Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2020 45 for Supporting your Innovation is Slammed Shut thE laSt woRd By raLpH KaCHur W hen financial support for your military or indus- trial discovery has had the door slammed shut, lost forever are the op- portunities to create new military, indus- trial, cyber, technical, social and economic benefits for Canada. This article provides background and suggestions for the gov- ernment to form a new department whose primary purpose will be, to take a second look at previously rejected applications. When applying for funding for an innova- tive project, among the many reasons for a rejected application is, the one who is evalu- ating your application does not have a deep understanding or appreciation of how, why, when, or what you propose is actually a ben- efit for Canada. The result is the door being slammed shut on you, never to open again. After your application has been rejected, options are: go to another country for sup- port (USA or China), sell your idea to a company, where production would most likely go to another country, keep trying or give up. Major Cyber Discovery Allow me to use my discovery as an exam- ple. I have made a major discovery for the malware protection of computers. We no longer need to use detection software to do a wide variety of malware safe activities. This is major advance in cybersecurity. A president of a major Canadian bank has offered to fund our commercial prod- uct development for a small equity stake, contingent upon the demonstration of a Proof of Concept (PoC) computer. The enabling technology has been proven in my lab. Opportunity Lost For three years I've been self-funding all research. I have run out of cash and now there are no funds to hire the technical help needed to implement my design for a PoC computer for that bank president. By not receiving the support necessary to build a simple PoC computer, will not only result in the loss of a Cyber Secure Computer Manufacturing Industry in Canada, but also the loss of significant WheN the DooR cyber, military, industrial, technical and economic opportunities. This is not only my funding dilemma, it is also a very typical story for the many other innovators who have had their re- quest for support rejected. When that door is slammed shut on us, that is it. Forever lost are the innovative discoveries made and knowledge gained. Canada Ranked 3rd in the World A 2018 report from Swiss based Startup- Blink, ranked Canada 3rd in the world for the support of startups. We need to provide help to startups, as they struggle to cross the finishing line of a successful venture, as to when we are known to pro- vide good support for them when they first approached the starting line. Improv- ing support for crossing the finish line is an area which Canada is now working on improving. This article is written to focus on just one area, which is when an application is rejected, what we need to do is to turn a

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