One of Canada’s leading specialists in innovation on Tuesday urged Atlantic Canada’s entrepreneurs to embrace federal government procurement as a means of driving their products to market.

Tom Jenkins, the Executive Chairman of Waterloo-based OpenText, told a luncheon speech at the Nova Scotia Innovation Summit in Halifax that government procurement is more effective than subsidies as a tool for encouraging innovation. And he added the good news is government procurement, especially in select sectors like defense programs, is destined to be lucrative for several decades.

“Government as a customer is going to be bigger than the Oil Sands in the next 20 years,” said Jenkins, who chaired two key advisory panels for the Prime Minister on innovation.

He was the Chair of the Research and Development Policy Review Panel, whose report in 2011 recommended a realignment of R&D spending in the country with the goal of devoting more resources to the commercialization of research. And he chaired the Military Procurement Review Panel, which recommended early this year the government adopt a Buy Canadian policy for the Department of National Defense.

Jenkins said that policy could have huge benefits for entrepreneurs in Halifax, given that the government will spend $25 billion in the city building ships over the next two decades.

“Twenty-five billion dollars,” said Jenkins. “Everyone in this room should be doing high-fives about that number, but the question is, What are you going to do with it?”

He encouraged his audience to look at the experience in his adopted home of Kitchener-Waterloo as an example of how to build an effective innovation community. He said the key to Waterloo’s success was its ability to harness the world-class attributes of the University of Waterloo, and Halifax can do the same with Dalhousie University.

Earlier in the day, Eric Grimson, the Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, outlined how the world-renowned engineering school aims to encourage entrepreneurship, including holding a $100,000 business plan competition for students. He said the money helps to launch young companies, but the real benefit of the competition is the acclaim the winner receives.

He also said the community has benefited from the university opening up “a sandbox” for innovators, meaning a facility with 3D printers and other tools that entrepreneurs need to explore their ideas.

One final point about MIT: all undergrads must take four communications courses through their four-year program so that they can learn to explain their ideas orally and in writing. In the first two years, they must take humanities or social sciences courses. In the third and fourth years they take specialist courses in writing for startups, such as penning an executive summary or an elevator pitch.

Though some students protest the course at first, Grimson said: “In the end, some students have come to me and said, ‘Why did we have to wait until we’re seniors to take this course?’’’

The Innovation Summit is taking place over two days, and is stressing the need for innovation in three segments – ocean industries, agriculture and forestry.