my business card. When I gave my business card to other business people, they would want to know what e-mail was. This was 1984. What was e-mail? They were perfectly right in not knowing what it was. It was a research project. It was a university thing. Little did anyone know the kind of impact it would have a decade and two decades later. But I remember putting it on my card and taking great pride in that I had something special, some special information, something new, something no one else understood the relevance of or the importance of. The more people asked me, "Hey what is e-mail?" the more I realized how important it was.

What I noticed on their business cards at the time was something called a telex number. How many of you remember what a telex number is? I knew what a telex number was because I built a telex machine in high school as part of the wireless data communications I was working on.

But years later, a decade later in fact, we both converged on something called a fax number. And that was something that we had in common. Quite frankly, it wasn't until 15 to 20 years later that I started to see e-mail addresses appearing on my colleagues' business cards, and I started to notice e-mail being used more and more in North America.

That's important. What was a research project was taken for granted by the students going through university. It was just something they had to learn, another tool like the lab equipment they had to figure out how to use. That technology, that experience, what was happening in the university was quite unique and was setting the groundwork for something that was going to revolutionize industry and quite frankly the world 10, 15, 20 years later.

What's interesting though was that if you were to ask business people, if you were to ask futurists, if you were to ask analysts, and if you were to ask governments what we should be investing in at universities, what was important, what should we be commercializing, I'm not sure e-mail or networking would've come up. It took students and researchers who were exposed to that technology and the venture capitalists who believed in them when they left university and either started working for large organizations or started their own organizations to commercialize that information.

Looking back, I know the importance of the university environment and quite frankly the University of Waterloo in my success and the company's success because one of the things I learned very quickly was to mine the product of that university. The raw material. Those students and the research.

One of the things we pride ourselves at Research in Motion is our ability to recruit the finest talent we can find. But we don't stop there. We make sure that we provide them with the finest equipment, the biggest best labs we can afford, the best development technology, and the best training and continuous training, that we can afford, to make sure that not only are they able to continue the research that they were doing in university, not only are they able to perfect their techniques and technology, they are going to produce the breakthroughs and have produced the breakthroughs at RIM. That we continue to promote the ability to think creatively and to have continuous dialogue with the scientific and research community they are a part of is something that is very important.

What can we learn from this? Well I don't think it's news to any of us in this room that universities are important, but have we sat down to think about it and do we talk enough about the crucial importance of universities and university education and students in the success of business, industry, governments, institutions? This is something that's very important because sometimes we lose sight of the importance of it because it works so well. The university system in Canada is working extremely well. Could it work better? Yes. Could it accomplish more? Absolutely. Could we graduate more graduate students or masters-level students in the sciences and engineering, in business, commerce? Absolutely. Are they capable of doing it? Well that's something that we need to look into because right now they aren't.

It is often observed that Canada was born of a noble vision and an active will. I think Canada needs to be reborn with a fresh noble vision and a renewed commitment to the acts of will needed to make it so. Well what should that vision be?

Many parts of this vision have already been agreed to. I think none of us would argue with the need for an open, caring, welcoming, democratic society that does its best to provide opportunity for all and protection for all. I think that it is surprising and, quite frankly, encouraging how little fundamental debate there is in this area. And that is great because that produces the groundwork that we can build on and that's something as Canadians we can take great pride in.

But we're entering an interesting time of paradox. We're entering another era of great prosperity. Based on the recent rebound in commodity prices and the acknowledgement of Canada as an oil nation, we are entering an unprecedented opportunity for progress and for prosperity. This means that unlike nations lacking natural resources Canada will have both the money to invest and the temptation to put off decisions that others have already made. So we will have the necessary funds to make investments and bets on our future but at the same time prosperity will tempt us to put off making those decisions.

Now I also believe that all of us understand what's happening around the world. Very large nations have discovered the importance of educating their people and investing in their universities and in their research. And also investing in the infrastructure that drives commercialization. That's reality. I think that that's something that we need to constantly keep in our minds. It is something that needs to be put into the constant tension of what decisions need to be made going forward and how we plan for the future.

President Bush is the most recent convert proposing the training of 100,000 new math and science teachers by 2015 and promising to double R and D in the physical sciences over 10 years. That's quite a goal and it is going to have a huge impact and it's something we need to consider as we plan what to do with our prosperity over the next decade and the decades to come after that because our oil and resources can only carry us so far. What are we going to do after they have run out? What happens if there's a major breakthrough and we are no longer as dependent on oil as we have been in the past? What will we do? Will we have made the wise research investments, the wise industrial investments, the wise infrastructure investments to prepare Canada for a world without oil?

I don't think anyone in this room would argue with the fact that our most valuable renewable natural resource is our educated public. And that's something that we need to keep in mind and we can't skimp on it. We need to be generous in educating our public and providing them the finest institutions and the best opportunities to educate themselves, to provide skills for their future and to become productive contributors to our society and industrial growth. But we have to understand the source of that education, the source of that creativity--innovation.

Vannevar Bush, one of the great engineers of the 20th century, said: "Science has a simple faith which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding not merely to prevail; that is the essence of our being."

