Entrepreneurial vision will define health/medical innovation at the University of Toronto over the next decade

Abstract

If I had been invited to write this article two decades ago, here at the University of Toronto, my definition of innovation for the University of Toronto would have been very similar to what the University aspired to for the previous 50 years, back to 1950. The vision at that time was to generate knowledge creation by training students via the process of curiosity-driven discovery. This prepared them for a singular career path in research by cultivating their direction towards academia within the post-doctoral pathway. In that mindset, discovery was only shared with the public through peer reviewed publications, housed within the ivory towers of universities, far out of reach from the entrepreneurs of the day. The role of the Canadian University was to impact academia. If society benefited from innovative discoveries, it would happen by random osmosis, as it was most certainly not a deliberate mandate of universities to prepare the entrepreneurial minds of scientific translation to in turn deliver the fruits of discoveries for society’s benefit. Rather, that task would be relegated to the established medical and pharmaceutical industry. However, dramatic shifts have occurred in our fields of health sciences and medical care over the last two decades. These have turned the ivory towers of medical science in Canada onto their side.