That said, three specific bottlenecks in the ecosystem do appear to be contributing to the country’s underperformance in this area: a gap between invention and revenue-generating commercialization a struggle to scale up successful start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) no burning platform for corporate adoption of innovation A gap between invention and revenue-generating com [...] Furthermore, Canada’s ranking on business-university R&D collaboration declined to 19th place in 2015.10 The reasons for this are complex and interrelated, including a lack of local R&D-intensive corporations to develop and adopt inventions, a lack of qualified staff within universities and companies to build relationships and broker collaboration, and insufficient funding to support early and ris [...] The reasons are complex and include a small and fragmented local market, shortages of experienced business talent, a lack of at-scale sources of growth capital, and an aversion to risk on the part of some of Canada’s established companies. [...] Small firms account for about half of business sector employment in Canada versus just over one-third in the United States.11 This lack of scale accounts for 4 Unlocking innovation to drive scale and growth 20 percent of the labour productivity gap between Canada’s business sector and that of the United States.12 Canada’s start-ups also have smaller exits and face a longer path to exit than their [...] Connecting to sectors, and getting to scale The Council recommends that the government map the sectors and opportunities in Canada’s key economic sectors.