Developed advanced portal for the delivery of community services. 

Population: 155,000

Website: www.greatersudbury.ca

Smart21 2006

At the turn of the new century, Stratford had a reputation for being quaint, cultured and out of the way, home to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and a 90-minute drive from Toronto, the business capital of eastern Canada.  The Festival is a home-grown success story in cultural tourism.  Founded in 1953, it became the largest employer in the city and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in local economic activity in ticket sales, restaurants, lodging and culture.    

This economic center complemented Stratford's industrial base, which supplied the North American automotive and aerospace sectors.  But in the last Nineties, the city's forward-looking leadership saw that the growth opportunities of the future would depend on information and communications technology.  

A Network for the Shakespeare Festival

Since then, a team led by Mayor Dan Mathieson has executed on an Intelligent Community strategy with great intensity. The city-owned utility has built out a 70-km open access fiber network with a WiFi overlay, and signed sales agreements with commercial carriers to deliver triple-play and mobile services. The network enabled the Festival to significantly expand its online marketing, and plays a key role in the city’s tourism strategy, which builds on the Festival’s reputation to attract “foodies,” cyclists and other target groups throughout the year.  At the same time, the city has used the network to slash its own telecom costs and power a smart meter program.

Digital Media Campus

After nearly a decade of planning and development, Stratford succeeded in establishing a satellite campus of the University of Waterloo that leverages the presence of an outstanding source of content: the Shakespeare Festival.    

The school launched with a Masters program in digital media, which is structured to end with internships that lead to employment.  It attracts students from arts, engineering and business, deliberately mixing them on interdisciplinary teams that forces them to understand other points of view and to collaborate on projects.  They have access to production facilities, digital editing suites and a large number of project rooms for highly experiential programs. 

The school followed with an undergraduate program, which admitted 93 students from 400 applications in its first year. The program mixes art, business and technology instruction, with the goal of taking students passionate about and art and teaching them business and technology, while exposing business students to the art and technology of digital media. Bundled into the program is project management instruction, so that students emerge with a professional certification in project management.

Creating a Home for Innovation

Having established an institution to produce digital media professionals, Stratford went on to create a home for innovators. Housed in an historic building downtown, the Stratford Accelerator opened its doors in 2012 with seven clients.  It offers housing and advisory services to early-stage tech companies from concept through commercialization.  It is an outgrowth of the Waterloo Accelerator Center, which has served 100 companies, of which 50 have graduated and half have stayed in the region, generating an estimated C$80m in revenue.  Supporting the companies are five in-house mentors and an entrepreneur-in-residence, who advise on finance, marketing, product development, manufacturing and other fields, as well as helping companies set milestones and execute against them. In addition to long-term relationships with start-ups, the accelerator offers a 3-month program called Pathfinder, that is designed for people with an idea they want to explore but who are not yet ready to devote full time to it.    

With each addition to Stratford’s ecosystem, the city’s attractiveness to innovators has increased.  The economic development team has successfully sold Stratford as a test bed for tech­nology projects – a city large enough to give new technolo­gies a meaningful test but easy to operate in due to its small size.  Toshiba, Cisco, BlackBerry, Inter-Op and Clemson University all have pilots running in Stratford. These interna­tional brand names lend validation to a strategy that has proven its value to the city.  

The near-death of the North American auto industry pushed unemployment in Stratford to 7.9% as the city lost 1,600 mostly low-skilled jobs in manufacturing. But the city also gained hundreds of new jobs requiring ICT skills, and has recently seen the revival of automotive create a labor shortage for the higher-skilled manufacturing jobs it retains. For an economy in transition, these trends are a serious validation that it is on the right track.

In the News
Read the latest updates about Stratford.

Want to know more about Stratford?
Stratford was featured in the Intelligent Community Forum books Brain Gain and Seizing Our Destiny.

Population: 30,886

Website: www.city.stratford.on.ca

Smart21 2011 | 2012 | 2013

Top7 2011 | 2012 | 2013

A city with two distinct economies, Sherbrooke is pursuing a development strategy to create a future of opportunity for all of its people and institutions. Like many successful cities in North America, the city experienced the worst of industrial decline in the Seventies through the Nineties. Despite the success of local businesses including Bombardier Recreational Products and Cascade, its economy was founded on low-cost, low-skilled labor that was ill-equipped to compete in the rising digital age. Local culture actually viewed entrepreneurs as people generating profits at the expense of workers, which would prove a further obstacle to economic growth.

Redefining the Soul of a City

At the same time, however, Sherbrooke boasts remarkable educational assets. Eight institutions educate 47,000 students and employ 11,000 workers, together constituting 34% of the population. Beginning in 2007, the city set out to exploit the potential of those assets to revitalize the local economy. Three hundred local stakeholders attended the Sherbrooke Summit, which began to redefine the city as a center for innovation. Three organizations were created: Commerce Sherbrooke for retail and service industries, Destination Sherbrooke for tourism and Sherbrooke Innopole to drive the development of clusters in advanced manufacturing, clean tech, life science, nanotech and ICT. A similar cross-sector collaboration, the Intelligent Community Roundtable, focused on improving city services and citizen engagement using ICT.

