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Business in Vancouver June 30-July 6, 2009; issue 1027 Report ranks Vancouver high-tech middle of the road in North America But film and software publishing industries have moved the city well up Milken Institute’s rankings since 2003 Curt Cherewayko Vancouver has placed 36th in a report of high-tech clusters in North America, lagging behind Montreal and Toronto, but closely edging out Ottawa. While Vancouver’s tech scene remains in the middle of the pack, the ranking is a dramatic improvement from the 64th-place ranking the city held in the Milken Institute’s last survey of North American technology clusters in 2003. According to the North America’s High-Tech Economy: The Geography of Knowledge-Based Industry report, Vancouver is a laggard in some areas, such as the manufacturing of semiconductors and other electrical components, but is a leader in others, including the software publishing and motion picture and video industries. Pascal Spothelfer, president of the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA), wasn’t surprised that Vancouver was ranked behind Toronto (15th) and Montreal (19th). “We’re still catching up to the fact that for so long we have been a resource-based economy, and to a large extent we still are.” He noted that Toronto and Montreal have much larger population bases and higher concentrations of head offices. “If you look at the growth we have had over the past 10 years, [Vancouver’s technology cluster] has been pretty strong,” said Spothelfer. “It has outgrown the rest of the economy by a few percentage points every year.” In the report, the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica-based think tank, examined the locations and patterns of growth in 19 individual high-tech industry categories, including employment, wages and concentration of technology in the local economy. The Silicon Valley, Seattle and Cambridge metros in the United States remained North America’s strongest knowledge-based economies. Vancouver employed 69,500 high-tech workers in 2007 behind Montreal (128,200) and Toronto (157,400). It accounted for 0.54% of wages in the North American high-tech sector and 0.78% of its employment. Montreal and Toronto were the fastest-growing tech centres in the top 20 between 2003 and 2007. Vancouver’s tech cluster is much smaller than Spothelfer would like to see it, but he noted that it takes a concerted, proactive effort to develop into a leading technology centre. This goes doubly today, said Spothelfer, as more and more cities realize the benefits of building on their knowledge-based industries. At its annual award show, which this year was held on June 17, BCTIA named wireless developer Sierra Wireless (TSX:SW; Nasdaq:SWIR) as technology company of the year. Other winners that night included: •Jonathan Rhone, president and CEO of Nexterra Energy Corp., who was named person of the year; •Sophos Inc., which was rewarded for excellence in product innovation; and •Elastic Path Software Inc., which was named emerging company of the year. Among Vancouver’s brightest spots, according to the Milken report, is its cluster of software publishers. Vancouver showed the greatest rise among the top 10 software-publishing clusters, climbing from 14th place in 2003 to ninth place in 2007. Milken attributed this rise largely to Vancouver’s video game industry and to development studios owned and operated by larger publishers like Electronic Arts. Spothelfer noted that software publishing lends itself to entrepreneurial environments because its barriers to entry are relatively small. He added that many software publishers in the city have excelled by servicing niches in sectors such as mining and forestry. • cgc@biv.com |
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