I just finished an Impact Brief on Public Sector Venture Capital and there were a number of thoughts I had while preparing it that I didn’t think belonged in a report so I figured I would include them here.

The report looked at the ability of BDC’s venture capital arm and MaRS’ Investment Accelerator fund to pick and nurture world class companies. These are two organizations that have invested in over $1 billion of government money in 500 Canadian tech companies.

As I was doing the research I talked with a number of other VC firms to get their perspectives as well. What I found in these conversations stunned me. It appear that very few VCs are looking back at the history of their investments to discover best practices either at investing or at growing world-class tech companies.

Several major venture capital funders have done absolutely no research on best practices and don’t intend to do so. One VC is planning to do some research. One even told me that he didn’t think it would be worthwhile to do this type of research as his companies were all different.

And then I thought about Google and perhaps the whole ethos of Silicon Valley. Google has initiated numerous projects to determine best practices within Google. An HBR article reports that Google initiated “Project Oxygen, a multiyear research initiative. It has since grown into a comprehensive program that measures key management behaviors and cultivates them through communication and training.” Project Aristotle was another study that looked at team effectiveness.

VCs like Openview regularly do research to help their portfolio companies and they share best practices publicly. CB Insights did research on why companies fail. All sorts of VCs blog regularly about the industries they are investing in and how to get better. Just check out websites for Bessemer or Andreessen Horowitz.

What the US VCs get is that research is essential to improve business practices. They are actively trying to get better.

In Canada there is virtually no practitioner based research on technology company best practices. There is virtually no research on investing practices. Governments across the country are investing over $5 billion annually to improve the performance of the technology sector and the application of technology but there is very little research to determine how we can improve these practices. If we’re spending so much money to get better, wouldn’t it make a little sense to spend some money to figure out how best to do that?

Shouldn’t we be trying to get good at getting better?