Together, the groups attacked the obstacles standing in the way of a better future for the city. At the high-tech end of the spectrum, the university developed a low-volume fabrication and packaging facility where semiconductor firms could prove new designs. The city launched start-up weekends and hackathons to give its young ICT talent a compelling reason to stay in Sherbrooke. Other programs trained businesses in using ICT to improve productivity, develop intellectual property strategies and step up their rate of innovation. The city discovered that a low percentage of its retail businesses were online and created training and education programs to boost Web engagement. Broadband access is not an obstacle – the city is well-served by private-sector carriers and saw a fiber-to-the-premise network begin deployment in 2014.

Results in Numbers

Collaboration and hard work on multiple fronts is producing results. The clean tech cluster grew 5% in the number of companies (to 100) and 10% in employment (to 3,000) in 2013. In the same year, the number of IT companies grew 8% to 96 and IT employment grew 6% to 1,600. More growth is in the pipeline as a new committee of community leader mulls a long-term strategy vision for a city on the move.

Population: 154,600

Website: www.ville.sherbrooke.qc.ca

Smart21 2015

Most of the world celebrated the start of the new century in 2000, but it was a time for mourning in Saint John.

A shipbuilding contract from the Canadian government came to an end and a major food manufacturer closed its plant in the same year. A long period of industrial decline had suddenly reached crisis point.

Despite being home to New Brunswick's telephone company, NBTel, and a branch of the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Saint John developed some of the poorest neighborhoods in the province. But while it had Canada's largest per capita decline in manufacturing from 1989 to 2003, it also saw 8% growth in services, double the Canadian average.

Battling Decline

To accelerate that positive trend, the city created a partnership with education, health care, provincial government, cultural institutions and business. It targeted ICT, life sciences, tourism, energy and advanced manufacturing for growth. Its timing was good: a local cable TV company (owned by a local entrepreneur) had just launched a competitive battle with NBTel that accelerated broadband deployment. In a strategy called True Growth, the city engaged with local employers and educators to identify and recruit skilled young people emerging from secondary school and university. It also recruited skilled immigrants and launched a mentorship program to connect immigrant entrepreneurs with business executives.

UNB did its part by partnering with a major employer to create an Executive MBA program for working executives. Meanwhile, a group of local entrepreneurs and angel investors formed PropellICT, a technology incubator with a difference. PropellICT focused on mentorship instead of office space, pairing entrepreneurs with senior business executives. In its first 3 years, PropellICT nurtured 21 start-ups, of which Radian6 became its most successful and best known, and went on to host the region's first angel investor conferences.

Meanwhile, local executives formed the Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative, which attacked the root causes of multi-generation poverty, from helping new mothers properly nurture their children to tutoring students and intervening with at-risk teens. As it entered the second decade of the new century, Saint John found itself with much to celebrate and much more to do.

Population: 68,000

Labor Force: 35,615

Website: www.saintjohn.ca

Smart21 2012

Top7 2012

The first decades of the 21st Century were good ones for Quebec City. Home to the Quebec provincial government as well as thriving technology, research and creative sectors, the city region achieved one of the highest GDP growth rates in Canada. Adding 76,000 new jobs, it also achieved one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. Today, the greater Quebec City region is the second-largest economic hub in the province, which rapidly recovered its momentum after the pandemic years to post a record real GDP of C$40 billion in 2022.

Economic success was the product of business-government-university collaboration that stretched back into the Nineties, beginning with a 1997 high-tech business summit that led to creation of a downtown tech district.  Progress received a push forward from an economic diversification strategy in 1998 and, in the 2000s, formation of a regional economic development agency and the amalgamation of 12 municipalities into an expanded city.

Cooperating for Success

That collaboration remains at the core of the region’s innovative economy. With the highest concentration of researchers in Canada, the region has nearly 300 laboratories, institutes and research centers that support business innovation. They boast expertise in IT, life sciences, optics and photonics, financial services, robotics and electronics.  Its technologists are driving advances in AI, deep learning and machine learning.

The city, its regional partners and Federal and provincial government funding contribute to high-tech entrepreneurship. Public-sector programs include provincial funding to support research and investment in innovation and city support for R&D, incubators and technology commercialization.  These have helped give rise to co-working space, incubators and accelerators devoted to bio-food, biotech, clean technology, social innovation, mobility and green technology, development. It is an impressive innovation ecosystem adding to the success of a city that serves a provincial capital, tourism magnet and provider of a renowned culture and quality of life.

In the News
Read the latest updates about Quebec City.

Want to know more about Quebec City?
Quebec City was featured in the Intelligent Community Forum book Seizing Our Destiny.

