Ideation for innovation at the NRC

Creating a better Canada and world through excellence in research and innovation is at the heart of what we do at the NRC.

One of the ways we enable this is through funded collaborative research and development (R&D) programs and initiatives. These allow NRC researchers to work on new technology and research ideas that could lead to game-changing discoveries and technological breakthroughs with partners such as academia and small and medium-sized businesses. Grant and contribution funding is provided to help offset the cost of the collaboration.

Created in 2018, the Ideation Fund provides individual NRC researchers and teams with funding to support their collaborative research. Every year, up to $6 million is provided to researchers and their external collaborators to test their potentially transformative ideas through the New Beginnings and Small Teams initiatives.

The first round of New Beginnings-funded projects has the potential to lead to up to 14 disclosures of intellectual property, with one third of the projects being further supported through other NRC initiatives, like Challenge programs and research centre‑supported research. Since its inception, the New Beginnings Initiative has resulted in 138 R&D projects involving 46 unique collaborators from academic and private sector organizations.