INNOVATION Manitoba

In early 2016, social media was undergoing a shift towards interactive visual content. While watching a YouTube video, Chris Schmidt caught a brief mention of a newly released Snapchat feature: custom location-based graphic overlays known as “geofilters.” Recognizing a massive shift in demand for digital design before it became a...

A commercial break at a Jets playoff game gave two University of Manitoba students an idea. Nearly a decade later, Taiv’s AI powers the screens in thousands of venues across North America. It still calls Winnipeg home. On a spring night in 2018, Noah Palansky was watching a Winnipeg Jets...

Innovation often comes from adding more. Sheepdog Brew Co. built its business by asking what could be stripped away instead. Founded in Manitoba by former Winnipeg Police Service officer and Army Reservist Shawn Black, Sheepdog Brew Co. set out to challenge a coffee industry increasingly driven by flavours, trends and...

Neovation is a Manitoba success story built on a simple belief: when organizations are powered by knowledge, people, and communities thrive. From its roots in Winnipeg’s early web and online marketing scene, Neovation has grown into a full-service learning and AI solutions company helping clients across Canada and the US...

In Winnipeg’s Point Douglas neighbourhood, a powerful and deeply community-rooted movement is redefining what innovation can look like. Winnipeg Boldness is an Indigenous-led social innovation lab that places community voices, lived experience, and Indigenous knowledge systems at the center of social change. Through collaboration, relationship-building, and systems thinking, the organization...

Deanna Hansen never set out to build a global wellness brand. In 1995, she was a newly Certified Athletic Therapist in Winnipeg, building a thriving deep-tissue practice working with clients from many walks of life. She developed a loyal client base, with many clients returning over the years. Yet Hansen’s...

OutreachGenius is an AI voice platform built to help franchise brands and home service businesses capture every sales opportunity – without increasing headcount. In the home services industry, missed calls, unworked leads, and slow follow-up create a silent but significant revenue leak. For franchisors and their operators, the cost is...

For many Manitobans, accessing a doctor isn’t always straightforward or easy. Long wait times, travel, and limited availability in rural and northern communities can make care feel out of reach. QDoc was built to change that, driven by a strong mission to ensure equal access to quality medical care for...

“You Can Only Harvest Once. Make It Count.” A Manitoba-Made Company with Global Reach BranValt, formerly Bushel Plus, is a Manitoba-rooted agricultural technology company helping farmers measure harvest performance, reduce grain loss, and get more grain in the bin. Founded in 2016 and now trusted in more than 45 countries,...

A new construction method has to earn its place on a Canadian Prairie jobsite. It must work for the crew, suit the conditions and meet the demands of the project. That practical test guides Gardon Construction’s approach to innovation. From its beginnings on the Prairies, Gardon has grown into a...

Bioscience Association Manitoba (BAM) serves as the central connector and catalyst for the province’s bioscience sector, bringing together companies, researchers, educators, students, and government partners to strengthen an industry that is steadily growing in both scale and impact. BAM was created with an important purpose: to support the development of...

Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a city defined by its trees. It has the largest urban elm canopy in North America. However, maintaining this canopy requires constant vigilance against the devastating impact of cankerworms and Dutch Elm Disease. Cankerworms feast on elm, ash, maple, linden, oak, fruit, and ornamental trees, often leaving...

PregEase Inc. is a Canadian MedTech company simplifying fertility and vaginal healthcare by focusing on practical, affordable, at-home devices instead of complex, high-cost interventions. Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the company has developed women’s health solutions that target two large, adjacent markets: the global fertility market, projected to surpass USD 93...

How Taumedis is turning decades of medical imaging experience into innovation, commercialization, and local economic impact. Winnipeg-based Taumedis was founded in 2023 by Canadian scientists and engineers with experience in medical and intraoperative imaging. Focused on developing technologies across the continuum of care—from early disease detection through image-guided intervention—the company’s...

Most new moms don’t struggle because help isn’t available; they struggle because it’s hard to ask for it. It might look like she has it all together, but beneath the surface, she’s navigating exhaustion, overstimulation, and an unspoken pressure to manage it all on her own. While support systems often...

“From global manufacturing expertise to Canadian innovation, our mission has always been to transform ideas into solutions that make a measurable difference.” Every successful company begins with an idea. The ones that leave a lasting impact begin with a purpose. For Innovative Global Ideas (IGI), that purpose has remained unchanged...

How a Winnipeg father turned a living-room accident into a computer vision training platform for young soccer players. The UPRO story begins the way family legends do: a soccer ball, a broken living-room TV, and a father deciding not to ban the beautiful game in his house. Dante, son of...

Pluto Ventures developed an AI tool that generates accurate 3D body measurements from 2D photos in just seconds. However, a significant challenge remained: the mismatch between body measurements and the retail industry’s “vanity sizing” and inaccurate size charts often resulted in a disappointing consumer experience. To address this issue, founder...

In an industry obsessed with firewalls, encryption algorithms, and artificial intelligence, POPP3R Cybersecurity has built its reputation on a simple but contrarian belief: the greatest opportunity to strengthen any organization’s security lies not in adding more technology, but in empowering the people who use it. Founded and led by Hernan...

Some companies are built around a product. MoveMobility was built around a purpose. Founded on the belief that business can be a genuine force for good, the Canadian manufacturer of wheelchair accessible vehicles and specialty mobility solutions has grown into a North American leader serving healthcare providers, First Nations communities,...

A WINNIPEG ENTREPRENEUR IS DEPLOYING A MOBILE BARGE-BASED REMEDIATION PLATFORM TO PULL PHOSPHORUS FROM EUTROPHIC LAKES — AND TURN POLLUTION INTO A PREMIUM AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT. Excess phosphorus in freshwater lakes is one of the most persistent and costly environmental challenges facing municipalities and water managers across Canada and around the...

Cameron Bergen did not learn this business in a classroom. He learned it on the floor, over more than 20 years running operations inside one of Canada’s largest food processors, a company acquired in 2018 for more than a billion dollars. He and his team, including Tracy Gromniski, helped generate...

While growing Geofilter Studio, an account representative from Google reached out to Chris Schmidt, informing him that his Google Ads had generated some of the highest-performing metrics they had ever seen. This opened the opportunity to see behind the scenes at Google, which sparked an immediate interest in big data....

In an industry defined by constant change, lasting forty years is not just a technology achievement. It is a trust achievement. People often ask me the secret to lasting four decades in one of the fastest-changing industries in the world. They expect the answer to be technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity,...