Participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in attending this workshop, please complete the survey below or reach out to us at info@ras-nsa.ca.
Workshop concept and presentation
Why Marketing Must Help Define Dual-Use Technologies
Intersection of Political Economy of Marketing, Exogenous Shocks, and Dual-use Technologies
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Organized by: Drs. S. Vaid, J. Massie, and A. Kimball
Our goal for the day is to conceptualize and define the construct of dual-use technologies through the scientific rigor of academic marketing. A useful working definition is straightforward: dual-use technologies are technologies that move from defence to commercial settings and vice versa. While this definition has generally found acceptance, it has remained deliberately broad and useless for marketing science.
The workshop will bring together approximately 20 serving military personnel, firm managers, Department of National Defence officials, and academics.
Participants will systematically and rigorously examine whether dual-use is :
(a) a technical property of a solution or invention, and/or
(b) an exchange across B2B/B2G markets, institutions, users, buyers, customers, and purposes.
The starting point for the workshop is that marketing and related exchanges are integral to dual-use technologies, not peripheral to them. Technologies move from defence labs to commercial settings, while businesses at the cutting edge of advances in AI, software, data systems, and digital platforms increasingly edge their way into defence circumstances. The commercialization pipeline requires firms to identify and engage with users, buyers, consumers, and customers while communicating value, encouraging adoption, and building legitimacy. If commercialization is the journey, marketing science is the explanation.
The need for a clearer construct is both scientific and practical. If academics cannot scientifically conceptualize and define dual-use technologies, how do we study them? How would funding agencies develop a rubric to distinguish a genuinely dual-use proposal from a typical commercial solution wearing a defence label? How should evaluators assess viability and commercialization pathways? How will we know whether defence investments offer public value by improving the performance of the firms they are intended to support?
The workshop will therefore pursue four connected objectives:
- Conceptualize the construct: Examine the defining characteristics of technologies that move from defence to commercial settings and vice versa.
- Clarify the unit of analysis: Consider whether the construct should describe a technology, a firm, a movement between markets, or some combination of technologies, firms, users, buyers, customers, capabilities, strategies, institutions, and purposes.
- Develop a working definition: Identify the boundaries that distinguish a genuinely dual-use technology from a typical commercial solution wearing a defence label.
- Prepare for measurement: Identify the elements required to measure the construct and eventually study firms across multiple periods, tracing how technologies and firms move between defence and commercial markets and how policy affects their innovation, revenues, exports, and survival.
The workshop is conceived as the beginning of a patient, systematic, rigorous, and scientific effort. Its immediate task is to conceptualize, define, and prepare to measure the construct of dual-use technologies. Its longer-term task is empirical: identifying firms, mapping their commercialization pathways, and quantifying downstream outcomes
Why the Scientific Rigor of Academic Marketing Must Help Define Dual-Use Technologies
Canada and Europe are investing heavily in technologies that move between defence and commercial markets. Now is the time for a clearer dual-use technology construct and a plan to follow firms over time.
Sash Vaid
If one looked closely, many technologies visible today in commercial contexts had either been born in, or evolved through, defence environments. These include technological solutions developed for sensing, imaging, cybersecurity, simulation, artificial intelligence, and geodata, among many others. Marketing facilitated that transfer since the commercialization pipeline requires firms to identify and engage with users, buyers, consumers, and customers, while communicating value, encouraging adoption, and building legitimacy. The transfer of technologies also happened the other way. Businesses at the cutting edge of advances in AI, software, data systems, and digital platforms have increasingly edged their way into defence settings.
In common parlance, we refer to these as dual-use technologies. A useful working definition is straightforward: technologies that move from defence to commercial settings and vice versa. This definition has generally found acceptance, but it remains deliberately broad. The wide angle of this definition sees dual use not just as a technical property of a solution or invention, but as a movement and exchange across B2B and B2G markets, institutions, users, and purposes. Marketing and related exchanges are therefore integral to the phenomenon, not peripheral to it. If commercialization is the journey, marketing science is the explanation.
Recently, discussions around dual-use technologies have begun to gain ground in Canada. Dual-use technologies have meandered from policy settings into public discourse. Accompanying that discussion is the humbling realization that Canada is confronting long-standing gaps in defence readiness even as it is looking to develop a new Defence Industrial Strategy. The numbers are nearly eye-popping; the scale is difficult to ignore. Over the next decade, over half a trillion dollars will be invested in Canadian security and related areas. Of this, $180 billion is earmarked for defence procurement and $290 billion is planned for defence-related infrastructure. It is estimated that $125 billion will flow towards downstream economic activity by 2035. The share of defence acquisitions awarded to Canadian firms is expected to rise to 70 per cent, while defence exports are expected to increase by 50 per cent. All this is predicted to create up to 125,000 jobs. One part of this strategy that merits mention is its repeated focus on defence and dual-use innovation.