Population: 516,625

Website: www.ville.quebec.qc.ca

Smart21 2011 | 2012 | 2014

Top7 2012

Ottawa and Gatineau are cities on the opposite banks of the Ottawa River, with English-speaking Ottawa on the Ontario side and Gatineau in French-speaking Quebec Province on the other. Together, they form a metropolitan area of over 1 million people. In addition to language, one more thing distinguishes Ottawa from its sister city: since 1867, it has been the capital city of Canada.

As with other national capitals, the main business of Ottawa has long been government. Total Federal government expenditures have risen from C$16 billion (US$14bn) in 1970 to C$158 billion (US$134bn) in 2001, though a growing economy has actually reduced Federal spending as a percentage of GDP. While most of that spending is distributed across Canada's vast land mass, the nation's capital naturally benefits. Today, 13% of the current labor force of Ottawa-Gatineau consists of Federal government employees.

But, like the capital region of other nations, a strong government cluster has also attracted businesses that depend on government policies and spending decisions. Canada's telecommunications industry, once state-owned, is headquartered in the region, and defense, security, software and life sciences companies have found good reason to locate offices and research facilities there. Current employment in the region's more than 1,800 high-tech companies is equal to 11% of the total labor force, even after the technology bust at the turn of the last century.

Besides being prosperous and dynamic, Ottawa-Gatineau is a nice place to live. It enjoys a beautiful natural setting at the junction of three rivers and boasts the lowest cost of living of any major North American city. It was ranked sixth in the world for quality of life by the Swiss firm Corporate Resources Group, and a cross-Canada survey recognized the region as the best place to live and work in the nation.

Ottawa 20/20

Given this situation, the region's political leaders could be forgiven for resting smugly on their laurels. But they have done nothing of the kind. In 1999, the City of Ottawa formed The Ottawa Partnership (TOP), a group of public and private-sector leaders who advised government on growing and sustaining the local economy. In 2001, the area completed a political reorganization that united a regional government body and 11 urban and rural municipalities, including both Ottawa and Gatineau, into one local government structure. As part of that process, the new government published a plan called Ottawa 20/20. Its goal was to establish a unified planning, zoning and development scheme that would see the community through the next 20 years as its population increased by as much as 50%. Following a performance review of the first five years, the government recently published a detailed plan for 2006-2009 focusing on economic development, equality and privacy issues. With an overall goal of making Ottawa-Gatineau an "Innovation Capital," priorities include workforce skills development, improving knowledge sharing among businesses and citizens, linking innovation more effectively with the marketplace, strengthening entrepreneurship and upgrading marketing.

Behind these priorities are two primary challenges to the region's continued success. Research by The Impact Group in Toronto, in collaboration with H. Douglas Barber, co-founder and retired CEO of Genum Corporation, one of Canada's most successful high-tech firms, shows that Canada suffers from a "commercialization gap" compared with its neighbor nation to the south. Canada is strong in research and development and has some world-class technology companies like Nortel and Mitel, but Canadian business generally lags American business in bringing technology innovation to market. According to Dr. Barber, the key to the problem is the relative inability of government, compared with the private sector, to understand customer needs and innovate competitively to meet them. Statistics from Industry Canada reveal that, in 2000, 68% of funding for R&D came from government and related sources while industry contributed 32%. This is nearly the reverse of the US, where industry spent 67% of each R&D dollar and government spent only 33%. This relative lack of customer centricity and commercial competence tends to produce technology-based enterprises that cannot afford the marketing or R&D needed to succeed.

The other challenge has to do with the region's unique mix of urban and rural areas. In urban areas, 94% of households and 100% of business and government facilities had access to broadband in 2003, whereas availability in rural areas was about 2%. Lack of broadband infrastructure posed a severe constraint on further development outside the existing urban zones.

Changing the Culture

It may be ironic to ask government to tackle a commercialization gap caused by an excess of government over private investment. But Ottawa-Gatineau is pursuing several creative approaches to changing the culture of innovation in business. Leading by example, the city has put dozens of services, from pet registration to utility bill payment, online. A SmartCapital program completed in 2003 introduced a collaborative online catalog of the resources of major universities, institutes and libraries in the region. An Entrepreneurship Center offers assistance in starting and growing companies, and connects them with local venture capitalists. More than 2,400 clients started businesses in 2004 alone, and they created more than 7,800 new jobs and C$205 million (US$174m) in new investment. Annual venture capital investment in the region has grown at an average of 50% per year since 1995, peaking at C$1.35 billion (US$1.15bn) during the technology boom and settling to a more sustainable C$250 million (US$212m) since then. Government, business and academia now collaborate on workforce development programs ranging from math tutoring for talented low-income children to analyzing skills gaps and working to fill them.

