Professor Myra Tawfik, EPICentre Professor of IP Commercialization and Strategy and Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), has just released a special report for CIGI titled: Addressing a Gap in Canada’s Innovation Strategy: Capacity Building in IP Literacy, IP Strategy and Access to Affordable IP Legal Services. In this report, Myra makes twelve recommendations for addressing Canada’s IP literacy deficit, including the establishment of multidisciplinary educational programs and tools to ensure that Canadian innovators are sufficiently “IP savvy” to successfully navigate the global innovation economy. The report is available at: https://www.cigionline.org/publications/addressing-gap-canadas-global-innovation-strategy.

Myra has already begun testing and implementing some of her recommendations. She has co-authored and co-developed a CIGI massive open online course (MOOC) on IP strategy with CIGI Senior Fellow Karima Bawa. This Foundations of IP Strategy MOOC is being beta tested for full launch early next year. Registration is currently open for any interested individuals who want to participate in the beta test. For further details, please visit: https://www.cigionline.org/events/calling-all-innovators-beta-test-of-cigis-foundations-of-ip-strategy-mooc.

Building upon this MOOC, Myra has developed an IP Strategy course specifically designed for law students and taught using a flipped classroom pedagogical model. In addition, through her work at EPICentre, she is currently involved in a number of multidisciplinary experiential learning projects involving teams of law students, business students and STEM students. All of these initiatives are designed to optimize the innovation and commercialization literacy of the start-up and entrepreneurial community as well as of the intermediaries who support them.