He then joined the University of Waterloo teaching in the department of mechanical engineering.
[1] From 2005 to 2012[2] he served as the inaugural RBC Professor in Commercialization of Innovation at the University of Ottawa and wrote the book The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge.
[3] He coined the phrase "Necessity may be the mother of invention, but competition is the father of innovation.
"[4] He was also the first Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy[5] at that university.
He was chair of the board of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo from 2006 to 2014,[6][7] chair of the scientific advisory committee (SAC) for the national Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) from 2010 to 2013; from 2016 to 2019 he sat on CCA's board of directors.