Canadian Innovation

In an interview with Ulrike BahrGedalia, Senior Director of Digital Economy, Technology, and Innovation at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Alex Webb, CEO at F12.net, discusses how Canada’s fear of failure and risk averseness are becoming one of its biggest risks and how a more proactive and bolder approach to digital transformation will benefit Canadian businesses and the economy in the long run.

Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia: Let’s start with the basics. What’s the difference between digitalization and digital transformation?

Alex Webb: It’s easy to confuse them because they’re related. Yet, digitizing everything in a business doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve transformed it. Instead, we must take the core customer experience and utilize technology to realize a competitive advantage. It means your business is materially altered and not merely accelerated.

Bahr-Gedalia: How would you describe the current state of Canada’s leadership around digital adoption?

Webb: I strongly feel that we’re way behind the mark. By and large, I’ve seen Canadian firms underinvest in marketing and technology — for instance, our neighbours to the south have doubled their investments in technology and marketing.1

Bahr-Gedalia: What do you see holding Canadian businesses back from adopting digital innovation?

Webb: There's strong adversity against taking risks. The competitive nature of the U.S. is such that they must gamble a little bit. Our friends in many other countries are afraid of not making a competitive investment, whereas in Canada, we’re afraid to make a mistake. That’s costing us.

Bahr-Gedalia: How can Canadian leaders get started on greater digital adoption or accelerate and expand their current efforts?

Webb: We don’t have to be pioneers. But we must look, observe, and learn. My best ideas come from phoning competitors thousands of miles away. They’re more than happy to share their experiences. So, reach out and make those connections.

Be bold. When you see a change you should make, commit and implement it. Once that’s done, you'll wonder why you didn’t do it earlier. It’s a doable cultural shift.

The amount of digital transformation that happened because of COVID-19 shows that we’re capable of it. I’d love to see us be more proactive in adopting digital transformation.

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Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s

Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia Senior Director of Digital Economy, Technology, & Innovation, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Alex Webb CEO, F12.net

Connect with the City of Vaughan’s Economic Development department at vaughanbusiness.ca to explore economic opportunities in the City of Vaughan.

This article was sponsored by the City of Vaughan

The Next Generation of Health Innovation Emerges in the City of Vaughan

The City of Vaughan has made great strides to develop its medical and life sciences industry and to become a centre of excellence in health care and health innovation. The rapid densification of the city, transformation into an urban community, and expansion of the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) makes Vaughan a prime destination for residential, commercial, and industrial investments. At the same time, the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital and plans for the Vaughan Healthcare Centre Precinct (VHCP) have solidified the city’s reputation as a leading centre for health innovation.

A leader in health technologies

One of these health care-focused investments is a transformative project known as the VHCP. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the

City of Vaughan is leading a collaboration to transform an 82-acre parcel of land at Jane Street and Major Mackenzie Drive into a health innovation district. Together with partners Mackenzie Health, York University, and ventureLAB, the city is developing the site into a world-class destination for health care excellence. Each member organization’s expertise and physical co-location at the site will provide opportunities to leverage cross-disciplinary knowledge and produce the next generation of health care delivery, health talent, and health technologies.

As a leading medical innovation hub, the VHCP will generate new approaches to acute, integrated, and community care. It will be a destination of choice for research, education, innovation, commercialization, and services in health care and health technologies, focused on enhancing the quality

and efficiency of care by enabling a unique “care without walls” approach.

Another transformative project is the expansion of the ventureLAB MedTech Hardware Catalyst Initiative (HCI), a first-ofits-kind initiative in Canada. New funding will expand the HCI’s capacity and build a new MedTech-specific lab in Vaughan, complete with specialized equipment to facilitate the growth of Ontario-based MedTech companies.

A partnership-driven city “Vaughan is a destination of choice for the trailblazers shaping the frontier of health and technological innovation,” says the Honourable Maurizio Bevilacqua, Mayor of the City of Vaughan. “The growth of the VHCP and ventureLAB MedTech HCI, two of our most innovative city-building projects, has solidified Vaughan’s position as a global leader in health technology and life sciences. With significant investments like the relocation of Toronto Research Chemicals to Vaughan, we’re rapidly transforming into a knowledge economy and reaffirming our status as a world-class city.”

“ventureLAB is a proud founding partner of the VHCP and home to the HCI, Canada’s only lab and incubator for hardware and semiconductor founders,” says Melissa Chee, President and CEO of ventureLAB. “Leveraging ventureLAB’s deep commercialization expertise and the success of the HCI, we’re excited to work with our partners and our community of scale-ready tech founders to build a future world-class health innovation cluster in Vaughan.”

Vaughan’s partnership-driven approach to city-building is driving economic opportunity for businesses and talent while improving residents’ quality of life. The city has a number of significant city-building initiatives underway besides its innovative projects in health, including the development of its downtown VMC, major transportation networks, parks, and more.

As one of Canada’s fastest-growing communities, the City of Vaughan is a highly liveable city that has not only become a destination of choice for research, education, innovation, and commercialization in health and health technology, but also an amazing place to live and grow for its 300,000-plus residents.

