Building a Successful Innovation Ecosystem With Collaborative Capitalism |Communitech's Iain Klugman
“We can honestly say that every assumption we made about how we thought it was going to work was wrong.”
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CEO Iain Klugman has spent the last 16 years bringing together government organizations, businesses, and talent to make Communitech an integral part of the Waterloo Region ecosystem. In this episode, he joins AQ to reminisce on his career of building Communitech to the intentionally collaborative and ambitious environment it is today.
Iain shares how his team worked to keep talent in the region when RIM went through a massive downfall, and how Communitech reviews their strategies yearly to adjust to this ever-changing community.
They discuss the comparison of Waterloo Region to Silicon Valley, the Future of X Initiative, the experiment that became the Corporate Innovation Program, and how the Waterloo Region has the potential to become a healthcare innovation hub.
0:47 Quote from Serial entrepreneur Dave Caputo about Iain Klugman
2:40 What has been essential to Communitech’s success: Focus on Ecosystem
3:44 Why WR is NOT Silicon Valley North
5:56 Future of X Initiative
7:20 Google’s Expansion and its effects within the community
8:46 knowing where you compete in the war on talent
10:20 The Experiment that became Communitech’s Corporate Innovation Program
14:06 How Public Policy MPA helped Iain with Communitech’s success
16:06 Reworking strategies to suit the ecosystem’s maturation
17:22 Iain’s top three Communitech Career Highlights
22:00 When RIM lost its way
24:34 Rise of MedTech in WR
More on Iain:
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More on Communitech:
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