Members of B.C.’s tech sector often look to Waterloo, Ontario – home of the BlackBerry – for lessons in cultivating innovation in what is arguably Canada’s most concentrated technology cluster.
BCTIA members toured the region a few months back, and last week, it was Vancouver’s turn to play host.
Among the more prominent Waterloo entrepreneurs in town to attend the Grow technology conference was Tim Jackson, CEO of Waterloo’s Accelerator Centre and a partner with Tech Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm managing a $95-million fund.
When asked by BIV what makes Waterloo work, he said, among other things, it is the city’s ecosystem of mentorship. “We have a community that has a formal mentoring structure, but also an informal one,” he said. "Part of that is helping people minimize their mistakes because the reality is if you can reduce your mistakes you get to market quicker.”
It appears to him that the Ontario and B.C. governments have different philosophies about how to support technology development and innovation.
“The Ontario government has been very good about supporting research and innovation and commercialization and entrepreneurship,” he said.
“Here it seems like a bit more of a hands-off approach. I would hope that the B.C. government is a bit more aggressive in saying, ‘This is an investment in the future, and if we can put some money into helping entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activities it will pay off in the long run for the province.’”