How University of Saskatchewan Is Leading in Innovation in Canada

The University of Saskatchewan places innovation and research and development at its core.

Undoubtedly, both companies and countries recognize that innovation and research and development (R&D) are measurable pillars of growth. As a result, many nations have placed innovation at the heart of their growth strategies to achieve greater progress.

According to Statistics Canada, Canada’s gross domestic expenditures on R&D totalled $37.5 billion in 2018. This was the highest level on record. Over half of the gain was due to increased spending on R&D performed by the higher education sector.

The University of Saskatchewan is one such university that places innovation and R&D at its core. Peter Stoicheff, President of the University of Saskatchewan, is helping the institution solidify itself as a national leader in innovation.

Has innovation always been a priority at the University of Saskatchewan? Innovation is woven throughout the university’s strategic plan. We commit to developing the knowledge and skills to thrive, moving discoveries into the world, and being a go-to

Janice Tober

resource and partner for the people of Saskatchewan and beyond. This university’s expertise contributes to innovation and discovery, which I want to ensure continues.

What sets Saskatchewan and the university apart as drivers of innovation?

Surprising to some, Saskatoon is the second fastest-growing IT hub in the country, dubbed “Silicon Prairie.” Four Saskatchewan companies are included in The Globe and Mail’s list of the fastest-growing companies in Canada and are led by, and have many employees from, graduates of the university. We're also physically connected to Innovation Place, a research park that has helped us establish an innovation corridor between our campuses. And our science infrastructure at the university is second to none and includes the nation’s only synchrotron.

Our Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) lab, for instance, has been at the forefront of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, being the first to isolate the virus in the country and to develop a vaccine, which is currently in human clinical trials.

I'd also like to add that we value the creativity and collaboration from innovation in the arts, social sciences, and STEM fields.

How do you define innovation?

Innovation is a term that means different things to different people. The University of Saskatchewan includes an interdisciplinary approach that can be applied, resulting in a direct and tangible impact on the betterment of the world. And this can only be achieved by creating an environment that includes cultural diversity, something we value as the key to getting to where we need to go.

What’s next on the horizon for the university?

We just announced a new startup incubator, Opus, which is a pre-accelerator program designed to help mobilize innovations developed on campus. We provide access to programs, infrastructure, and a network of mentors and advisors. It was created to foster entrepreneurial thinking and culture and to get ideas off the ground. It’s only through actualizing ideas that innovation can prove its worth for the betterment of society.

Peter Stoicheff President, University of Saskatchewan

To learn more about research and innovation at the University of Saskatchewan, visit research. usask.ca

This article was sponsored by the University of Saskatchewan

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN

The City of Vaughan has become a veritable leader in the health technology and life sciences sectors.

Tania Amardeil

Maurizio Bevilacqua Mayor, City of Vaughan

Melissa Chee President & CEO, ventureLAB

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF VAUGHAN

Meeting the Exponential Growth in Demand for Digital Talent

Anne Papmehl

Canada’s economic future depends on having a robust supply of digitally-trained workers in areas like cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, and robotics. “The pandemic revealed the need for digital services and technologies to be fully evolving, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” says Dr. Steven Liss, Vice-President of Research and Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). “As we saw, big companies that were well-positioned digitally made a much smoother transition, as did the SMEs that had already adopted digital tools.”

In this current high-demand and low-supply market, organizations like Magnet are working to identify and fill the most urgent digital skills gaps, both now and in the years ahead. Founded at TMU (formerly Ryerson University), Magnet is a not-for-profit social innovation platform that partners with education, government, technology, and community services to connect employers with job seekers, as well as to provide training and career development services. “With SMEs being a significant feature of our economy,

a digitally-skilled workforce will be critical to help these companies move forward, and Magnet provides the technologies and tools to make those connections,” says Dr. Liss.

To identify current and future skills needs, Magnet constantly scrutinizes and analyzes job postings, trends, and research across Canada. “Having a responsive system that’s based on data and what’s happening on the ground helps us better predict what and where the trends are and informs evidence-based policy on career pathing,” says Mark Patterson, Executive Director of Magnet. Multiple stakeholder collaboration and consultation are key components of this system. “We work with schools, post-secondary educational institutions, community-based organizations, unions, and training programs across the country, along with groups like the Labour Market Information Council and TMU’s Future Skills Centre, to ensure we’re meeting the needs of businesses and job seekers,” says Patterson.

New skills, as well as new mindset, will be necessary As trends shift and change, so will education and the training of the labour force.

“Over the next five to ten years, there’s also going to be a big shift to more on-the-job and experiential learning, along with a proliferation of short-term micro-credentials to help people upskill quickly on a specific skill or tool that’s used in the workplace,” says Patterson.

On top of that, critical thinking ability, agility, and a mindset that’s open to constant change will be fundamental. “Adopting a lifelong learning mindset and developing that in our education system will be more important than telling people this is the one skill they should have,” says Patterson.

