March 21, 2012

As I mentioned in my last posting, I have recently spent time in Canada as a guest of their government. A key focus was to better understand how Canada, with an inherently low risk culture, was advancing its innovation agenda. One example stood out.

Waterloo is a region of only 500,000 people, and within 20 years has developed into the second largest generator of start-up companies in North America (only beaten by Silicon Valley). The locality now has many research-intensive companies including a number of multinationals who have been attracted, along with national laboratories (such as the Institute for Quantum Computing) and philanthropically supported research institutes (including the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics).