 Our Speaker, Brad Zumwalt  Eric Bennett Thanks Our Speaker |
| Bruce Graham introduced Brad Zumwalt who delivered a compelling presentation on Making Calgary a Technology Hub. Mr. Zumwalt began by describing his talk as an extension of Jim Gibson's Tip of the Spear from our April 2nd meeting. While Jim Gibson told us about the big trends affecting the entire world, Mr. Zumwalt told us how these global trends have been impacting Calgary's technology community. He told us that Calgary should have an innovation goal, represented by the numbers 50-1-10-31, to create 50,000 jobs at 1000 Calgary companies that will achieve an aggregate annual revenue of $10 billion by the year 2031. These companies should be distributed among those in the start-up phase (having five employees), emerging (50), growth (300) and scaling (1000+ employees). Achieving this ambitious goal will not be easy as Calgary is somewhat behind comparable cities. Alberta suffers from a scarcity of venture capital, and the current pool of $175 million translates to $44 per capita. By comparison, Quebec has a $200 per capita venture pool. As a result of this, Calgary has fewer start-up companies than other jurisdictions, despite a young population with a large number of great ideas. There is also the problem of a talent pool with high expectations, which arises from the wealth present in the energy sector (i.e., talent is more expensive, less experienced, and scarce). However, meeting these expectation offers the promise of great return as the digital economy makes up 6.5 per cent of global GDP, and impacts 16 per cent of the world's economy. Mr. Zumwalt described Calgary's "rainforest" innovation model, which Jim Gibson introduced in his presentation to the club, by sharing the ingredients of a healthy innovation ecosystem. These include culture, leaders, policy and infrastructure, resources, role models, and engaged activities. |
He also described an approach to growth that he referred to as "The Calgary Way".
- We have to GROW
- To grow you have to COMPETE
- To compete you need to find EFFICIENCY
- To gain efficiencies you have to INNOVATE
- To innovate you have to RISK and tolerate failure
- To tolerate failure you have to have TRUST
- When you have that trust it becomes CULTURE
- The right culture delivers GROWTH
This cycle echoes the main theme in Jim Gibson's presentation: that innovation can only succeed where there is a culture of trust.
Following a lively question and answer session, Eric Bennett thanked our speaker for his information packed presentation.