Ensuring inclusive growth in the digital economy

Apart from changes to education and training, removing barriers to full labour market participation will be necessary. “Internet access for people in rural, remote, and many Indigenous communities, for example, is still a challenge that prevents them from fully participating in the digital economy,” says Patterson. To ensure inclusive growth in the digital economy, Magnet collaborates with other TMU centres, such as the Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst, which works with youth facing barriers to employment. “We’re working on their skills for entry-level cybersecurity roles to accelerate their path to opportunity,” says Patterson. Another collaboration partner is TMU’s Future Skills Centre, which dedicates over half of its investments toward helping address barriers for underrepresented and underserved communities in the labour market.

How Durham Region’s Innovation Community Is Closing the Commercialization Gap

Abigail Cukier

Durham Region is leading the way in innovation by creating an ecosystem that enables business startups and founders to scale and grow their companies, driving growth and productivity and developing a workforce for the technology sector.

Invest Durham, the regional economic development division, is facilitating a community approach through efforts like its recent participation at the global tech event Collision Conference. Working together with 13 of its regional partners, Invest Durham highlighted how the region provides the ecosystem and opportunities that help companies overcome a common challenge — the commercialization gap. While Canada excels at generating ground-breaking research and ideas, there’s a gap in commercializing those ideas and taking them to market.

While incubators, accelerators, hubs, and co-working spaces throughout the country provide support to entrepreneurs, but a focus on the idea-creation-to-intellectual-property stage results in few startups taking that next step to successful commercialization (estimated at less than three percent).

Entrepreneurs gain continued support that drives future success

To bolster startup success rates and create sustainable businesses, Ontario Tech University’s Brilliant Catalyst incubator in Oshawa and the 1855 Technology Accelerator located in Whitby announced at the Collision Conference their partnership to deliver end-to-end advisory services to local and international entrepreneurs across all startup stages — from ideation through commercialization. With personalized and detailed handoffs between incubator and accelerator, entrepreneurs will gain continued support that drives future success.

The 1855 Technology Accelerator is a business accelerator focused on helping tech startups scale revenue and operations quickly, including expediting sales and marketing, revenue growth, executive mentorship, research and development, IP/trademark protection, investor readiness, and talent optimization.

Brilliant Catalyst is the university-based incubator and experiential learning hub at Ontario Tech University. It serves students and is a designated entity under the Start-Up Visa Program, which allows it to support entrepreneurs from around the world. It designs and delivers learning opportunities and programs to innovators to help propel the next generation of innovation changemakers and put more Canadian ventures on the map.

Partnership focused on providing a founder-first vision

“Brilliant Catalyst at Ontario Tech has established an amazing entrepreneurship program, which helps not just students, but faculty, international entrepreneurs, and private industries to commercialize and grow their businesses,” says Dennis Croft, CEO of 1855 Technology Accelerator. “Brilliant Catalyst provides a bestin-class experience from ideation through first customer sale, allowing for a seamless handoff to 1855 Accelerator’s value proposition.”

Dr. Osman Hamid, Director of Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Brilliant Catalyst, Ontario Tech University, calls 1855 “an amazing partner.” “The focus that 1855 has on scaling companies complements our focus on helping founders build their ventures from ideation to their first sale. This partnership will help solidify our relationship and give founders the leverage to benefit from two organizations with a founder-first vision and goal,” he says.

The partners already have a history of

enabling startups to succeed. For example, IFTech sells the world’s first commerciallyavailable multisensory, multidirectional, force-feedback, immersive, wearable technology for use cases, including training, gaming, movies, and virtual reality.

Trusted support and advice make all the difference

IFTech faced disconnects in the entrepreneur support system early on despite its success. For example, from 2016 to 2020, its founders didn't have access to startup advisory for marketing, sales, supply chain, operations, or private equity investment raising, which led to a significant delay in commercializing and scaling. But through working closely with Ontario Tech University and 1855 Technology Accelerator to scale, grow, and enhance its technology and commercialization strategies, the company is reaching its goals.

“Without Ontario Tech and the 1855 Accelerator, we wouldn't have accomplished our business goals,” says Brodie Stanfield, Founder and Co-CEO of IFTech. “We’ve leveraged a wide range of support, including several academic organizations, federal, provincial, and municipal governments, and angel investors. But it all comes down to having the right support and trusted advice to grow revenue and scale the operational capabilities of your company.”

“Successful entrepreneurship is done through partnership, through learning and failure, through trying new things, and by being bold with your ideas,” notes Simon Gill, Director of Economic Development and Tourism for Durham Region. “The partnership of 1855 and Ontario Tech University will bolster success rates, create new businesses, and forge a new path for success for the incredible talent learning at Ontario Tech University.”

Learn more about TMU at torontomu.ca

Learn more about how Magnet is preparing to respond to the labour

To ensure Canadian businesses have sufficient digital talent to meet rising demand, Magnet is working to fill current and future skills gaps.

Dr. Steven Liss Vice-President, Research & Innovation, Toronto Metropolitan University

Mark Patterson Executive Director, Magnet

challenges of today and tomorrow by visiting magnet.today

This article was sponsored by Toronto Metropolitan University

Inclusive Innovation in an Evolving City: Edmonton as Idea Powerhouse

Innovate Edmonton is positioning Edmonton as an inclusive global innovation capital. Born from a visionary city council in 2020, the publicly-funded organization responsible for municipal innovation, led by CEO Catherine Warren, is uniting and promoting homegrown innovation as a gateway to solving the world’s most pressing problems, and it's just getting started.

