The National Research Council Canada has helped more than 50 companies through its incubator program over the last 13 years. The program, in part, includes finding a mentor within the research community to support each startup. “We focus on technology, rather than offering business support,” said Marie Lussier, Manager of Industry Partnership Facility with National Research Council Canada.
Earlier this week
I posted about a mini road show I was about to go on, with events in Toronto and Ottawa. Well, am back now, and I'd say it was pretty successful all around. This was the 2012 IT Buyers Forum, sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, with some help from the Export Development Corporation and Invest Ottawa.
Canada’s technology market is underachieving due to a lack of support by the private sector and a securities exchange structure that sets tech entrepreneurs up for failure, according to
Jos Schmitt.
We’ve heard it time and again: Ontario has world-class academic institutions, which are proficient at turning out entrepreneurs who generate innovative ideas. Upon graduation, however, they often face roadblocks.
Crossing the delta between a pilot-scale lab and the ramp up to demonstration scale is a significant challenge in innovation.
Who are we and where are we headed?" - in terms of the digital media economy in Canada - was the question that started the 49 Pixels project. The survey has taken a year and seeks to answer the following questions: the size and scope of the industry, the number of digital media service providers operating within Canada (number of employees, location, revenue, etc), and the size of the workforce (habits, salaries, and skills of producers of digital media content). Read the full report...
In a pair of editorials recently (
http://goo.gl/Tv2gE and
http://goo.gl/0qSGQ) I discussed the problems at RIM and criticized the company both for its actual performance and for the way it communicated (entirely failed to communicate) with customers during the recent data outage.
I just returned from a meet-and-greet arranged in Kitchener by Communitech to connect early stage technology companies to potential investors. Although tonights event felt a bit like an awkward high school dance, I think that the efforts being made by Communitech in K-W are exceptional.
There has been an abundance of gloom and doom expressed in the media since the “great recession of 2008”. The markets seem to have been irreversibly shaken and the image of the global economy irreparably tarnished. It is in these uncertain times that decision makers begin to make several grievous mistakes. In this post we will address the importance of not losing sight of what is important to business success, regardless of the state of the economy, particularly from an IT investment perspective.
Industry Minister Christian Paradis gave a
speech today [September 19, 2011] at the Wireless Canada Technology Showcase. The talk included references to forthcoming copyright reform, the reintroduction of privacy reforms (formerly Bill C-29), and plans to move forward with spectrum auctions.
The International Telecommunications Union yesterday released its
Measuring the Information Society 2011 report, which benchmarks information society developments worldwide. The centrepiece of the report is the ICT Development Index, which tracks 11 different indicators focused on access, use, and skills (the eleven indicators are: fixed telephone line subscriptions, mobile subscriptions, international Internet bandwidth, households with a computer, households with Internet access, percentage of individuals using the Internet, broadband subscriptions, mobile broadband subscriptions, adult literacy, secondary and tertiary enrolment).
The past year has not been kind to Research in Motion Ltd., Canada’s leading technology company. The Waterloo-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its share price nosedive in the wake of less than stellar launches of new products such as the Playbook, disappointing earnings guidance, and plans to cut its global workforce.
Dwayne Winseck examines the growth of the Canadian network media economy from 1984 to 2010.
The OECD has released its
latest round of data on broadband services in 33 of the world's most developed countries [update: While today's release [June 23, 2011] is new and incorporates this information into the OECD Communications Outlook 2011, a reader points out the broadband data was first released two months ago].
The CRTC's vertical integration hearing
opens today with fifty groups
scheduled to appear over the next week and a half. I've written a couple of articles about the issue over the past year. Last September, I
noted the Canadian consolidation felt like a last stab at a walled garden approach that has consistently failed and argued:
With the new Parliamentary session set to kick off today [June 2, 2011] with the election of a new speaker, new cabinet members are busy brushing up on the myriad of issues they will face in the coming months. The appointment to cabinet comes with a private mandate letter from the Prime Minister that sets out his expectations and policy goals.
Christian Paradis delivered his
first public speech yesterday [May 31, 2011] as Industry Minister at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
Silicon Valley like its metallic namesake is shiny and alluring to those in the tech and digital media sector. In comparisson, Ontario often seems dull and staid. Although Canada has had its share of tech and Net success stories over the years, the news and blogs are saturated with coverage of the happenings in the Valley. Often Canadian tech companies are only covered in mainstream media when they sell out or move down south.