Meanwhile, government spurred the formation of a volunteer group, the Ottawa Rural Communities network (ORCnet) to build awareness about broadband and aggregate demand in rural areas. Through workshops, communities meetings and work with the telecom sector, ORCnet helped service providers build a business case for extending broadband into low-density markets. To sweeten the pot, local government put C$1 million (US$850k) into a public-private partnership that is investing C$3 million (US$2.5m) in a network build-out scheduled for completion in autumn 2007, which is expected to largely close the urban-rural broadband gap.

Ottawa-Gattineau has targeted life sciences, which already employs 11,000 people, as well as wireless, VoIP and green technologies as its best hope of future growth as the Innovation Capital. With over 78,000 people employed in high-tech already, the region looks forward to having a technology labor force larger than its Federal labor force, and to seeing privately-funded innovation become the primary driver of its economy.

Population: 1,148,785

Labor Force: 686,000

Websites: ottawa.ca/en | www.gatineau.ca

Smart21 2006 | 2007

Top7 2007

Ottawa and Gatineau are cities on the opposite banks of the Ottawa River, with English-speaking Ottawa on the Ontario side and Gatineau in French-speaking Quebec Province on the other. Together, they form a metropolitan area of over 1 million people. In addition to language, one more thing distinguishes Ottawa from its sister city: since 1867, it has been the capital city of Canada.

As with other national capitals, the main business of Ottawa has long been government. Total Federal government expenditures have risen from C$16 billion (US$14bn) in 1970 to C$158 billion (US$134bn) in 2001, though a growing economy has actually reduced Federal spending as a percentage of GDP. While most of that spending is distributed across Canada's vast land mass, the nation's capital naturally benefits. Today, 13% of the current labor force of Ottawa-Gatineau consists of Federal government employees.

But, like the capital region of other nations, a strong government cluster has also attracted businesses that depend on government policies and spending decisions. Canada's telecommunications industry, once state-owned, is headquartered in the region, and defense, security, software and life sciences companies have found good reason to locate offices and research facilities there. Current employment in the region's more than 1,800 high-tech companies is equal to 11% of the total labor force, even after the technology bust at the turn of the last century.

Besides being prosperous and dynamic, Ottawa-Gatineau is a nice place to live. It enjoys a beautiful natural setting at the junction of three rivers and boasts the lowest cost of living of any major North American city. It was ranked sixth in the world for quality of life by the Swiss firm Corporate Resources Group, and a cross-Canada survey recognized the region as the best place to live and work in the nation.

Ottawa 20/20

Given this situation, the region's political leaders could be forgiven for resting smugly on their laurels. But they have done nothing of the kind. In 1999, the City of Ottawa formed The Ottawa Partnership (TOP), a group of public and private-sector leaders who advised government on growing and sustaining the local economy. In 2001, the area completed a political reorganization that united a regional government body and 11 urban and rural municipalities, including both Ottawa and Gatineau, into one local government structure. As part of that process, the new government published a plan called Ottawa 20/20. Its goal was to establish a unified planning, zoning and development scheme that would see the community through the next 20 years as its population increased by as much as 50%. Following a performance review of the first five years, the government recently published a detailed plan for 2006-2009 focusing on economic development, equality and privacy issues. With an overall goal of making Ottawa-Gatineau an "Innovation Capital," priorities include workforce skills development, improving knowledge sharing among businesses and citizens, linking innovation more effectively with the marketplace, strengthening entrepreneurship and upgrading marketing.

Behind these priorities are two primary challenges to the region's continued success. Research by The Impact Group in Toronto, in collaboration with H. Douglas Barber, co-founder and retired CEO of Genum Corporation, one of Canada's most successful high-tech firms, shows that Canada suffers from a "commercialization gap" compared with its neighbor nation to the south. Canada is strong in research and development and has some world-class technology companies like Nortel and Mitel, but Canadian business generally lags American business in bringing technology innovation to market. According to Dr. Barber, the key to the problem is the relative inability of government, compared with the private sector, to understand customer needs and innovate competitively to meet them. Statistics from Industry Canada reveal that, in 2000, 68% of funding for R&D came from government and related sources while industry contributed 32%. This is nearly the reverse of the US, where industry spent 67% of each R&D dollar and government spent only 33%. This relative lack of customer centricity and commercial competence tends to produce technology-based enterprises that cannot afford the marketing or R&D needed to succeed.

The other challenge has to do with the region's unique mix of urban and rural areas. In urban areas, 94% of households and 100% of business and government facilities had access to broadband in 2003, whereas availability in rural areas was about 2%. Lack of broadband infrastructure posed a severe constraint on further development outside the existing urban zones.