The City of Edmonton, long known as “the Gateway to the North,” is today also the Gateway to the Future. Historically, Edmontonians have found motivation and opportunity in challenges that others find daunting, hardened perhaps by the long, bitter winters and driven to self-sufficiency by once-remote geography. Now, when global challenges like climate change, the digital divide, food security, public health, and social justice all require novel solutions, Edmonton is stepping up and saying: “Let’s get to work and deliver.”

The spirit of ingenuity can be felt in the air and seen in the streets. Edmonton was recently recognized as North America’s fastest-growing tech sector, and the downtown core is home to multinational headquarters and burgeoning startups in industries ranging from machine learning to public health, and from gaming to clean energy. At the corner of 101 Street and Jasper Avenue, Innovate Edmonton is opening a new 20,000-square-foot innovation centre, collaboration space, and gallery to encourage and accelerate the growth of even more homegrown enterprises. Edmonton’s world-class science attraction, Telus World of Science, is in the midst of a massive $40 million expansion, reflecting an insatiable hunger for learning, innovation, and exploration in the community at large.

Edmonton: A powerhouse of talent and diversification

Over the last three quarters of a century, Edmonton has grown into an economic powerhouse on the back of the energy and natural resource sector. More recently, the Albertan instinct for resilience and adaptability has driven the city to aggressively diversify and future-proof its economic capabilities. Over the last five years, the local tech skills labour force has grown by more than 50 percent, while the costs of setting up shop in Edmonton remain low. With fully modernized-and-then-some communica-

tions and transportation infrastructure, the once-remote city is now a major hub. All of this provides considerable motivation for young companies to actively choose Edmonton as a home base, amplifying the diverse community of startups and scaleups that already call Edmonton home.

The land we now know as Edmonton has been the home of Indigenous innovation since time immemorial, and today First Nations, Métis, and Inuit thought leaders are continuing to ideate and spark a resurgence of ancestral knowledge. Edmonton recognizes the absolute imperative of elevating these insights in pursuit of collaborative answers to broad-spectrum challenges like public health, Reconciliation, and the climate emergency.

for enterprises and entrepreneurs new to the local business and regulatory landscape.

As programmers and placemakers, Innovate Edmonton offers invaluable coaching, curriculum, and mentorship for innovators at every stage of growth, while also providing the space, conditions, and context needed for businesses to help themselves and others. The organization’s future home will contribute to downtown vibrancy, and a sense of innovation and pride for residents, while expanding opportunities for global events, collaborations, and community re-invention.

None of this would be possible without engagement from business, academia, and the community at large. And so, the fifth P, partnerships, is the one that both underpins and overarches the whole endeavour. With a network of contributors across government agencies, cultural and educational institutions, investors, and private companies of all sizes, Innovate Edmonton unites an innovation ecosystem where individual players are committed to ensuring the health and success of the broader enterprise.

Finding new ways to find new ways

Among the city’s vibrant community of startups, scaleups, prospective founders, and established multinationals, there’s a passion for disruption and an appreciation that the notion of innovation needs innovating.

Edmontonians have an insatiable appetite for new ways of thinking and new approaches to the application of old wisdom. This has led to remarkable interdisciplinary collaborations and a fertile environment for transformative business models pioneered by Albertans of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Every voice adds a new texture to the chorus of economic reinvention.

As the public face of the city’s economic innovation initiatives, Innovate Edmonton fosters, formalizes, and reinforces the values and qualities that make Alberta’s capital city a natural global trailblazer. Operating on five pillars, Innovate Edmonton builds on Edmonton’s potential through: positioning, programming, placemaking, pathfinding, and partnerships.

The work of positioning and pathfinding is, at its heart, one of storytelling and mapmaking. The organization spreads global awareness of Edmonton’s incredible narrative arc and the part that new innovators can play in writing the next page of the story, while also filling the vital role of navigator

True evolution has no endpoint This is a time of peak transformation for Edmonton, at the very moment when the world needs more Edmonton. The city’s bench strength in innovations that tackle the world’s thorniest problems, and Edmonton’s underpinnings in artificial intelligence, machine learning, life sciences, and sustainability, are just what international markets demand and exactly where enlightened investors want to deploy capital.

Edmonton is reaching out its hand to all with the ambition and courage to take it.

“Come aboard,” the community is saying. “Together, we will make an impact.”

Charting the path forward with Innovate Edmonton

Join the innovation at itstartswithone.ca/ community

This article was sponsored by Innovate Edmonton

Edmonton Is an Inclusive Global Innovation Capital. Meet Its Innovators

Think of any global challenge. Climate change. Public health. Food security. Social justice. Today, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll find a startup with a novel solution taking root in Edmonton’s fertile business soil. From sprouts to saplings to grand oaks, here are four new growth innovators spreading their branches for global reach.

