Thought Leaders

Quebec is a fertile ground for deep tech entrepreneurship, which relies on knowledge and cutting-edge research, opening up new perspectives in several high-tech fields. These companies push the boundaries of innovation and create innovative solutions that have a profound impact on our society. Quebec’s universities and public research centers play...

Jump Into New Jersey’s Innovation EcosystemAcross the globe, countries are seeking to harness the power of the invention to innovation pipeline to drive economic growth and address a wide range of societal issues including national security, health, inequity, education, and environmental challenges. It is estimated that 85% of a country’s...

Most entrepreneurs we work with, including ourselves, have been building businesses for over a decade. Most are not working on the first business they started either. Even if the concept you’re currently working on doesn’t shake out, the lessons, the networks, and how you respond to success and failure will...

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE“It’s cancer.” That’s not a sentence you want to hear your doctor say when you’re only 23 years old. Seven days earlier having graduated with my degree in opera, and now I was sitting in a hospital. They say thyroid cancer is the “best” kind...

Before I became the CEO of the Accelerator Centre, before I joined the board of the Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN), I was a founder. I co-founded Alert Labs with a simple but ambitious goal: to help buildings save water, operate more efficiently, and reduce risk through smart technology. Like...

If there’s one leadership skill that’s quietly shaped every success I’ve had, it’s flexibility. Not intelligence. Not experience. The ability to adapt and lead change is what matters most. That mindset has carried me from blue-collar beginnings in Michigan to manufacturing plants in Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, and now Tennessee. I’m...

I obviously knew of the proximity to the Rocky Mountains, but I didn’t know about all the wonders such as the Drumheller Valley, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park and Jasper National Park. I also didn’t know that Calgary is the third most diverse major city in Canada. Or that in 2022 it...

Patent or publish, protect or disseminate… As a scientist in academia, these are questions I am faced with increasing frequency. We often assume that fundamental science and innovation proceed at different speeds, or even in entirely separate environments. After all, is there really space for innovation within the context of...

English: Greater Montréal, Québec’s economic heartland, definitely beats in tune with digital innovation. We have one of the richest tech ecosystems in terms of knowledge, know-how, and creativity. A source of great pride for Québec and Canada. We stand out on the global scene with our world-class academic institutions and...

An innovative culture is shifting but it must define areas of curiosity that mixes with experience and then you could open your eyes and find the intangible assets that all individuals and organizations have. When we established Virtual Management back in 1995 the knowledge of “virtual” was very limited and...

ALE BROWN MBA, CIPP, CIPT, CIPM, PMP PRESIDENT AND PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT Innovation to me means a lot of different things. It means courage, it means ability to adapt, it means embracing the unknown. It means a brighter and more promising future if you can see where theopportunities lie and just...

Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege of watching extraordinary ideas become reality. I’ve seen entrepreneurs build companies from sketches on whiteboards, researchers solve problems once thought impossible, and technologies transform industries in ways few could have imagined. Those experiences have shaped how I think about innovation. Innovation Begins with...

When talking with Kushal Shah, the Managing Director of e& capital, I am struck by the depth and range of his experiences. Kushal, a man whose life journey began in the serenity of Nairobi, Kenya, opened our conversation with a profound reflection on his roots. “I was born and brought...

Demystifying innovation is trying to break it into what we see are the building blocks of getting from creating ideas to realising the value of innovation. There are three parts to it, and these are not necessarily sequential – ideating and shaping, designing and killing ideas and lastly scaling. Many...

COMMUNICATING WITH TECHIES What to Look for in a Digital Agency Whether you want to augment an in-house team or bring an entirely new product to life, odds are, you’re going to entertain the idea of hiring an agency. By an “agency”, I mean everything from advertising companies offering digital...

When people ask me why I do what I do, my answer is simple: I build solutions that help our clients and partners win, protect, and increase security. My journey as an entrepreneur has always been shaped by real-world conflicts and the urgent need to innovate faster than the threats...

Todd Sanders President & CEO – Greater Phoenix Chamber Every morning, as the sun rises above the mountains and the early morning city lights glitter with flashes of orange, we all wake up with a new chance—a fresh opportunity. Each sunrise in Phoenix, Arizona is the start of a new...

When I arrived at the Pope Francis Center in downtown Detroit in 2015, our focus was on providing food and a space for respite for our friends experiencing homelessness. I quickly realized that while providing immediate relief is critical to staying alive, we were not doing enough to make a...

It was in 1991 that I joined École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) as a professor. Over the course of my teaching career, through the development of my research career and now, as CEO of ÉTS since 2019, I have been able to truly appreciate the extent to which this institution...

Creativity, in the context of advertising and marketing, is and always has been a driving force for me. Being exposed to the power that brands can have on humanity and their collective behaviour has reinforced my ambition to always be a force-for-good, and leave a positive dent on the planet....

Bristol has a reputation for the high-tech industry, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. However, the city is marked as the 7th worst of 348 districts in England & Wales for black and ethnic minority communities to live and thrive. The issue has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. So what...

The healthcare sector is renowned for breathtaking innovations and technological advancement. We receive news of breakthroughs thought impossible a handful of years ago every day. The reality on the ground is slightly different. Roughly 10,000 new patients age into Medicare each day, drastically outnumbering the staff capable of serving their...

For me, as an immigrant in 2002, South Florida was the natural connection point, or gateway, between North and South America. The Research Park at Florida Atlantic is at the center of South Florida’s 6.5 million people. For longer than I have called South Florida home, this has been a...

BRUCE CASWELL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, MAXIMUS That belief has been a common thread throughout my career. I feel it more now than ever because the gap between what’s possible and what is often delivered is still too wide. Today’s expectations are shaped by the commercial world – instant,...