Changing the Culture

It may be ironic to ask government to tackle a commercialization gap caused by an excess of government over private investment. But Ottawa-Gatineau is pursuing several creative approaches to changing the culture of innovation in business. Leading by example, the city has put dozens of services, from pet registration to utility bill payment, online. A SmartCapital program completed in 2003 introduced a collaborative online catalog of the resources of major universities, institutes and libraries in the region. An Entrepreneurship Center offers assistance in starting and growing companies, and connects them with local venture capitalists. More than 2,400 clients started businesses in 2004 alone, and they created more than 7,800 new jobs and C$205 million (US$174m) in new investment. Annual venture capital investment in the region has grown at an average of 50% per year since 1995, peaking at C$1.35 billion (US$1.15bn) during the technology boom and settling to a more sustainable C$250 million (US$212m) since then. Government, business and academia now collaborate on workforce development programs ranging from math tutoring for talented low-income children to analyzing skills gaps and working to fill them.

Meanwhile, government spurred the formation of a volunteer group, the Ottawa Rural Communities network (ORCnet) to build awareness about broadband and aggregate demand in rural areas. Through workshops, communities meetings and work with the telecom sector, ORCnet helped service providers build a business case for extending broadband into low-density markets. To sweeten the pot, local government put C$1 million (US$850k) into a public-private partnership that is investing C$3 million (US$2.5m) in a network build-out scheduled for completion in autumn 2007, which is expected to largely close the urban-rural broadband gap.

Ottawa-Gattineau has targeted life sciences, which already employs 11,000 people, as well as wireless, VoIP and green technologies as its best hope of future growth as the Innovation Capital. With over 78,000 people employed in high-tech already, the region looks forward to having a technology labor force larger than its Federal labor force, and to seeing privately-funded innovation become the primary driver of its economy.

Population: 1,148,785

Labor Force: 686,000

Websites: ottawa.ca/en | www.gatineau.ca

Smart21 2006 | 2007

Top7 2007

Parkland County is a county-sized municipality that has applied the open-access network model – pioneered by urban centers from Stockholm to Dublin, Ohio – specifically to meet the needs of a rural region. Located on the western border of Edmonton, capital of Alberta Province, and only hours from the province’s vast oil sands extraction industry, Parkland County is prosperous. Its primary industries include power generation, forestry, coal, oil and gas, advanced manufacturing, transportation, logistics and agriculture. One of its three business parks is the largest in North America. Most of this economic activity is concentrated in the east, within Edmonton’s economic zone. The small cities, towns, villages and hamlets to the west, for all of their natural beauty, lack employment opportunities and see a steady exodus of youth. One factor in the west’s isolation is lack of access to broadband, with its potential to level the economic playing field.

Building Communications

In 2012, Parkland County completed the core of a network of 20 utility-grade communication towers, six of which have a fiber backhaul to the nearest Alberta SuperNet Point of Presence. Capitalized by grants, the towers have power and terrestrial connectivity and are open to operators of first-responder networks, mobile and wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), who need only rent space on a tower and install a radio to be in business. The towers are designed to allow multiple service providers to collocate on them as well, making it more affordable for companies to provide services in regions with low population density. Parkland County has rugged terrain and is heavily forested, so plans call for construction of an “in-fill” network of smaller towers to extend service to even more of the population. The business model produced breakeven on operating costs within four years, with the more popular towers in the east helping to subsidize the less popular ones in the west, and take-up by WISPs, systems integrators and government agencies has been strong.

Parkland County has also completed a fiber-to-the-home project in the hamlet of Entwistle. The project, built out of the existing underground fiber backbone, was completed in late 2017. With the topography of the region making wireless distribution difficult, the county plans to construct another fiber backbone in 2018 to deploy GPON technology to provide fiber to residents in another underserved area of Parkland.

A Mobile Maker Space

To fill gaps in school programming, particularly in STEM fields, the county launched a mobile Maker Space in spring of 2017. Maker Space kits include all the tools to create a temporary workshop in a library or community hall, allowing a local presenter to offer classes on radio building, coding, robotics and other technical topics. The first year of the Mobile Maker Space was so successful that the county upgraded the project from a summer program into a year-long Inventor’s Club, with students working part time to bring the program to other areas of the county.

The success of the Mobile Maker Space has also led Parkland County to host its first Mini Maker Faire in November of 2017. The Faire boasted over 25 vendors from private-sector, post-secondary, libraries and local schools with a variety of projects for students and their families to complete from weaving to robotics.

The Idea Farm

Parkland County’s large landmass and low population density have led to pockets of innovation going largely unnoticed and unsupported. To address this issue, the county has begun setting itself up as a rural living lab called “The Idea Farm.” Parkland County began the project in 2017 by engaging with local stakeholders and conducting a visioning session with Internet providers, heads of other municipalities, private business owners, nonprofits, educators and residents to determine a long-term vision and strategy for connecting innovators throughout the county. In the same year, the county began a video series that will continue through 2018 showcasing local innovators, including a skateboard company, an artisan with a global online following and a large-scale indoor farming operation. Parkland County also runs a virtual farmers market with corresponding workshops to help local artisans and farmers offer their goods more widely through an online platform. Alberta’s NAIT Innovation Centre has also committed a group of students to explore rural technology applications with local businesses in Parkland County, with plans to pilot any technology they developed.