D.F. McCourt

New businesses are thriving in Edmonton as a confluence of cultural and economic factors come together to make this cosmopolitan Canadian city a destination for innovation and growth. The breadth of ideas from which these businesses take root is astounding. Ambitious and purposeful founders are making Edmonton their headquarters as they disrupt and drive change in fields as diverse as artificial intelligence, public health, transport logistics, climate change, and social justice.

TRUE ANGLE Bringing Health from the Lab to the Individual

As a clinician researcher in rehabilitation science and also as a lifelong restaurant aficionado, Dr. Jana Rieger had a vision of bringing easy enjoyment of food to those with health issues that got in the way. And so, she created the Mobili-T®, a wearable piece of biofeedback technology to assist patients with swallowing disorders. But to get this into the hands of those who needed it, and to thus truly make a difference, Dr. Rieger realized that she needed to be an entrepreneur as well as a scientist.

"There’s this valley of death people that talk about between academia and commer-

cialization,” says Dr. Rieger. “We developed this beautiful thing in the lab that wouldn’t get into the hands of patients. Starting True Angle took a leap of faith.”

Today, True Angle, with the support of organizations like Innovate Edmonton, is growing and expanding its reach, helping patients across Canada and in 24 U.S. states. “We hear stories like a customer in New Jersey, who’s gone from taking five hours to drink a cup of coffee to 15 minutes, or somebody who couldn’t eat anything by mouth, and now went out and had a Sonic burger,” says Dr. Rieger. “Those are amazing stories that are so exciting for us.”

FLY AND FETCH Human Connections Bring the World Within Reach

The fundamental idea behind Fly and Fetch is that, with tens of millions of people flying on airlines every day to destinations all over the globe, there's no cause for international shipping of small packages to be expensive or delayed. By connecting shippers directly with airline passengers, it has created a distributed network of personal carriers that can shuttle packages from anywhere to anywhere quickly, easily, and affordably.

“Being immigrants, we already did this,” says CEO Shelvie Fernan of herself and co-founder Victoria Celi. “International

shipping is so expensive that we would ask someone to bring the packages for us rather than going with a traditional courier company. We were like, wait a second, that’s a startup idea.”

Taking that initial idea and developing it into a robust solution that addresses all the finer points and concerns has been a journey. But it’s one that Fernan and Celi have leaned into, viewing every obstacle that arises in the growth of Fly and Fetch as an opportunity to explore and innovate. “We’ve learned so much,” says Fernan. “With a startup, it’s essential to always be learning.”

Also at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Engineering Postdoctoral

Fellow Irina Garces has teamed up with PhD Candidate Eyup Demir to tackle the global microplastics crisis. Their company, Octo-M Technologies, is developing a three-part product capable of collecting water, analyzing it for microplastics, and separating those microplastics from organic material.

“Some people may not know that only a very tiny portion of plastics are recycled each year, and even when they are, they can only be recycled a finite number of times,” says Garces. “This means that plastic eventually ends up being waste that breaks down into tiny pieces called microplastics, and it’s everywhere! Researchers have found that humans consume the size of one credit card of plastic per week on average.”

Edmonton has long been a hub for pharmaceutical and life sciences research and development. In this difficult space, new innovators like Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API) are finding that there's still room to make waves.

“API was founded and launched five years ago as a spin-off from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to transform the ecosystem and fill the gaps in translational science and the commercialization of research,” says CEO Andrew MacIsaac. “The Edmonton region has all the right pieces in place to fill a huge manufacturing gap in Canada’s pharmaceutical supply chain.”

With initiatives that include a multi-year fellowship program at the University of Alberta, which serves as a talent incubator in pharmacometrics, API has built its entire modus operandi around continual collaboration. And Edmonton’s rich research and business community has proven exactly the right venue. “By pulling together teams from academia and industry, we bridge the skill gap and provide innovators with access to translational research capabilities, infrastructure, and expertise,” says MacIsaac.

“Collaborations like these promote a healthy ecosystem, address the need for drugs and therapeutic treatments faster, and drive innovation in ways that can lead to economic growth, job creation, and talent development.”

Octo-M is addressing a problem with broad global implications, but it's doing so from a very specific local base. And there's a reason that it has chosen Edmonton for its headquarters. “This city has a great support system at all levels,” says Garces. “It’s a great time to be in Alberta right now. Our province has really committed to innovation. With the new accelerators and everything, you can see that many opportunities are coming our way.”

Edmonton’s innovators are committed to impact. By tackling global challenges, they're also opening the doors to international market demand and enlightened investment. Edmonton is poised as an inclusive global innovation capital, and organizations like Innovate Edmonton and its partners are cultivating local leadership and positioning the city on the world stage.

