DECODING THE PROMISE OF CALGARY 2.0, AMID A NEW WAVE OF TECH, INNOVATORS
The market value of all energy stocks traded on the S&P/TSX Composite Index, including the services sector, is roughly $330 billion. The market capitalization of Apple is US$892 billion. Convert the value of Canadian energy stocks to U.S. dollars and the math shows Canada’s energy sector is worth about one-third of a single American tech giant.
If there’s any doubt about the economic direction Alberta needs to take, those numbers strip away any uncertainty. By any measure they are arresting.
And Apple’s not even one of the so-called FANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. As investors start betting on which company could be the first to reach $1 trillion in value, Amazon is coming out ahead of Apple.
It’s because of this value gap between energy and technology — and what it represents in terms of opportunity — that the time has come to re-evaluate Alberta’s economic future and the changes that have taken place within the energy sector.
Thanks largely to its resource sector, Alberta boasts a labour force with skill sets that span the ability to manage large projects, maximize productivity, find innovative ways to raise capital and take risks on new ventures.
Layer on the changes in agriculture that have resulted from technological developments and growing global demand for food and the world-class research in health care occurring at postsecondary institutions, and there is much raw material to work with.
Additionally, we generate scads of data, which, in today’s world, has value.
Despite the many challenges presented by the downturn in the energy sector, it’s an exciting time to be in Alberta.
This column will further illuminate what’s taking place in Calgary and around Alberta as individuals and companies look for opportunities to leverage what they know and do into new areas.
It will highlight the organizations established to support, guide, fund and mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors. And it’s about the institutional knowledge of the many who’ve made their careers in everything from the investment business, law, medicine or engineering now sharing with those seeking to establish a new direction for the provincial economy.
We’ll look at what’s already taken place, what gaps exist and what the constraints might be.
One of the important catalysts to changes that have taken place in the past two years is the establishment of Rainforest Alberta, led by Jim Gibson and Brad Zumwalt. The Rainforest is where entrepreneurs, innovators, investors meet on Wednesdays in the newly established Nucleus space to connect and collide — the new buzzword of what some call “the movement.”
But there is more going on than the Rainforest, which also has an Edmonton chapter.
There is also Alberta Innovates, Calgary Technologies Inc., Innovate Calgary (now situated at the University of Calgary), Startup Calgary, Calgary Economic Development, Creative Destructive Labs — Rockies, Energy Masterminds associated with the ARC Energy Research Institute and the A-100 that aims to develop the next generation of technology entrepreneurs.
The University of Calgary is home to the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking and the College of Discovery, Creativity and Innovation. Bow Valley College has launched an Alberta-wide initiative aimed at expanding the province’s entrepreneurial capacity by engaging students in the 26 universities and colleges called 150+ — as well as the Repsol Hub for Social Enterprise, and SAIT is offering online courses as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) to equip individuals to start their own businesses.
And that’s before the incubators such as Nucleus, Rocketspace, Zone Startups and District Ventures, or the venture capital firms such as Azure Capital, Relay Ventures, Panache Ventures, McRock Capital, Yaletown and Exhibition Capital are added to the mix.
All of this makes things a bit confusing for people trying to understand all that’s taking place and where their needs might best be served.
The question is whether it’s too much.
At this stage of what should be viewed as a multi-year journey, probably not. As Zumwalt said this week, the Kitchener-Waterloo corridor in Ontario is an overnight sensation that was two decades in the making.
Every entrepreneur has different needs depending on their stage of development, level of experience, the product they are looking to develop or launch, financing needs and market they are looking to access.
There is no one-size-fits-all metric.
This series is about creating that address book to help navigate the new economic order that is being developed in Calgary — and the province.