Why Doyletech?

About Us

Since its incorporation in 1982, Doyletech Corporation has specialized in advising clients on how to convert technology into wealth. Those clients have included governments at all three levels, research institutions, economic development agencies, entrepreneurs, and corporations.

In the mid eighties, while on a commercialization assignment with the NRC, Doyletech developed a tool called a Business Opportunity Document (BOD) to facilitate such collaboration. It is a highly abbreviated New Venture Business Plan that describes the technology, the potential products, and the markets they will address. Both of these documents are described in a textbook he has authored entitled Making Technology Happen. BODs are now used by several federal laboratories and university technology transfer offices across Canada.

Doyletech was one of the first technology-based strategic management consultants in Canada. Our partners literally coined many of today’s common commercialization terms such as the ‘technology engine’. Today, we remain an independent strategic management consultancy to industry and government. Since 1999, our service offerings have broaden significantly as well as our geographic coverage. We are now trusted advisors to public and private sector clients in the United States and the Caribbean, where we are active in ICT strategic planning and a wide-range of economic development projects.

What Sets Us Apart

The Right People, Approaches, and Results. Our experienced consultants have all started companies and know the ins and outs of wealth creation from technology exploitation.

People: Experienced & Committed. We are personally committed to exceeding client expectations.

Approaches: Customized & Collaborative. We strive to understand your situation and your market in a way that is relevant and more evocative than traditional analyses or data-driven assessments. A disciplined, yet flexible, approach is taken to seek out the right direction for our clients.

Results: Measurable & Sustainable. We work with clients to deliver practical, measurable, and sustainable results.

In the following sections (menu on the right), we outline some of the major Doyletech consulting products. These include DT FamilyTree, DT Linkages, DT TechnologyScorecard, DT Mentorship, DT MarketMaker, DT Technology Transfer Toolkit, DT Economic Developer’s Toolkit, DT IndustrialAnalysis, and DT CommunityMetrics.

These products are not the total service offering or capability of Doyletech; for more information on our service offerings, visit the ‘Portfolio’ section of this website.

Our Tools and Techniques, and our Values

Techniques. We help clients turn technology into wealth by utilizing our extensive industry experience, proprietary methodologies and computer models, and extensive domain expertise. The combination of these elements allows us to deliver consistent, high quality services to clients, ensuring efficiency, predictability, and visibility.

Values. Our values and beliefs guide our client interactions:

Respect: For our employees, customers, and ourselves.

Excellence: In our research, our planning, and our execution.

Impact: We will make the most important thing most important.

Profit: We must add value to all we do.

In the Spotlight: Making Technology Happen (MTH)

Doyletech: Helping Clients Turn Technology into Wealth
We help public and private sector clients turn technology into wealth. By Making Technology Happen, we ensure that you experience the results that you require. While our service offerings are organized into twelve major categories, assignments can involve one or more of these offerings. No matter the work involved, we are personally committed to getting the job done regardless of the obstacles.

Spotlight: Making Technology Happen, New Seventh Edition
Originally published in 1988, Making Technology Happen (MTH) is a 191-page book that covers the entire spectrum of technology commercialization from the identification of exploitable technology in publicly funded laboratories, to the creation of new business ventures, to the ongoing management and governance of technology-based firms. It even has a chapter devoted to steps that can be taken by municipalities to create such firms in their areas of jurisdiction.

We also provide a one-day seminar covering the topics of Making Technology Happen. MTH seminars have been held across the country. Federal and provincial agencies and laboratories use MTH Seminars to help their scientists identify and protect intellectual property. University technology transfer officers use MTH Seminars to help university researchers and scientists in the technology commercialization process. Economic development agencies and incubator managers use MTH Seminars to assist their local entrepreneurs as they identify new product/service/process concepts in their community. To learn more about the MTH Seminar Series, contact Mr. Glenn McDougall.