Irina Garces Ph.D.,

Victoria Celi COO & Co-Founder, Fly and Fetch

Dr. Jana Rieger Co-Founder & CEO, True Angle

Andrew MacIsaac CEO, API Eyup

Shelvie

This article was sponsored by Innovate Edmonton

Join the Innovation at itstartswithone.ca/ community

Damen Executive Director, Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking

UCalgary Is Creating the Entrepreneurial University of the Future

Entrepreneurship programs at post-secondary institutions are often housed in one or more faculties. However, the University of Calgary (UCalgary) is approaching entrepreneurship differently. Its Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking is a unique central innovation hub that builds on entrepreneurial programs in faculties across campus and the university’s innovation organizations, creating a connected community that’s embedding entrepreneurial thinking in the university’s culture and cultivating the innovators of the future. By engaging students, researchers, faculty, and the larger community in entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in new and unique ways, the Hunter Hub and UCalgary are at the forefront of teaching and innovation discovery in entrepreneurship in Canada.

Embedding entrepreneurial thinking as a core skill

The Hunter Hub supports game-changing innovators across campus, helping to accelerate their ideas from conception to impact. Hunter Hub events and programs are available to all, fostering the development of an interdisciplinary community of innovators who think entrepreneurially no matter where their careers take them. The genesis for the Hunter Hub came from the UCalgary’s Haskayne School of Business’ unique idea to have all business students learn and experience entrepreneurial thinking as part of their degree.

Houston Peschl, a senior instructor at the Haskayne School of Business who created the Entrepreneurial Thinking course that impacts hundreds of business students every year, believes entrepreneurial thinking is essential in today’s world. “Whatever challenge you pick in society — for example, climate change, suicide prevention, or energy — you need this mindset,” he says. “Entrepreneurial thinking skills prepare students to problem-solve, tolerate ambiguity, fail forward, be empathetic, create with limited resources, respond to critical feedback, and understand how to work in and with teams. These are the hallmarks of great leaders.”

Building on the success of teaching entrepreneurial thinking to all business school students, Haskayne, in partnership with the Hunter Hub, recently launched an Embedded Certificate in Entrepreneurial Thinking available to undergraduate students in any faculty.

A top startup creator Of course, entrepreneurial thinking, alongside a strong research community and commercialization programs and support, also fosters literal entrepreneurs, and UCalgary placed first amongst research universities in Canada for startup creation in the most recent Association of University Technology Managers’ 2020 Canadian Licensing Activity Survey.

An essential pillar in UCalgary’s growing innovation ecosystem is the Creative Destruction Lab - Rockies (CDL-Rockies).

“A key strength of UCalgary’s innovation ecosystem is that there are supports and programs for startups at any stage,” says Heather Marshall, Head of Engagement at CDL-Rockies at UCalgary’s Haskayne School of Business. “The Hunter Hub works with students in terms of early-stage ideation and getting them thinking about entrepreneurship, and then we at CDL are later-stage, once there’s an idea and the inventors have decided to commercialize it.” To date, CDL-Rockies’ alumni ventures have created $1.7 billion in equity value creation.

Growing cutting-edge ventures UCalgary also supports innovators and startups with UCeed, a unique group of early-stage investment funds that complete the link between discovery, entrepreneurship, and impact. “In the first two years of UCeed, we’ve made around 20 investments with a total value of $2.5 million, and this has led to over 80 new high-tech jobs and seen a further $20 million being invested by other investors,” says John Wilson, President and CEO of Innovate Calgary, UCalgary’s innovation transfer and incubation hub. “UCeed’s objectives are cultural as much as financial. Having our own investment funds makes it easier for our students and professors to translate their research and for outside investors to make early-stage investments. All this supports the growth of UCalgary and the diversification of our city.”

Launching national talent programs Yet not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur to be a key participant in the innovation economy. The Hunter Hub is also focused on creating a talent bridge from post-secondaries to local innovation ecosystems hungry for top talent. To that end, the Hunter Hub launched Experience Ventures, an innovative work-integrated learning program that pairs students with startups and growing compan ies from coast to coast. “Experience Ventures is enabling over 6,000 college and univer sity students to make an impact alongside real-world innovators through entre preneurial thinking placements,” says Anica Vasic, Hunter Hub’s Director of Talent. “Students are paid to hone entrepreneurial thinking skills and work on projects with new companies and technologies that are shaping the future.

Experience Ventures offers a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between school and the new world of work, helping to ensure that early talent is building their future, today.”

The University of Calgary’s vision is to be Canada’s most entrepreneurial university, and it’s well on the way.

Keri Damen

To learn more about innovation at UCalgary, visit ucalgary.ca/ hunter-hub

This article was sponsored by the University of Calgary’s Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking

Keri

From Pulse Farms to Veggie Burgers: Shepherding the New Plant-Based Economy

We are what we eat, and what we eat is changing.

The rise of plantbased foods has been meteoric, and what was once a small and specialized segment of the food market in Canada is now closing in on $3 billion in annual value. For those working and investing in the plant-based food and ingredient sector, the future looks ripe for innovation and continued growth.

The fundamental drivers behind the plant-based dietary revolution are not new, though they’re becoming more pronounced. What is new, however, is that innovation is finally catching up with expectation.

“It's always been a race,” says Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada. “Consumer expectations are continuing to evolve, and that evolution is driven by a lot of things. It's driven by a desire for healthy, nutritious, and convenient food. It’s driven by consumer concern about the environment and animal welfare. It’s driven by price. And it’s driven by a desire for great taste. Fortunately, the science in this sector is moving at a phenomenal rate and we have so many food companies that are able and willing to innovate in order to keep up with those changing consumer expectations.”

