I received an interesting blog Thursday from Peter Halpin, Executive Director of the Association of Atlantic Universities, extolling the impact the region’s post-secondary institutions have had on innovation and R&D in the region.

Yes, it’s been said before, but it gives me an opportunity to bring out some research that I’ve been conducting that I hope will one day flesh out this concept a bit more.

In particular, Halpin notes that three of the big innovation stories in the region came about because of the active participation of universities. Radian6 and Ocean Nutrition Canada, two of the largest exits in the region ever, and the successful Newfoundland survival training company Virtual Marine Technology all succeeded in large part because of their affiliation with universities.

I’ve been trying to quantify how much the colleges and universities influence the locally owned innovation sector in the region, and it’s difficult to overstate their importance. The two greatest challenges these companies face is finding financial capital and human capital, and the universities are superb at helping to solve the second of those challenges.

How much university research ends up in local companies is difficult to quantify, but I am compiling data that could shed a bit of light on it. So far, I’ve collected data on 152 Nova Scotian innovative companies and 36 have definitely grown out of IP developed at or with the participation of a university. There are many more that fall into a grey area where universities undoubtedly helped. (Please excuse the focus on Nova Scotia – this is a work in progress and I will get to the other provinces soon.)

I’ll learn more as I continue to develop this databank, but there’s one more interesting point I should bring up.

Some 107 of these Nova Scotian companies are based in Metro Halifax, which isn’t surprising. Of the remaining 45 companies, 27 are based in or near the university towns of Wolfville, Truro, Antigonish and Sydney. That means more than 90 percent of the locally owned innovative companies in Nova Scotia are headquartered within a 25-minute drive of a university.

Coincidence?  I don’t believe so. Universities attract the type of people who allow entrepreneurship to thrive. They are also huge catalysts for developing entrepreneurship in rural areas, which is one of the key development challenges the region faces.