Accelerating Commercialization: Adoption Readiness Levels
A new framework from the US and some Quick Hit reading recommendations.
Happy Monday! Today I look at a fascinating interview with the US Department of Energy’s Chief Commercialization Officer and the DoE’s development of Adoption Readiness Levels. I think it is a great framework and I write about some ways it could be applied in Canada.
The Quick Hits section turns to research on the barriers to investment in critical minerals in Canada, looks at funding for scientific research, and highlights two new strategies - the UK’s new Industrial Strategy, and the City of Toronto’s new 10-Year Action Plan.
I hope you enjoy it!
Accelerating Commercialization - Adoption Readiness Levels
It is well established that one of Canada’s big innovation challenges is commercialization. We produce great academic research but then fail to turn that into technology that is developed and sold by Canadian companies that employ people here and pay taxes here. Instead, those gains often end up elsewhere.
In light of that, it is interesting to see innovative work happening in the US to support commercialization. This great interview in the Volts newsletter/podcast with Dr Vanessa Chan, the US Department of Energy’s Chief Commercialization Officer, explores that in depth.
The interview covers a lot of ground but I want to focus on the DoE’s Adoption Readiness Levels (ARLs). As Dr Chan points out, these have been developed in recognition that just getting from Technology Readiness Level 1-9 is “insufficient to actually get to wide-scale adoption in the marketplace”.
The ARLs focus on some non-technology-specific factors that are risks to adoption. 17 metrics are broken down into four core risk areas:
Value Proposition covers whether the technology will meet the requirements of the market at a price customers are willing to pay.
Market Acceptance is about the target market’s characteristics and risks - such as whether there is sufficient competition to allow market entry.
Resource Maturity covers a lot of essential factors to bring a technology to market, including access to sufficient capital to scale production, whether necessary infrastructure exists, and whether the skills and talent are available to produce and use it at scale.
License to Operate represents whether there are major regulatory hurdles and if there is sufficient societal acceptance of the technology.
In the Volts interview, Dr Chan highlights how the ARL assessment has been picked up by venture capital firms who are using it to help assess where companies they are considering funding match up. While the risks it covers aren’t new, this kind of packaging is and it has proved helpful with founders who come from technical and PhD backgrounds, as well as other entrepreneurs.
I think there is a lot of applicability for this framework here in Canada. Incorporating the assessment and methodology in Lab to Market programming for aspiring entrepreneurs seems a clear opportunity. Likewise, replicating US VC firms and requiring companies to come with their ARL number as well as their TRL seems sensible to help inform investment decisions.
Perhaps more interesting for my policy wonk brain is how ARLs could be used to advocate for policy change. When it comes to emerging and disruptive technologies, a lot of policy change is often needed to allow them to reach their full potential in ways that are safe and that build public/consumer trust.
Yet, it can be incredibly difficult to get that change to happen for several reasons. This includes the fact that the pioneers are often deep into the technology weeds and are not experts in the regulator barriers that need overcoming or on the skills ecosystem needed to support their new technology, to pick only two areas. When you are deep in the daily struggle of running a start-up, articulating policy positions to governments is not a priority, even if it can ultimately be essential. This challenge can be further exacerbated by the fact that disruptive technologies face up against incumbents who are, by definition, far better resourced and embedded in the policy and economic system and can work to block change that would threaten their interests.
ARLs could help with this. By providing a clear framework to think through the broad barriers to adoption of new technology, they provide a frame of reference and a language to founders who might not have had that. Taken collective for new technologies, they can also provide VCs, sectoral bodies, or governments directly, with great insights into the steps needed to smooth the path to the widespread adoption of new technologies.
That is an exciting prospect.
Quick Hits
What is holding back investment in Canadian critical minerals? - Some new data from the Canadian Climate Institute and TMX Group on the critical minerals ecosystem. It is hard to overstate how much critical mineral production needs to ramp up (and get far more efficient) if we are ever to reach emissions goals. With a bigger report to follow this year, this piece highlights some of the key issues in the way of scaling that production in Canada.
Ottawa’s funding cuts for breakthrough scientific research hurts all Canadians - This Policy Options piece by a group of eminent McGill scientists argues for better supporting and funding discovery research through the research councils and against funding “strategic research goals”. I certainly agree that we need to better fund investigator-initiated research - following the Bouchard report’s recommendation of a 10% increase annually for five years would be a good start. But as that same report makes clear, investigator-initiated research is not the only thing we need to support - we also have to fund “urgent, international, multi- and interdisciplinary and mission-driven research” that falls through the gaps in the current system. Increasing research council funding is necessary but not sufficient.
Invest 2035: the UK's modern industrial strategy - The UK’s draft industrial strategy has just been published for consultation. Taking a different approach to previous strategies (and in the UK, there have been many), this one emphasizes eight “growth-driving sectors”. It also includes cross-cutting policies that support a “pro-business environment”, along with an explicit inclusion of place - with “unleashing the full potential of our cities and regions” a “core objective” of the strategy. There is a lot in it, and I might write a longer post on it at some point but, in the meantime, these are two short and helpful reviews from the Institute for Government Senior Fellow Giles Wilkes, and from Andrew Leicester, an Associate Director at Frontier Economics.
Sidewalks to Skylines: An Action Plan for Toronto's Economy 2025-2035 - Zooming in from a national strategy to a city strategy, Toronto has just published its own ten-year action plan. It is built around three priority areas: Strong Main Streets, Quality Jobs, and Global Competitiveness along with a broad bucket called Getting the Basics Right. The broad direction of travel has merit but I’m not sure it gets into enough depth of how to deliver change. A lot of the actions are along the lines of creating working tables to identify actions, or developing (or co-developing) strategies to come up with more actions. Similarly, while there is broad commentary on challenges the city faces, these are not detailed and don’t seem adequately linked to the following actions. For more commentary on the strategy see my former colleague Cristina Andoni’s write-up here.
Super interesting, thanks for flagging this Tom. The concept of ARLs seems like a useful complement to TRLs,, especially when discussing policy issues with decision makers. Appreciate your perspective.