Featured Service: Economic Impact Analysis and Econometrics

Doyletech has conducted economic and social impact assessments across a range of industries, technologies, programs, and geographies. DT EconWin is our proprietary economic model which we typically employ to measure the economic impact of an investment, or even a whole industry, on a particular region, or nationally. It takes into account the impact of employment, spending, exports, taxes, and other metrics. It has also been used to quantify various social and environmental impacts and costs. The model can also be used easily to investigate the effects of government incentives on a new investment within a local economy.

This econometric model is able to isolate individual investments, and then calculate, under a variety of scenario conditions, what the returns would be to the community as a whole in terms of increased economic activity. The model assumes that the local and regional economies are effectively in a state of equilibrium, and therefore the new investment impact can be illuminated as a strictly-incremental impact on both.

The model works on what is known as the “economic base” principle, i.e., it differentiates between an investment that serves purely local needs, as opposed to an investment that effectively brings in revenues from outside the region. The latter are equivalent to “exports” from the region (even if they stay within Canada); when the “exports” are larger than the internal costs, then the new investment is a net contributor to the region’s “economic base”.

The model integrates key exogenous inputs (such as the value of construction and operating labour and materials, and the value of any related downstream investment in other new facilities such as new supply or manufacturing capacity), and projects forward, using various endogenous economic multipliers, the value of eventual total outputs (such as number of jobs created, value of extra local spending, and new tax revenues generated). A key value of the model is its ability to calculate “indirect” and “induced” economic effects, taking into account the “downstream” multiplier effects from the original investment.

Another key feature of our model is its ability to run backwards: we can simulate a hypothetical “shut-down” of economic activity occasioned by the re-direction of investment to the given facility.

The figure below provides a simplified schematic of the model.

In addition to the econometric assessments using DT EconWin, we also have several tools and techniques for developing other types of impact assessments. For example, our models of the economic impact of licensing and fee-for-service activities at federal and provincial laboratories and agencies are considered the keystone in Canada.

Several federal labs, including National Research Council Canada and Communications Research Centre Canada, use our models on a regular basis. Our recent assessment on the NRC-IRAP’s SME activities led to this organization receiving major new funding from the federal government. We have also conducted work for the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) to assess the effectiveness of technology transfer activities at various federal government departments and agencies.

In 2009, we conducted an assessment of the impact of Boeing Aerospace’s Industrial and Regional Benefits packages across Canada, with particular reference to employment through Boeing’s spending. These benefits were very distributed. In order to do this, we developed our own case-specific employment model for Boeing and all its suppliers, using Industry Canada data.

DT FamilyTree

Doyletech has helped many organizations demonstrate impact not only by identifying spin-off companies (and other impacts) from their organizations but also by portraying these spin-offs with what we call “family Trees”. Many are aware of our “FamilyTree of Ottawa-Gatineau High Technology companies” which we produce on a regular basis; but we have also developed similar graphics and collaterals demonstrating various economic and social impacts from universities, government labs and agencies, technology incubators, individual companies, and entire industrial clusters and regions.

DT TechnologyScorecard

DT TechnologyScorecard is designed to provide a quick and cost effective way of assessing the commercial viability of a technology. It can be applied to a new invention to determine whether patent protection is warranted; or to a portfolio of technologies to provide a ranking based on their respective commercial potential.

The Scorecard is an interactive tool that uses a set of criteria based on a number of critical attributes of a technology. The objective is to arrive at a score for each of the criteria. Technologies which receive a high rating based on their overall scores are deemed to have good potential for commercialization. Since some criteria may be deemed to be more important than others, a weighting factor is applied to each criterion – for example, 3 for high importance, 2 for moderate importance, and 1 for low importance. The weighting factor is based on the type of technology and the relevant field(s) of applications.

This tool is intended for universities, government laboratories, and R&D organizations in both the public and private sector. It has been shown to be a cost saving tool that can be used to:
• identify technologies that have potential for commercialization;
• assess new inventions to determine whether patent protection is warranted;
• determine whether patent protection continues to be justified for technologies that have already been patented;
• identify technologies that may be worthy of an in-depth commercial evaluation.

The analysis provides an overall score for the technology; and can be represented by a spider diagram as shown below.