Protein Industries Canada is an industry-led not-for-profit organization established in 2018 alongside the Government of Canada’s identification of plant protein as one of the nation’s five Innovation Superclusters. Over the last four years, Protein Industries Canada has worked to drive research, fund innovation, and foster growth in this thriving economic sector — and it’s making excellent progress.

The new crops that feed the future

The innovation that Protein Industries Canada is encouraging happens across a wide swath

of products and technologies at every point up and down the supply chain. Sometimes, they’re highly visible, as when new plant-based products like meat or dairy alternatives appear on grocery store shelves, offering affordable quality, nutrition, and flavour. Other innovations are less front and centre, though no less important, as when significant advances are made in the cultivation of the ingredients that make those foods possible.

the root-rotting disease commonly found in peas and lentils, providing farmers an alternative choice in terms of cultivation. It’s also a naturally nitrogen-fixing rotating crop, so it actually rejuvenates the soil.”

Though sweet lupin has been around forever, it hasn’t traditionally been grown in North America for commercial purposes. But, as lupin is a perfect ingredient for the new generation of plant-based foods, it’s time to start planting.

“Lupin is gluten-free, it’s non-GMO, and it has over 35 percent protein,” says Choi. “It’s got high emulsification and gelling property, so it binds together really well for pasta applications and baking applications. The interest from manufacturers, consumers, and farmers has been astronomical.”

Sowing innovation, reaping prosperity

Among the large-scale science and innovation projects in Protein Industry Canada’s roster, one of the more exciting collaborations is around the development of an entirely new protein-rich plant crop for the Canadian market: sweet lupin.

“Lupin is an ancient crop with very high protein, very low starch, and high dietary fibre,” explains Tristan Choi, CEO of Lupin Platform Inc. “It’s naturally resistant to

The goal with projects like these is to build a complete field-to-table supply chain, where Canadian agricultural potential is matched with Canadian manufacturing and Canadian distribution to create a food economy that can not only have a global impact on the international export marketplace but also contribute to Canadian food sovereignty right here in our own kitchens and restaurants. It’s about as ambitious as a target can get. But Greuel and Choi are both adamant that we can get there if we continue to invest in home-grown innovation and also, crucially, in training and reskilling a new cohort of specialized workers to fill the 17,000 additional jobs this sector is expected to create.

If we can do that, the economic outlook of Canada’s plant-based food sector is as bright as the Albertan sun beaming down on a golden field of sweet lupin.

“We can create jobs and we can create wealth,” says Greuel. “We truly believe that Canada's plant-based food sector will be a $25 billion industry by 2035.”

Plant-based foods aren’t just having “a moment” — they’re permanently reshaping the landscape of human sustainability. It’s a huge economic opportunity for Canadian farmers and innovators.

D.F. McCourt

Learn more about the innovative work occurring in Canada's plant-based food and ingredients sector by visiting proteinindustries canada.ca/ opportunity

This article was sponsored by Protein Industries Canada

Consumer expectations are continuing to evolve, and that evolution is driven by a lot of things. It's driven by a desire for healthy, nutritious, and convenient food. It’s driven by consumer concern about the environment and animal welfare. It’s driven by price. And it’s driven by a desire for great taste.

Bill Greuel CEO, Protein Industries Canada

Tristan Choi CEO, Lupin Platform Inc.

Talsma Product Marketing Manager, Climate FieldView

Data-Driven Agriculture: The Key to a Sustainable and Resilient Food Supply

D.F. McCourt

As the world’s population pushes eight billion and beyond, as global urbanization continues to expand unabated, and with the future of the climate increasingly uncertain, one big question faces us all: how are we going to fill all these bellies?

Marvin Talsma of Bayer CropScience and Product Marketing Manager for Climate FieldView is based in Southwestern Ontario and the reality of this quandary is apparent in his own backyard. “When I think about food security and the growing population, I see it around me every day,” he says. “The suburbs are growing, the big cities are growing, and they're spreading out. In Southwestern Ontario, we have probably some of the best Class 1 agricultural land in the country, but we only have a set amount and it's shrinking every year. It's not like we can build a factory and manufacture more land to grow food on.”

A fast-moving, high-tech industry Fortunately, while the urbanized world has expanded and progressed, the world of agriculture hasn’t been standing still. We’re just 70 years on from the beginning of the Green Revolution, which completely redefined farming through the advent of mechanization, modern fertilizer, high-yield crop varieties, and many other game-changing developments. And the innovation has never stopped.

“On the technology front, we now have machinery that gives us the ability to get across more acres,” says Talsma. “We have technology that brings improvement in placing seed in the ground, whether that's with a corn planter or soybean planter, where we're putting them at the right space and at the right depth for the moisture. We're able to monitor these factors and adjust for them. We have things like GPS technology that allow farmers to drive in a straight line and actually put more seeds on their fields in every acre.”

