The federal government wants to tap the skills of obscure basement inventors and turn their tinkering into innovative consumer products.
A new survey for Industry Canada has found that almost 13 per cent of Canadians are so-called "private innovators," who have improved on consumer goods or created new products in the last three years.
Recent research in the United States and elsewhere has found similar numbers of ordinary basement tinkerers, regarded by some as a talent pool that consumer-products firms need to harness to find fresh profits. "The consumer innovations uncovered by researchers abroad arise in many sectors, including software, gaming, sporting equipment and automotive," says an Industry Canada description of the survey project.
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