An investment of $25 million by the government of Canada, announced October 8, is to help the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management develop expertise to assist young businesses. The CDL merges science-based projects with business expertise to help young companies scale up into creators of new jobs, processes and services.
The funding is to help CDL gain insight into the success of start-ups. The research project, using artificial intelligence tools, will facilitate CDL supporting business ventures that harness emerging technologies such as AI, clean tech, energy, health, smart cities and space and quantum technologies. The CDL project is also to support the growth of science-based business start-ups through mentorship and access to angel and venture capital. In addition, CDL will boost its engagement of young women in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields to ensure broad representation in the next generation of technology and business leaders in Canada.
CDL will run experiments with start-ups at the following sites in its Canadian network including the Rotman School; Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia; Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary; HEC Montréal, Université de Montréal; and, Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University.
“The Creative Destruction Lab was founded in 2012 to address a failure in the market for judgment,” said Sonia Sennik, CDL Executive Director. “First-time founders of science-based companies, while fully committed to the success of their venture and possessing deep knowledge in their technical domain, often lack the business judgment required to prioritize among the almost infinite list of to-dos required to successfully build and scale their business. Our structured and rigorous program helps them with that prioritization process. While we fully leverage market forces to provide prioritization guidance from individuals who themselves have built successfully scaled businesses, the coordination of those market forces requires non-market support. That is why we are so grateful to the Government of Canada for supporting our mission that will drive economic impact and create jobs, learning opportunities, and global leadership for deep-tech and science-based companies across Canada.”
The investment is being made through the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund, a program designed to attract and support high-quality business investments across all sectors of the economy by encouraging R&D that will accelerate technology transfer and the commercialization of innovative products, processes and services and will facilitate the growth of innovative firms.
Since its inception in 2012, companies that have participated in the CDL programs count over $3 billion created in equity value. CDL Alumni include Thalmic Labs (Waterloo), Atomwise (San Francisco), Deep Genomics (Toronto), and Kyndi (Palo Alto).