Borrowing the Internet

In 2017, Parkland County partnered with the Telus provider and 4 rural county libraries to launch the Borrow the Internet project, which loans out Internet hubs to library members. Each hub may be borrowed for one week and works in any area with electricity and cellphone coverage. For residents without the necessary devices to run the hubs, the libraries also maintain an inventory of tablets and laptops to be signed out as needed.

Though the project is only one year old, it has met with great success. The hubs have had consistent waiting lists since their introduction at all four libraries, and Telus has committed to providing more devices to alleviate those wait times. Beginning in 2018, the county will be introducing subsidized rates on Internet and hubs for all residents enrolled in distance learning programs through Athabasca University. Similarly, Telus has launched a program called Internet for Good in Alberta to subsidize Internet rates for families and individuals on government support to help close the digital divide.

Parkland County is demonstrating what a rural Intelligent Community can do to establish a new model for rural regions and use it to change the destiny of the place that people are proud to call their home.  

In the News
Read the latest updates about Parkland County.

Population: 32,097

Website: www.parklandcounty.com

Smart21 2014 | 2018

The capital cities of states and nations have an unfair advantage. Businesses that sell to government tend to cluster there. The business of governing also dominates their economies and, generally speaking, government responds less to the economic cycle than business. Good times may not be as good but bad times are eased – in fact, demand for government services typically rises in a recession.

Ottawa appears to be an exception to the rule. Three times in the past fifteen years, it has passed through recessions that tested the foundations of its economy. But each time, Ottawa has adapted, rallied and emerged more dynamic than before.

Canada's fourth largest metro area, Ottawa went through its first downturn in 1995. Faced with a major budget deficit, the national government downsized and devolved many functions to the provinces. Thousands of former government employees were suddenly looking for work. Fortunately, they found it in a set of communications technology companies started in the 1990s that were growing into multinationals, including Newbridge Networks, Nortel, Cognos and Mitel.

The talent released by government became an important resource for a wave of growth that peaked in 2000 – and then fell off a cliff in the telecom recession of 2001-02, when the companies that had fueled Ottawa’s boom suddenly became its biggest liability. Once again, the community adapted. It brought to bear its significant R&D capacity in communications technology, expertise in military software security and semiconductor design. Companies diversified out of reliance on wireline telecommunications and into wireless, gaming, digital media and medical devices. Growth resumed as telecommunications bottomed out and a broader range of technology companies hit their stride.

For Ottawa, the financial crisis of 2009 was headlined by the bankruptcy of Nortel, its largest private-sector employer and major contributor to research and development. Yet while Canada's unemployment rate moved toward double digits, Ottawa's rate remained below five percent, despite the drastic restructuring taking place at Nortel. Ottawa's position as Canada's capital surely gets some of the credit. But equally impressive is the city's track record of investing in information and communications technology, creating an environment that nurtures the start-up and growth of ICT-based companies, and equipping its citizens to prosper in that environment.

Infrastructure for Growth

Despite being a major population center, Ottawa is hardly an urban jungle. Ninety percent of its land is rural, where just 6% of the population live. In 2006, only 2% of that rural population had access to broadband. But by 2012, through the Rural Broadband Expansion project funded by the city, broadband passed 100% of all homes, businesses, government offices and educational facilities throughout the city. In a survey of rural business owners, 75% said that access to broadband had improved their sales and profitability and 15% said that they would be forced to relocate if broadband access were not available. The survey also asked employees living in rural area about the economic importance of broadband to them: 20% said they would not be able to continue working for their current employer without it.

The public library system has backstopped this broadband deployment with free high-speed Internet access at all 33 branches since 2001, when it also introduced free computer and Internet training courses for the public. In 2008, over 1,500 people attended courses specifically targeting older adults and newcomers to the community.

Working in close collaboration with its educational institutions, Ottawa has built another kind of infrastructure as well: one that develops talent, nurtures start-ups and connects them to opportunity. At the center of this effort is the Ontario Center for Research & Innovation (OCRI), an economic development nonprofit funded by government and more than 700 member companies, which fosters the advancement of the region's knowledge-based institutions and industries. OCRI's goal is strikingly simple: to make Ottawa recognized as one of the most innovative cities worldwide. It acts as a catalyst and contributor for government, university and private programs reaching from research labs and incubators to school classrooms.

OCRI's path was set by a plan issued in 2000 titled Ottawa 20/20. It identified government, tourism and technology as the three pillars of the local economy. It committed the city to continuing collaboration among government, industry and education, with a focus on cluster-based development and the nurturing of talent. Ten years later, a working group refreshed the 20/20 strategy to drive the community's contined growth. The working group's membership is a portrait of collaboration in action, with representatives from Ottawa's colleges and universities, OCRI, city government and the life sciences, cleantech, ICT digital media and software sectors. The emerging plan aimed to create an "innovation architecture" that supports the next generation of technology companies with the people and services they need to prosper.