So what are the specific acts of will? What are they? Clearly, we absolutely need to continue our investment and increase our investment in basic research and the research that is done at our universities. That's very important because that gives us a dual benefit; the dual benefit of knowledge creation and training. This is important because it isn't just the knowledge creation that creates future wealth. It's the students and researchers who graduate, who go off into industry, who start their own companies with that talent, with that information and with that connection to that research community who are going to commercialize that information. Those are the two things we need to keep in mind. Knowledge creation without creating students is something that is very inefficient. On the other hand, if that knowledge creation is creating and training students and inspiring students then you are leveraging a very powerful source.

Now in this regard, we have been well served by the investments that Canadians have made over the past decade. We really are setting ourselves up to succeed but we can't stop. We can't look back and say: "Done that. Been there. What's new?" We need to realize that we are in a global competition. We need to realize that we need to continue this investment and it has to be an inspired investment and it has to be very carefully measured, very carefully targeted to have impact over the decades to come, because today there is a tremendous opportunity for coherent strategic national leadership to take Canada to the next level. This is quite a challenge. I think it's something that Canada can do.

There are difficult decisions to be made. For example, as I mentioned before, we need more engineers, scientists and business people graduating with advanced degrees, both masters and PhDs, and we need to make sure that our institutions are prepared to produce those graduates.

Now here's the leadership part. It is easy to come up with short-term strategies or what I call tactics. It is also easy in a hypothetical way to come up with long-term strategies. But the responsibility of government and leadership is to start making the investments necessary in those long-term strategies, because those long-term strategies are believed to not produce votes. Those long-term strategies are things that I believe Canadians relate to.

My family came to Canada. It took an act of will and preparation to come here and to build a family and to build an opportunity. My parents believed that their children should have a better life. This is no different from the countless immigrants who have come to this country. This is very important. I think it's in our fibre to invest in our future and invest in our children. This is a Canadian fundamental. I don't think anyone would be surprised by us telling them that we need to invest in the future, we need to invest in education and we need to invest in our people. The tricky part, this is the part of leadership, is the act of will to actually do it and do it strategically because we can't do everything. We are not that big. We have to be very careful. We have to be prepared to make investments in some things that we believe make sense and we have to be prepared to say no to things that we do not believe strong enough to have impact.

Most importantly, we need to understand what I call the virtuous cycle, because this is the part that is so simple, quite frankly, to talk about but it is difficult to understand how comprehensive it is. It is a very simple virtuous cycle. Why do we need to invest in the finest research? Because it will attract the best researchers. That's what they live for. I know. I talk to them all the time. They want to go where they are valued and where they can get the funds to accomplish their research. It is very important to them. But why is it important to attract the best researchers? Because those researchers will attract the best students. Those students are the commercialization machine. They are the most efficient commercialization machine ever created. They will take that information, they will take that inspiration, they will take that knowledge and in some cases along with their researchers and they will leaven industry, government, all of Canada. That leavening will create wealth and that wealth will provide the funds we need and the resources we need to invest back in that research and that's the cycle. I believe in that cycle and I have done it myself.

Why did I start the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics? Because I believe in the fundamental advantage that theoretical physics provides mankind and I believe that we need those breakthroughs, that understanding that we talked about before. Why did I put it at the University of Waterloo? Because the University of Waterloo has proven that it has great student achievement. In fact, it has the largest math faculty in North America. It has the finest co-op education. That's what you need for physics. You need math and you need the ability to get those students in industry to really capitalize on that investment. What we need now is to match our research capability at that university with student achievement. Student achievement that has put us number one several times in things like the Putner Math exam that is put on by MIT and the ACM Computing Corporation competition and our achievements in solar cars and other projects that we excel in and compete in around the world.

Our new specialty is quantum informatics--a new field in both math and theoretical physics--with initial commercialization results that may not appear for 10 or 20 years but there is hope that they can produce results even sooner. Why is that important? Because those of us in this field know that Moore's Law is going to end within the next 10 to 20 years. In fact Intel scientists have said this and it's on their Web site. What we've done is we've built a solid base between the Perimeter Institute and the Institute of Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo to make sure that we have the foundation to prepare for the future, and invest in that research. It's a great start but we need to continue investing in it and it's something that I know is going to take us a long way.

So in conclusion, if we are truly interested in investing in the future it is going to take acts of will, it is going to take leadership, it is going to take leadership to say yes to some things and invest in them generously and no to other things and realize that we can't be all things to all people. We can't be great at all things but we do know as a nation that we can be great at some things and those are areas that we need to make sure we are investing in.

Secondly, our most powerful renewable resource in this country is our educated public and our students. It is that virtuous cycle of research that is happening at our universities and that incredibly powerful commercialization engine--the students we graduate and the researchers--that is going to leaven the industry of the future.

And finally, what happens at universities, the research that is going on there, is going to be relevant in decades to come. It is not necessarily going to be recognizable to us as relevant today and in fact if we try and choose today we will probably make a mistake.

When future generations look back and examine how we chose to allocate our current bounty, let them find that we chose wisely. Thank you.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Sylvia Morawetz, Principal, S.A.M. Solutions, and Director, The Empire Club of Canada.