Person: Charles Plant

The Short Report, February 19, 2020: A new chemistry cluster in Ontario; Boris Johnson’s brother joins ApplyBoard; selling our AI lunch

Bioindustrial Innovation Canada (BIC) received $15 million from FedDev Ontario “to promote new sustainable innovations and bring business support to Eastern Ontario in Canada.” Along with partners the St. Lawrence Corridor Economic Development Commission and St. Lawrence College, BIC will establish the Ontario Bioindustrial Innovation Network (OBIN), a hybrid chemistry cluster in Brockville, Ontario. The network aims to…

Canadian VC investment strategy hurting VCs and Canadian innovation: Report

Innovation in Canada will be seriously compromised unless domestic venture capitalists start throwing  big bucks into Canadian firms, suggests a new report. Big funding is one of the secrets of success of US firms, whether in Silicon Valley, or in other technology hubs in the rest of the US. In contrast, it is a challenge to get large funding tranches from Canadian VCs.

Report calls for data-driven approach to government investing to grow world-class Canadian firms

A report from the University of Toronto’s Impact Centre is calling for a data-driven approach to maximizing the government’s investments in Canadian firms and growing them to be world-class. The report — Government Venture Capital: Can the Public Sector Pick and Nurture World Class Companies? — says that the strategy for venture capital investments of the Canadian government is not to simply copy what venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are doing.

Barton panel pitches large growth funds, procurement to improve innovation ecosystem

The creation of two large funds aimed at scaling high-growth tech firms is among the recommendations contained in the second wave of reports from the Advisory Council on Economic Growth. The funds would target what the panel describes as bottlenecks in the innovation ecosystem – early- and expansion-stage companies as well as established small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with high impact potential.