Michael Chubb couldn’t pass for a rancher or a professor of agriculture — and he’d tell you as much.
With more sales pitches under his belt than body score exams, the fast-talking businessperson would probably be more at home in the CBC’s Dragons’ Den than a cattle barn.
Yet Chubb found himself wheeling and dealing with agriculturalists on a few fronts this year, first as general manager of the Saskatoon Colostrum Company (SCC), where he pushes a Canadian-made livestock supplement across international borders, and then in his other, unpaid gig mentoring researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s agriculture and veterinary colleges.
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“I couldn’t have paid for the MBA that I realized out of the pathway that has transpired,” said Chubb, who in a leather jacket and no tie with the top button undone on his collared shirt, wasn’t dressed the part of a business bigwig on this visit to SCC’s offices in Saskatoon’s industrial zone.
But a glance online reveals the portrait of a “master networker” with a history of “big-pitch engagement” and “key account relationship development” experience — words gleaned from LinkedIn, an online platform for business networking. This background has helped install Chubb as entrepreneur in residence through the U of S’s Industry Liaison Office (ILO).
Chubb, a Saskatchewan native who took an around-the-world tour through science-based enterprises, executing marketing, sales and business development plans, has been asked to prod and poke students and faculty, looking for opportunities to capitalize on their intellectual capital.
“There’s a whole bunch of people on campus, not just in those colleges, that have the desire for enterprise and may have the seed of an idea, but there’s not a lot of people there to support them and put together a bunch of other resources,” Chubb said.
“So tying together people that have really great business process skills but don’t necessarily have a new idea, is a function that I am enthused about because I’ve now met a lot of the people in both colleges and after you talk to them about their research areas, you see these seeds of enterprise.”
The idea is to identify people who may, in their existing research programs, be sitting on a potential new business and not know it — a new beneficial feed additive, for example, that could be added to a new or existing product and sold to livestock producers.
Similar processes already occur on campus, but not everyone thinks about going into business for himself, breaking ground on a production facility or marketing a new brand. As such, Chubb’s role is both that of a facilitator and provocateur.
“I’m an enthusiast for the creation of new enterprise, preferably from here, from this province, from the really smart people (at the U of S) that often end up sending their ideas away to somebody else in some other part of the world for commercialization,” said Chubb.
“We can do it here. We can totally do it here, but you need to agitate to think different sometimes.”
The U of S and the ILO, which works with patents and licences, have a strong history of commercializing research, bringing new products to producers and building bridges between academic and business communities.
Farmers will recognize the many seed varieties from the Crop Development Centre, while vaccines familiar to livestock producers can be traced back to laboratories on campus. This trail contributes to revenues that are among the highest in the country for university-licensed technologies.
However, Chubb was brought onboard to encourage professors and researchers to pave the way themselves.
“Even the idea of protecting your technology by getting a patent is not very close to the heart of lots of professors,” said Baljit Singh, associate dean of research at the U of S’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
“They don’t even think about these things yet, and then to think about commercializing and starting an enterprise or a company or a business based on that technology, you’ve got to imagine that it’s still a few steps removed from their thinking.”
A model of success for researchers is the organization Chubb has helmed since 2011.
By the time Chubb became general manager of SCC, it had already been swallowed up by Koepon Holding, becoming a significant holding for the Dutch dairy giant that also owns Alberta-based genetics company Alta Genetics.
However, the company’s roots are in the work of Deborah Haines at the WCVM, who was researching the passive transmission of maternal antibodies from cow to calf 20 years ago.
The business was built from the knowledge that replacement colostrum with an improved immunoglobulin content, which helps prevent disease, could benefit cattle and producers.
Since then, the company’s portfolio has expanded to include human and companion animal products.
Today, the company buys hundreds of thousands of litres of frozen material a year from more than 1,400 farms in Canada, processing and packaging it as a dried powder at its Saskatoon facility.
This year, most of its products will be sold in Canada, the United States and Japan to the expected tune of $7 million in sales.
In 2012, the company received an exporter of the year nomination from the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership.
From Saskatoon, Chubb keeps an eye on growing or potential markets in South America and Europe while navigating their corresponding regulatory hangups.
“In a way, we’re a Saskatchewan company, sure, but we’re actually part of the economics of lots of dairy farms across the country on the supply side,” he said. “Hopefully on the sale side too.”
Singh said Chubb is at the colleges for only a few hours a month, but there’s potential for more than just talk to emerge if others like Chubb join the program and it continues for several more years.
“I think about the sustainability of it. You could have 100 Mike Chubbs, and you should,” said Chubb.
“I think you should have partners that are kind of like free radicals floating around in this ecosphere of potential.”
