On Monday, the federal government announced that it was making new a five year, $10.7 million investment into the creation of new pan-Canadian incubator led by Ryerson University.
The downtown university will join the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) to create so-called Zones of Innovation and Incubation (ZI2).
"The principle focus of the network will be on leveraging research from all three universities to promote commercialization, creation of new companies and jobs," said Wendy Cukier, Ryerson University's vice president of research and innovation. "But we’re also extremely committed to driving innovation within existing companies and organizations."
According to Cukier, the incubators will be focused on digital technology and gaming.
"When we’re talking about things like gaming, we’re not just talking about games for entertainment: we’re talking about games for education, for enhancing healthcare and for training more broadly," she said. "The potential of the technologies that are being tested, commercialized and spun off to transform a number of sectors—healthcare, financial services, entertainment and manufacturing—is quite significant."
Cukier believes that the network could have a transformative effect on the city.
"Toronto has an ambitions to be one the leading centres of innovation in North America, and indeed there is a lot of data that suggests that it already is in terms of startups," said Cukier. "But I think this also strengthens Toronto’s ambition to be an intelligent, digitally-enabled city. This initiative will not only help sharpen the focus on our digital innovation corridor, but also result in the development of new approaches that could potentially be transformative."
Source: Ryerson University