Harvesting Talent

The 2001-02 downturn of the telecom sector had an unexpected impact on education in Ottawa. As telecom moved from regional darling to regional dog, enrollment in secondary school science and math programs plummeted, which soon translated into lower science and engineering enrollment at the university level. The tech sector recovered but interest in science and engineering education did not. By 2006, Ottawa's tech clusters were flagging the problem as serious and asking OCRI to develop a solution.

In 2008, OCRI worked with the Ministry of Education to introduce a Specialist High Skills Major for grades 11 and 12 focusing on ICT. In the same year, OCRI also introduced a High School Technology Program at two area secondary schools. Over the course of one term, students participated one day per week in classes on computer hardware, networking, team building and technology career opportunities. The entire program was built around social computing and the open source community. Equipped with XO laptops provided by participating companies, students worked in school and in consultation with technology firms to create software projects of their own. The first year was successful enough to justify expanding the program to four schools in 2009.

To further increase interest in STEM at the secondary level, Ottawa has also developed TechU.me. The program provides access to real-world, curriculum-based challenges, aiming to equip high school students with enhanced critical thinking and technology skills for their future careers. TechU.me also employs a group of skilled mentors to guide and assist their students. Since the program’s launch in 2012, 5,000 students have participated, and Ottawa high schools have seen a 35% increase in computer science enrollment.

Another program, Winning Innovation Networks for Schools (WINS), connects tech companies with students to graphically demonstrate career opportunities in the community. The first WINS project sent 100 students and fifteen teachers on site visits to four employers in the cleantech and medical device sectors. The next project will invite biology classes to help local medical device companies work on technology challenges identified by the companies, from sleep sensors to neurological rehabilitation.

While OCRI has focused on secondary school, Ottawa's colleges and universities have rolled out new programs to serve an economy undergoing continuing change. The University of Ottawa now offers cross-faculty courses in entrepreneurship and e-business, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Modeling and Animation for Computer Games. Carlton University created a Bachelor of Engineering in Sustainable and Renewable Energy and partnered with Algonquin College on a Bachelor of IT. Algonquin meanwhile launched its own School of Media & Design for Animation and partnered with OCRI on an Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, which grants secondary school students college credit for high skill majors.

The community has given equal attention to the "last mile" between the end of education and the start of employment, when the most talented students face a choice of where to start their careers. TalentBridge is an OCRI program that provides entrepreneurially-inclined university students with government-funded part-time jobs, working under experienced mentors, at local technology companies. The companies get the benefit of fresh thinking and new energy, while students gain business experience and often make the move into full-time positions with the companies.

Ottawa serial entrepreneur Terry Matthews has created the Wesley Clover Affiliate Program, named for his investment firm. Wesley Clover works with local universities to identify the brightest and most motivated new graduates, puts them through a "boot camp" training program for 9-12 months, and then pairs them with industry leaders in specific vertical segments. The aim is to introduce a new product into the market within 12 months of team formation. From 2007 to 2016, the program has expanded its portfolio of affiliates and startups to include more than 100 companies with over a 90% success rate.

Entrepreneurial Production Line

Capitalism's great benefit is the efficiency with which it moves resources out of unproductive uses and into productive ones. Ottawa attempts the same trick with entrepreneurial talent, through a range of programs designed to identify potential entrepreneurs, give them support and training, and point them toward success.

OCRI's Business Accelerator targets high-potential companies and offers them coaching, market analysis, support services, and access to OCRI's global network of investors for six months to a year. It aims to help young companies shift into high gear through market entry and financing. When they do, they can also take advantage of OCRI Global Marketing, which maintains relationships with Canada's representatives throughout the world.

Lead to Win identifies seasoned managers of technology companies who have been turfed out by corporate downsizing and helps them launch new technology-based businesses. The program originated in 2002 during the telecom recession and was revived when the latest downturn struck in 2008. Applicants accepted into the program receive training on business ecosystems, entrepreneurial management, and success factors for start-up tech companies. Those who start businesses are connected to strategic customers, sales opportunities and resources including financing. Out of the 61 participants in 2009, over 60% launched businesses, and in 2014, those five-year-old companies generated over $19.3 million in revenue. Lead to Win was ranked among UBI Global’s top ten North American business incubators in 2015.

Helping Hand

Ottawa's success in technology has yet to produce a substantial private venture capital sector ready to fund start-up and early-stage companies. National and provincial programs fill some of the gap. Ontario Centers of Excellence offer up to C$250,000 for market readiness and proof-of-concept programs. An Investment Accelerator Fund offers investments of up to C$500,000 to help launch high-potential technology ventures. The Emerging Technologies Fund matches private-sector investment up to C$5 million in early-stage companies, while the Next Generation Jobs Fund supports R&D and commercialization in new industries such as cleantech, biotech, ICT and digital media.

