In the span of a decade, the number of cities around the world building and investing in their local startup ecosystems has exploded, according to Startup Genome research. Amidst this boom, the competitiveness of markets for technology products and services and the ultimate race for sales and revenue has never been more intense. There’s absolutely no time to lose for startups that are seeking to scale and win global markets.

Ensuring startups have access to the right talent, capital, and networks at the right time is a common foundation for helping win the globalization race. These elements, however, need to be paired with an appropriate understanding of the competitive marketplace and, in particular, of the freedom to operate that a startup has to enter and win a market from an intellectual property (IP) perspective.

The province of Ontario, Canada – home to exceptional startup ecosystems such as Toronto-Waterloo (ranking #18 in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report), Ottawa, and London – has long been great at producing startups, but far less effective at helping turn them into high-growth scaleups. Efforts to address this have included both federal and provincial policy responses aimed at enhancing access to talent, capital, and networks.

In 2019, the government of Ontario took the lead in adding IP protection and commercialization to the priority list. It did so by appointing an expert panel chaired by former Blackberry CEO, Jim Balsillie, to investigate and propose solutions that would arm Ontario innovators, as well as post-secondary institutions and other innovation intermediaries, with access to IP education, services, funding, and advice.

Doing so has centered on the creation of Intellectual Property Ontario (IPON), the organization that I now lead as CEO. Amongst its menu of services, IPON provides startups with IP education and access to funding for IP services. For early-stage ventures, this might mean conducting initial IP audits or developing IP strategies that augment the startup’s overall commercialization strategy. For others, it can take the shape of sophisticated landscape reports that help the startup understand its competitive IP position. Ultimately, the goal is to arm these startups with the knowledge and tools to not just patent or protect their innovations, but to translate this IP into the ability to win markets.

Does it work? Research by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office shows that startups that hold registered IP rights are three times more likely to expand at home, and are four times more likely to export. Startups that hold patents raise venture rounds that are nearly double the size of their non-IP holding equivalents.

Suffice to say, IP matters immensely both for companies looking to scale and for the ecosystem leaders working hard to support them. Across technology verticals, the pace of patenting is only increasing, further narrowing the freedom to operate for latecomers. Addressing these challenges requires developing support programs aimed at enhancing IP literacy and IP strategy to arm startup founders, researchers, and other innovators with the tools they need to effectively compete in a hyper-competitive global innovation economy.

Dan Herman, PhD, is the CEO of Intellectual Property Ontario, a startup founder and former Head of Innovation Policy for the Government of Canada’s Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.