Innovation Central Society Elects New Board
Prince George, B.C. – A local tech fueled non-profit says its “poised for growth” with the election of a new board of directors.
Will Cadell, CEO of Sparkgeo, a local web mapping company, is the new CEO of the Innovation Central Society.
Other members of the Board include local entrepreneur John Kason, Renata King of NDIT, Tracy Calogheros of The Exploration Place, Kate Armstrong of Emily Carr University Living Labs, Robert Knight of UNBC, Carolynne Burkholder of Heather Sadler Jenkins and Sagar Saxena of School District 91.
“As we continue to build our partnerships with important organizations like the educational institutions and local professional advisors to our clients, these direct connections through out Board will be invaluable in fostering the next generation of innovators, as well as coaching and supporting those who are currently creating new products and establishing new businesses,” says ICS’s executive director Matt Hutcheon.
He says those partnerships include working with the City of Prince George and others “on a tech-focused version of the Move Up Prince George Campaign to help position Prince George as a destination for new skills.”
CEO Cadell adds it’s a myth that high tech isn’t happening here.
“There’s this crazy idea that you need to be in the big city to do technology. Really, it’s the reverse. The great thing about tech is that you can literally do it from anywhere. Here in PG we are in the same time zone as the biggest technology hub on Earth and have much better quality of life and cost profiles,” he says.
“We just need to demonstrate our advantage and encourage more people to give tech a go. That’s where Innovation Central comes in!”
Comments
That’s great, but what are you doing on intellectual property rights? Canada has a woeful record of protecting innovators and allowing them to flourish here at home. Many have to leave Canada in order to see their dreams realized and the predators and reverse engineers are ubiquitous now.
Various organizations have existed in this community over the last 25 years, at least, which have been providing assistance to “innovators” in researching patents to ensure they are actually “innovative”, and if that has been proven to find assistance to developing marketing plans, production plans, etc.
It would be interesting to have someone do a bit of research to provide a history of those efforts in PG, especially in relation to how many achieved a “leap forward” to develop their ideas into a viable business here or elsewhere.
With that in mind, I would want to make sure that they actually remember the context of “innovation”, not just developing a business from an idea which really simply adds to business players who already exist.
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