Does a track record in Business matter?

Yesterday, I was at a rehearsal for a start-up company competition. My job was to look at the three FINALISTS in the competition - start-ups that had "made it" to this point and who would be presenting to an illustrious group of REAL judges in a few days so that a "winner" could be announced then. I was struck by a common feature in all of these companies. They each had a world-class academic with multiple decades of scientific experience as their founder and scientific leader AND they each had a young (in some cases not even yet GRADUATED) MBA student as their 'C' level business leader. Does that strike anyone else as odd?

There are probably several explanations for this phenomenon. Probably there is some sort of government subsidy for a new employee who is taking on their first job. It is possible that there is a genuinely noble thought of giving some young person a start in life. They may have had some relationship with the scientific leader (relative or former student for example) etc. But ALL of the reasons that I could think of should also have applied to the scientific side of the company. Yet NONE of them had made this choice on the science side. Why is it possible that the same academics who would never consider giving the scientific leadership of the company that they founded to some recent graduate (even from their own groups!!) would happily give the BUSINESS leadership to a similarly inexperienced stranger from another discipline?

As I ruminated on this strange phenomenon - one which I see repeated ALL across the country - I could come up with only one explanation; one that I am sincerely VERY loathe to accept (hence this blog to recruit other explanations from my readership). The only explanation I could entertain in the end was that scientific academics have extremely low respect for the value that an experienced business person brings to the eventual success of the startup. Is it any wonder then in Canada (where the OVERWHELMING support for start-ups and innovation is based on the assumption that academics somehow are best equipped to create this country's future Sustainable Global Companies (SGCs)) that we have no real world-class global companes to show for our DECADES of adherence to this approach?

Now, I have heard many times from serious nvestors that "It is far better to invest in mediocre technology and a stellar business team than the other way around". Is it possible that there is some truth to this saying? Could it be that as Canadians we are investing in the wrong BUSINESS end of the success story? Would it be worth even taking a larger FRACTION of what we invest today in technology and investing it in our Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) so that those with a proven BUSINESS track record can expand their operations, try something new, increase their capacity for risk, open new markets for themselves etc. etc. etc. and maybe someday even BECOME SGCs.

I know that there are several government programs that supposedly help the SMEs. But by and large the SMEs I meet all tell me that the only interaction they have with the government is at tax time. So I ask, would we all be better off if we started to help smaller but strategically already proven companies become bigger global players? Would this approach be better than our government continuing to squander all of our collective bets on the belief that academic technologies are the answer to our future?

As usual your comments are most welcome.