DT TechnologyScorecard PDF File

Mentorship and Business Strategy for Executives and Entrepreneurs

While most CEOs and senior managers recognize the value of effective mentorship and business strategy development, many of them procrastinate on seeking it because they are concerned about entering into consulting arrangements that can consume a lot of time and money. Doyletech Corporation has tailored its mentoring service so that it can be modularized and purchased on an hourly basis in the same way that other professional services are purchased.

The marketing capabilities of early-stage company CEOs can vary widely.

Most mentorship assignments will be taken by Doyletech in-house consultants; however, the services of other mentors who are well known to us can also be arranged. Included with each assignment will be one copy of Making Technology Happen TM, a 191-page textbook authored by Denzil Doyle. Mentorship and business strategy topics have been designed so they can be addressed in fixed minimum time slots or as components of larger modules that address broader topics such as people management and self-improvement.

DT MarketMaker

Based on our research and experience commercializing new technologies and developing new markets, Doyletech has developed DT MarketMaker. By thoroughly understanding and researching your market (including its structure, dynamics, and potential evolution), we are able to identify ‘sweet spots’ in the competitive landscape.

DT MarketMaker is market-focused commercialization that offers an unbiased market validation (neither technology ‘push’ nor ‘pull’). Its results can serve as the foundation for a business plan, be used to align the executive team, or gain the confidence of investors (both public and private-sector). The DT MarketMaker process is illustrated in the following figure.

In terms of identifying the ‘sweet spots’ in the marketplace, the following figure illustrates how DT MarketMaker scopes out the entire competitive frontier.

Introducing The Technology Transfer Toolkit (TTO)

The TTO Toolkit is a suite of dedicated services for technology commercialization professionals. It provides tools, techniques, and processes in five high-demand areas, namely:

  • 1. Measuring Impacts and Outcomes;
  • 2. Developing Commercialization Tools;
  • 3. Intellectual Property (IP) Diagnostics and Process Improvement;
  • 4. Finding Receptors;
  • 5. Assistance with Strategic / Business Planning and Funding Submissions.

Clients in the area of technology commercialization and transfer (including business planning), include Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Bioindustrial Innovation Centre (BIC), Canadian Light Source (CLS), National Research Council Canada (NRC), NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), the Cornwall New Ventures Advisory Group, TRIUMF, Canadian Microelectronics Centre (CMC), the New Brunswick Innovation Centre, CETAC-West, Carleton University Technology Transfer Office, Florida State University, the Government of Suriname, eTeck in Trinidad, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), BSNL India, and several other organizations across Canada and internationally.

Introducing The Economic Developer’s Toolkit (EDO)

We have packaged three of our most requested services for economic development professionals into The Economic Developer’s Toolkit. They are: (1) DT EconWin – assessing the economic impact of community projects and initiatives; (2) DT IndustrialAnalysis – developing growth strategies and supply-chain analysis for community sectors or sub-sectors; and (3) DT CommunityMetrics – identifying real estate demand and supply, and development opportunities in the community.

DT EconWin is an economic development tool that can quickly and easily assess the impact of an investment in facilities or projects ranging from hospitals to manufacturing plants within a given region.

DT IndustrialAnalysis is an analytic and decision-making tool that will allow communities to better plan for investment attraction and sector development. The objective is to find how new investment, organizations, or orientations would result in new migrating growth paths for the community.

DT CommunityMetrics is a community-level real estate space planning and forecasting system. It can assess the current and future needs for commercial facilities in a given geographic area.

DT IndustrialAnalysis: Investment Attraction and Sector Development On-Demand

An industrial “system” is the mutually supporting presence of related firms within a given industrial sector or sub-sector. Our experience with real industrial systems suggests that, with globalization and the shift to a knowledge-based world economy, time-to-market and just-in-time delivery are critical. This encourages the clustering of capabilities in regional centres to support the innovation process and thus to minimize the “leakage” of external benefits outside the area. Firms are attracted to regions that can provide the key functions needed to bring their products or services to market rapidly. At this point a “new economy” industrial system emerges.

