Ryan Peterson + Trent Shumay

CEO + PRESIDENT AND CTO, FINGER FOOD STUDIOS

Ryan Peterson, CEO of Port Coquitlam–based Finger Food Studios, works on the bleeding edge of technology, but he insists that he and chief technology officer Trent Shumay are simply bringing an old-school service model to a new arena. “We had friends founding companies on the billion-dollar big idea, and very few people were taking the pro-services business route,” Peterson says.

Founded in 2009, Finger Food develops mixed, augmented and virtual reality tools for clients. It's one of only eight firms licensed to develop software for Microsoft Corp.'s Hololens, a wearable holographic computer.

Finger Food allows customers to design and create products and services without the cost of building realworld prototypes and models. Its clients span manufacturing, retail, entertainment, education and health care; this May it was tapped to develop a new scenographic tool for Cirque du Soleil. Launched in a Port Moody basement, the company now operates a 25,000-squarefoot Holodeck studio and posts $20 million in annual revenue. Peterson predicts that the next big wave in technology will be the digital twin: businesses creating virtual models of themselves to test ideas before pursuing them in the real world. “That's going to be a huge productivity gain for all businesses,” he says.