The Social Rate of Return to Canada's Inventor's Assistance Program

Thomas Astebro (1) , Irwin Bernhardt (1)

1 Department of Management Sciences

Inventors, who are considering the commercialization of their inventions,-can often avail themselves of evaluations and advice provided by government supported programs. In Canada, such a service is provided by the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre (CIIC), through its inventor's assistance program (IAP). In its 20 years of operation, the IAP has evaluated more than 11,000 inventions. The fee (in Canadian [Cdn.] dollars) charged for an invention evaluation was Cdn. $262 in 1995, and these fees cover about half the program's expenses. We compute the social rate of return of the Canadian IAP under different assumptions. The most plausible estimate is a social rate of return between 36% and 70%.

Mots clés: inventor; invention; the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre; CIIC; inventor's assistance program; IAP; commercialization

Domaines: Stratégie et politique d’entreprise

Thomas Astebro, Irwin Bernhardt. The Social Rate of Return to Canada's Inventor's Assistance Program. Engineering Economist, 1999, 44 (4), pp.348-361. ⟨10.1080/00137919908967528⟩. ⟨hal-00480038⟩