Implementing our analytic methodology involves two parts. Part I involves physically constructing our pyramidal shaped “maps” for the regional sector. This profiles the sector for subsequent analysis; and Part II involves developing alternate migratory growth paths and solutions for enhancing the system; these can then be used as a basis for driving consensus on recommendations for go-forward action items.

Part I uses visual “mapping” of the sectors and sub-sectors in a consistent framework. This framework maps the various companies that form the industrial sector, by reference to existing markets and applications, alongside potential new market opportunities, (the demand side), all in relationship to a structural, hierarchical “model” of infrastructure capabilities in a given area.

Part II involves developing hypotheses for action items recommendations that will enhance the sector. The objective is to find how new investment, organizations, or orientations would result in new migrating growth paths for the system.

Ideally, the system works by providing two separate flow streams (see figure below). The first is a flow of products that go through a series of technologically-based transformations within the sector/sub-sector layers that make them of higher-value to consumers and are then sold to external markets. The second is a flow of information from the market back through the layers of the sector/sub-sector to guide how the various technologically-based transformations need to be improved through new or better research, investments, organization, up-skilling, and so on.

This analysis framework works for several reasons. It answers the question of whether a community has a fundamental competitive advantage in a particular domain. Second, it highlights the specific strengths and weaknesses of the local economy. Third, the competition can be identified, and their relevant strengths, by reference to the markets identified in the sector maps. Fourth, the approach automatically gives broad relevant benchmarks for the local economy.

The approach also facilitates development of recommendations for next steps, and appropriate action plans. The mapping and success factor assessments will point out the strengths and weaknesses, and allow a focused agenda for positive further action. This would permit sector stakeholders to understand and act upon the following types of information, for example:

Market dynamics that will attract investors (e.g. proximity to the US market, already established foreign markets, access to the local Canadian market);
The state of the supply base (e.g. the presence or lack thereof of a system integrator within a sector – the lack of a systems integrator in a sector with a well established infrastructure and with good market potential may be particularly attractive to a potential investor); or
The state of the related infrastructure (e.g. if the sector has a well-developed infrastructure block, markets are much more likely to consider purchasing from the system than otherwise; alternatively, if the infrastructure block is weak, stakeholders can target infrastructure improvements to enhance the attractiveness).

DT CommunityMetrics: Real Estate Opportunity Assessment On-Demand

CommunityMetrics is a forecasting system developed by Doyletech Corporation to assist community planners, developers, and real estate owners in assessing the current and future needs for commercial facilities in a given geographic area. It is an information system that can be used in the following ways:

• By Community Planners – to ensure that there is sufficient and appropriate zoning in place to accommodate the increasing diversity of real estate needs.
• By Industrial & Business Park Managers – to ensure that their facilities are geared to future growth.
• By Economic Development Officers – to develop projections of when and why certain markets are more favourable for investment and development.
• By Business Improvement Agencies (BIAs) – to identify whether local demand for products and services is being met locally or being serviced from outside the trade area.
• By Real Estate Developers & Investors – to identify under-built or over-built situations in local communities thus allowing them to plan accordingly for new development, or redevelopment, or an exit strategy. CommunityMetrics provides real evidence of which markets should be avoided or viewed with caution.
• By Consultants & Researchers – to develop a comprehensive real estate space footprint on any market, no matter the size.

How it Works
The tool can be used for market assessment at both the overall community level as well as for a specific development site. The following are the steps which are typical when conducting a retail market analysis for a specific site:

Demand Side Analysis:
• Define the trade area;
• Determine the number of households and total household income;
• Market share/capture analysis;
• Estimate retail space supportable by resulting sales.

Supply Side Analysis:
• Identify competing stores in and around trade area;
• Determine competitive differences;
• Consider planned or potential stores;
• Estimate market share of trade area sales that a planned type of store at the site could achieve;
• Determine the dollar value of this market share;
• Translate sales level into supportable space.

Identifying Underserved Market Demand and Market Gaps
Our most common application of CommunityMetrics is at the community-level in which an analogous method to that presented above is used. It serves as a community-level sales gap which can identify expansion/recruitment opportunities for the overall community, neighbourhood, or business district. It will clearly illuminate under-built or over-built situations.

Edit