Funding from government finds a match in the nonprofit sector, which draws from foundations and private industry. Ottawa is home to the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Center, the Carleton University Visualization and Simulation Lab, the NRC Institute for Research in Construction and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Sustainable Development Technology Canada has allocated a total of C$425 million to 171 projects at local tech companies focusing on climate change, air and water quality, and soils research.

Ottawa’s government also aims to help Ontario and the nation as a whole accelerate Canada’s medical industry. The Medical Device Commercialization Centre (MDCC) recently received $14.9 million in federal funding to be used to link medical device innovators, such as universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals and corporations, with users, including investors, hospitals, healthcare systems and, of course, patients. MDCC’s experts will be providing assistance with many different areas of development and delivery, including analyzing and confirming clinical market needs, advancing and optimizing prototypes and other solutions, testing and clinical trials, obtaining regulatory approvals and licensing, and even launching devices to market. As of today, the Centre’s experts are in the process of assessing 500 different medical technologies with the hope of advancing at least 20 of them to revenue generation and clinical use.

Will cleantech, biotech, 4G wireless and gaming provide the next boom to Ottawa's economy, perhaps to be followed by the next bust? In recent years, high-tech has edged out the Federal government as the single largest contributor to Ottawa's GDP. The new diversity of its industries, and the intense collaboration among business, government and education, promise a future even more exciting than its past.

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Ottawa was featured in the Intelligent Community Forum book Seizing Our Destiny.

Population: 1,111,700

Website: ottawa.ca/en

Smart21 2010 | 2016 | 2017

Top7 2010

At the northeast end of Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe lies Oshawa, the former Automotive Capital of Canada that is finding a new future as an education and life-sciences hub. The Golden Horseshoe bends around the western end of Lake Ontario and includes the 2014 Intelligent Community of the Year, Toronto. For decades, the economy of Oshawa was tied to General Motors, which employed 20,000 people in a city of 160,000 and was the engine of the local economy. In the Eighties and Nineties, however, rounds of downsizing gradually reduced GM’s employment in the city to 4,000, wreaking havoc on the community. By 1997, the city’s downtown commercial vacancy rate reached 29% and the brownfield sites of vacant factories blighted the cityscape.

Mobilizing the Assets

City leaders, along with stakeholders from businesses and institutions, took joint action. The city was blessed with major institutions of higher learning including Durham College and Trent University Durham, as well as Lakeridge Health, one of the province’s largest community hospitals. Together, the partners plotted redevelopment of the downtown core and the replacement of automotive employment with economic development in sectors including health, sustainable energy, agriculture and transportation. Growth would be based, not on “chasing smokestacks” to bring in outside companies, but on building on the existing foundations of research and education, and using that expertise to kickstart business innovation.

It would also be based on broadband. Another of the city’s assets was Oshawa Public Utilities Corporation, which began to invest in dark fiber infrastructure to meet its own needs as well as serve city facilities. The private sector was persuaded to join in, and dark fiber began to be installed in all new construction projects to meet future demand.

Growth in Research and Education

In the new century, the city’s strategy began to show results. In 2003, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology opened as the province’s first laptop-based university. It became one of Ontario’s fastest-growing universities, which attracted more than C$100 million in research grants, and now houses more than 70 specialized laboratories and 10,000 students. The incumbent institutions worked closely with local business and introduced new programs aimed at retraining residents for in-demand careers in the city’s target sectors. Together, in 2012-13, Durham College and Trend University were estimated to contribute nearly C$1 billion in economic impact to the city.

As hoped, this concentration of education and research began to yield a harvest of new companies in wearable technology, immersive gaming, automotive data systems and consumer applications. Multiple incubators and business accelerators have opened downtown to house the young companies. The Lakeridge Health Education and Research Network opened in 2013 and began training 1,600 students per year using advanced simulation technologies while pioneering research in health informatics.

Digital Equity

Meanwhile, the city worked to equip all of its citizens with the digital skills they needed to prosper. Schools went wireless and received allotments of handheld devices, while two-thirds of teaching staff successfully completed instructional technology training. The library system installed Wi-Fi and over 100 public-use computers, tablets and e-readers for their patrons to use. Community centers and the Boys and Girls Club introduced Wi-Fi and computer access for their users as well.

Oshawa has seen its unemployment rate dramatically improve and commercial vacancy drop by more than half. Eighty-six percent of residents now have a certificate, diploma or degree compared with 73% a decade ago. City Council has also convened a citizen environmental advisory committee that engages residents in a broad range of workshops, community gardens and clean-up projects to build civic pride, while new buildings are rising on brownfield lands across the city. Local government, institutions, businesses and citizens are moving in the same direction, and it is toward a brighter and more sustainable future.

Population: 149,607

Website: www.oshawa.ca

Smart21 2016