The issue is not limited to Canada. Europe is equally focused on treating dual-use technologies as central to strategic autonomy. The Horizon Europe 2026-2027 work program places significant emphasis on strategic and dual-use technologies, space autonomy and commercial space capabilities, critical technologies and industrial ecosystems, research security and the export control of dual-use technologies, as well as AI, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, sensing, robotics, and quantum technologies. These are certainly engineering priorities, but they are also marketing science questions. A focus on market uptake, supply-chain resilience, business cases, and exploitation strategies is key to the commercialization of these ideas.
The construct of dual-use technology is not consistently conceptualized or clearly defined, and the scholarship on the subject is remarkably thin. The most directly relevant foundational papers are two articles published in Research Policy in the mid-1990s that defined and conceptualized dual-use technology. Yet neither Cowan and Foray (1995) nor Molas-Gallart (1997) operationalized dual-use technology as a measurable construct or subjected it to empirical construct validation. Over three decades, only a handful of papers referred to the idea in their abstracts. None of the articles I identified appeared in a marketing journal. There is no doubt that adjacent scholarship in engineering, security studies, technology governance, and related fields has sought to define dual-use technologies. As a result, an eclectic mix of definitions exists today, including those found in publications and frameworks from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Wassenaar Arrangement, MIT’s Dual-use Readiness Model, the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Business Development Bank of Canada, as well as in practitioner commentaries. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, these and many other definitions (a) have not been developed and empirically validated as measurable constructs, and (b) have not systematically grounded the construct in marketing theory or empirically validated its marketing dimensions—even though marketing is integral to realizing dual-use potential by commercializing technological capabilities across civilian and defence markets.
That gap matters. If marketing academics cannot define and scientifically conceptualize dual-use technologies, how do we even study them? How would funding agencies develop a rubric to distinguish a genuinely dual-use proposal from a typical commercial solution wearing a defence label? How do evaluators assess viability and commercialization pathways? And how will we know whether Canada’s defence investments offer public value by improving the performance of the firms they are intended to support?
My experience gives added weight to these observations. Earlier this year, I was invited to Queen’s Park through Science Meets Parliament Ontario 2026 to make this case on dual-use technologies. I was expecting brief, formal meetings; however, conversations with parliamentarians and legislative staff ran longer than scheduled. The definitional problem I discuss above seemed to resonate with our representatives. My argument to parliamentarians was straightforward: if we cannot scientifically define dual-use technologies, how will we allocate investments? The visit revealed another dimension of research impact beyond publications, which clearly remain the currency of academic life. I saw value in how marketing science scholarship can help parliamentarians frame questions that precede societal and market exchanges.
This gap is also visible at the firm level. The Regional Defence Investment Initiative states that southern Ontario has more than 900 defence-capable organizations. For starters, who are these firms? Which are defence firms, which are dual-use firms, and which become dual use only after a change in users, buyers, customers, capabilities, or strategy? A single count of 900 defence-capable organizations cannot answer those questions. Researchers must patiently, systematically, rigorously, and scientifically study these firms as a panel over multiple periods (preferably years), tracing how technologies and firms move between defence and commercial markets. Only then will researchers know how policy—that is, a defence industrial strategy—affects their innovation, revenues, exports, and survival.
This is the research agenda now taking shape in my lab. The Vaid Lab for Dual-Use Technologies aims to connect three areas that are too often separated: the political economy of marketing; dual-use industrial and cyber technologies; and exogenous shocks at the regulatory and firm levels. The immediate task is to conceptualize, define, and measure the construct of dual-use technologies. The next task is empirical: we must identify firms, map their commercialization pathways, and quantify downstream outcomes.
As Canada and Europe look to make generational investments in defence capability and economic resilience, it is time for some hard talk—tough, direct, and challenging. Before we judge whether these policies work, we need to know what, precisely, we are even talking about and what is being funded. Only then can we measure how value is exchanged between defence and commercial settings. For marketing science scholars, this is not an incidental concern. I see it as an invitation to study how technologies originate and find markets, how markets reshape technologies, and how taxpayer dollars generate—or fail to generate—commercial and societal value.
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Disclosure: I, Sash Vaid, am the author of this article and take full responsibility for its content. I used Microsoft 365 Copilot carefully and with judgment between June and September 2026 for editorial assistance and to convert my detailed notes, arguments, sequencing, and source directions into preliminary guides. I then wrote the article in my own words and voice and approved the final text.
Pre-Workshop Community Survey
Defining Dual-Use Technologies
The accompanying article offers the following working definition: Dual-use technologies are technologies that move from defence to commercial settings and vice versa. However, important questions remain about what should qualify as dual use, where the boundaries of the construct should be drawn, and how dual-use technologies should be evaluated. Your responses will help inform the workshop discussion. There are no right or wrong answers.
Disclosure: I, Sash Vaid, used Microsoft 365 Copilot carefully and with judgment between June and September 2026 for editorial assistance and to convert my detailed notes, arguments, sequencing, and source directions into preliminary survey guides. I then used Microsoft 365 Copilot to help design this survey around substantive questions raised by the accompanying article, which I authored, and during its review. I reviewed and approved the final survey text.
Participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in attending this workshop, please complete the survey or reach out to us at info@ras-nsa.ca.