Fertilizer is a key tool that farmers have and when there are shortages or prices increase, digital tools like FieldView help them use it only where the crop needs it. These tools help to ensure that fertilizer is put in the right place, at the right time, at the proper rate.

From rain clouds to data clouds

Right at the leading edge of farming’s ongoing transformation sits a burgeoning revolution in the data sciences. Like every industry, agriculture is seeing its horizons greatly expanded by technologies such as cloud computing and machine learning, and one of the essential tools making that possible is Bayer CropScience’s digital farming arm Climate FieldView, a comprehensive analytics package that farmers can interface with directly through an ordinary tablet.

“When I think about some of the things we're doing with Climate FieldView, it’s incredible,” says Talsma. “Just as a start, we can use satellite imagery to create zones in a field where we need to apply a pesticide, whether it's for weed control or a fungicide to control disease in the crop. We can be precise and put these products only where they’re needed, not blanketed across every acre. The same goes for fertilizers.”

Sustainability is good business

In many ways, sustainability and resilience are two sides of the same coin. And the ability of farmers to work in a resilient and sustainable way improves dramatically when they can optimize their operations through data. The idea that data-driven farming can improve efficiency and drive economic return in the short term is obviously attractive to Canadian farmers, but they’re just as interested in the benefits these technologies bring on the very long view.

“Farmers want to be sustainable and they want to be good stewards of the land,” says Talsma. “They care about what’s good for the planet and they care about what’s good for the soil because they're the ones living on these farms.”

Many farmers hope for their children, grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren to still be living on those same farms in the decades and centuries to come. So it’s no surprise that they’re investing today in the technologies that will keep those farms healthy, productive, and able to fill the bellies of our grandchildren.

Technology takes up a great deal of space in the cultural conversation about innovation. Yet, notwithstanding incredible breakthroughs in the tech sector, at its core, innovation is the development of new ideas and thus covers a broader swath of human ingenuity than one might think.

“Innovation can be technology-inclusive, but it shouldn’t be technology-exclusive,” says Dr. Craig Kuziemsky, Associate Vice-President of Research at MacEwan University’s School of Business. “Peter Drucker, the famous management theorist, once said that innovation really needs to be looked at as a social or economic activity, not a technology-driven one.”

In other words, innovation is a spectrum that covers numerous disciplines and may or may not utilize technology. Among these disciplines are social and economic innovations spearheaded by Canadian universities, governments, communities, and individuals working collaboratively toward common goals.

Collaboration is key for innovation “People have been innovating for millennia, from the way they plant crops and raise animals to Copernicus, Newton, and the amazing things we’ve seen in technology,”

says Colin Christensen, Entrepreneur in Residence at the MacEwan University School of Business. “But take things like the Red Cross. Take how we look after and provide for people, such as trying to address key societal issues like homelessness and poverty, the environment, and equitable access to health services. These are complex problems that require social innovations to address them.”

Moving forward with any innovative idea, Dr. Kuziemsky and Christensen say, is largely a function of cooperation and teamwork between various stakeholders — namely universities and colleges, community partners, industry, and government. “At times, there’s a gap between the innovations we develop and our ability to get them meaningfully scaled up and integrated into society,” says Dr. Kuziemsky. “Innovation has to solve a problem that matters, but if it doesn’t integrate meaningfully into society to change lives, then it really doesn’t have a lot of use. That’s the biggest challenge.”

Universities develop talent and create knowledge via experiential learning, which happens in partnership with other stakeholders, but scaling up ideas requires an ecosystem — as does, Christensen says, effective design that makes a real impact on the world.

Designing intentionally for inclusive innovation

“You have to get out of the individual innovator’s head and talk to somebody. Talk to the person who has the problem and ask questions,” says Christensen. More broadly, he says, inclusivity in terms of team diversity is crucial in a design ecosystem. Diverse views are equally as important.

“When you have a bunch of like-minded thinkers with the same background in a room, you cannot possibly come up with something brand new,” he says. “You need to be able to look at the problem differently or be made aware of different elements you might not know because of cultural or other contextual factors.” This is where post-secondary institutions must play a key role as the hubs that bring together faculty members and students, community partners, industry, and government.

MacEwan’s Social Innovation Institute and MacEwan Venture Lab are two ways that MacEwan University serves as such a hub. kihêw waciston, MacEwan’s Indigenous centre, is an important source of engagement with Indigenous communities.

“We can’t be designing innovation for people. We have to design it with them,” says Dr. Kuziemsky.

University fosters inclusive innovation across the spectrum at macewan.ca/ about-macewan/ research

If we’re going to sustainably feed the Earth’s rapidly-growing population, modern farmers need every tool we can give them.

Marvin

Farmers want to be sustainable and they want to be good stewards of the land.

To learn more about sustainable farming solutions, visit climate fieldview.ca

This article was sponsored by Climate Fieldview

Dr. Craig Kuziemsky Associate Vice-President, Research, MacEwan University School of Business

Colin Christensen Entrepreneur in Residence, MacEwan University School of Business

Discover how MacEwan

This article was sponsored by MacEwan University

Veronica Stephenson

PHOTO COURTESY OF MACEWAN UNIVERSITY