October 9, 2018 – Ottawa, Ontario – Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

In the face of global economic challenges, the Government of Canada is continuing to make investments in projects to help grow innovative companies, including start-ups, to create well-paying middle-class jobs and ensure Canada punches above its weight in a competitive global market.

Today, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, announced an investment of $25 million in the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a non-profit organization based at the University of Toronto that merges science-based projects with business expertise to help young companies scale-up into creators of new jobs, processes, and services.

Thanks to this investment, CDL will create up to 125 jobs, attract more investments into Canadian businesses, and see more intellectual property developed and retained in Canada. CDL’s project will also involve more than 1,300 science-based ventures in a wider network across Canada over four years and it is estimated that these ventures could create up to 22,000 new jobs.

The funding will help CDL gain insight into the success of start-ups. The research project will facilitate CDL supporting business ventures that harness emerging technologies such as clean tech, energy, health, cities, space, AI and quantum technologies. The CDL project will also 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 for the next generation of technology and business leaders in Canada.

CDL will run experiments with start-ups at the following sites in the Canadian CDL Network:

This investment is being made through the 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.

Quotes

“Creative Destruction Lab’s exciting project promises to unleash a new wave of start-up innovation across Canada, creating thousands of middle class jobs, and further securing Canada’s position as a world leader in the AI field. Our government is proud to make investments that will help turn hundreds of innovative ideas into the good jobs and companies of tomorrow.”

– The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development

“Our government is making sure Canadian entrepreneurs have the ecosystems of support they need to startup, scale up and access markets. Our strategic investment in Creative Destruction Lab will help accelerate the transformation of innovative ideas into commercial success stories, helping Canadian entrepreneurs, creating middle-class jobs and strengthen our innovation economy.”

– The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion

“The Creative Destruction Lab was founded in 2012 to address a failure in the market for judgment.  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.”

– Sonia Sennik, Executive Director of Creative Destruction Lab

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Contacts

Nilani Logeswaran
A/Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development
Tel: 343-291-2849
Cell: 613-668-1794

Media Relations
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
343-291-1777
ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca

About The Creative Destruction Lab

The Creative Destruction Lab is a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies. Its nine-month program pairs founders with experienced entrepreneurs and investors to set focused, measurable objectives with the goal of maximizing equity-value creation. Founded in 2012 by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the program has now expanded with locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Halifax, and New York City.

Since its inception in 2012, companies that have participated in the CDL programs have created over $3 billion (CAD) in equity value. CDL Alumni include Thalmic Labs (Waterloo), Atomwise (San Francisco), Deep Genomics (Toronto), Automat (Montreal), Kyndi (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris).

For more information:

James Liu
Marketing Lead
Creative Destruction Lab
james.liu@creativedestructionlab.com