Two weeks ago, the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance (OCTA) travelled to Phoenix Arizona to attend the Energy, Utility & Environmental Conference (EUEC).  OCTA is a sister organization to the Ontario Technology Corridor (OTC). Don’t you just love acronyms?  Both consortiums follow a basic philosophy of collaboration to attract foreign direct investment (FDI).  It is quite simple really, set up meetings with companies attending the conference, (mainly USA companies in this case) and that are potentially looking at expanding their businesses into Canada.  At EUEC, we managed to meet with 21 companies in three days.  On this particular trip, five of the 10 OCTA cities participated in the mission. 

So what are these companies looking at doing?  Well, it’s everything from R&D to manufacturing.  Lucky for us we have we cover the full gamut in Ontario. Couple this with the fact that Ontario has one of the best Feed In Tariff (FIT) programs in the world and you have a recipe for investment attraction.  Out of the 21 companies we visited, three are already considering a first visit to Ontario.  Hard to believe someone is visiting Ontario for the first time….who knew??  Two of the three will likely come directly to Ottawa. And why wouldn’t they…this is the Nation’s Capital with over 1,800 advanced technology companies and whole bunch of highly skilled workers, not to mention our city ROCKS!! 

Our job at OCRI is to facilitate meetings with industry leaders, academia and, of course, the government.  This triple helix, as I call it, will give them a holistic view of city and our selling attributes.  Hopefully this is the icing on the cake that gets them to locate in our great city!

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to present OCRI’s response to the city’s proposed economic development strategy. The strategy sees Ottawa recognized as a competitive global hub for innovative, knowledge-based talent, businesses and organizations. OCRI is committed to the economic development of the city and overall, we agree with the strategic objectives as outlined in the document and look forward to working with the City to achieve the stated objectives.

OCRI has been supportive of and involved with the economic refresh activity by City staff although not directly involved with the steering committee. The organization fulfills a leading role in economic development for the region including the entrepreneurship centre, global marketing (investment and trade activities in Ottawa and abroad) and regional innovation activities in addition to other OCRI activities for members.

Leading the way for Ottawa, OCRI fully supports the bolstering of key economic development activities in the region. Investment has decreased over the past few years and fallen far behind investment by other cities and regions. More investment will result in a more diversified local economy with strong international success.

Key economic development initiatives include the creation of strong ecosystems in the areas of: international trade and investment, entrepreneurship, and clusters (including cleantech, life sciences, wireless/mobile applications and digital media). (See our KBI white paper response for more detail.)

Talent is a key focus area for Ottawa. While we have high quality, local talent with many students graduating every year from our universities and colleges, we need to increase STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) participation to meet the demands. Strategies must be implemented to attract, engage and retain talent in Ottawa. Leadership and early entrepreneurship education are also key focus areas. (See our Talent white paper response for more detail.)

OCRI is a leader in providing a full range of commercialization and investment resources to companies across knowledge-based industries to accelerate their growth in the global marketplace. This includes support for startup company creation through Entrepreneur’s Edge, Lead-to-Win, Exploriem and other programs. OCRI works to bring capital to the region through investment in high potential emerging technology leaders in Ottawa.

OCRI programs and services touch many business people and youth in our community. Because of the broad range of services, it is difficult to fully understand the value that OCRI brings to the community. OCRI partners with the City of Ottawa to deliver a number of services to the community which I have outlined below. Key OCRI services that support Ottawa’s economic development include:

Entrepreneurship Centre

• Helps entrepreneurs make informed business decisions while starting or growing their businesses (seminars and workshops on management, legal and accounting)
• Youth focus via programs like Ottawa Innovation Challenge, Junior Achievement, Canada Youth Business Foundation, Summer Company and others;
• Operates resource centre at City Hall, kiosks in Orleans, Barrhaven and Kanata.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

• Delivers Entrepreneur’s Edge series for entrepreneurship training;
• Delivers TalentBridge which engages entrepreneurial engineering students in work terms that develop marketing, sales and business management skills and connects students with supportive mentors from the local knowledge-based sector.

Global Marketing

• Provides assistance for export-oriented businesses seeking to market products and services internationally;
• Provides support for in-bound and out-bound trade missions with emphasis on Asia, Europe, U.S. and Latin America;
• Active founding member of the Ontario Technology Corridor (Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo, London and Niagara) which was established for joint marketing abroad;
• Supports Ottawa’s established and emerging knowledge-based clusters (Photonics, Wireless, Software, eBusiness, Contact Centres, Life Sciences, Cleantech, Security and Digital Media.)

Investment and Commercialization

• Provides business advisory services, business acceleration, market intelligence and mentoring to build the next wave of knowledge-based companies;
• Hosts the annual Ontario Venture Summit (OVS) to showcase companies to qualified investors;
• Actively supports community-based initiatives including: Lead to Win, Exploriem, TiE, and The Ottawa Network.

Community Leadership

• OCRI hosts and chairs the Innovation Leadership Team;
• OCRI chairs the Ottawa Technology Round Table for industry, academic and research institutions, and federal, provincial and city governments;
• OCRI CEO is a member of the Tourism Leadership Team;
• OCRI contributes to the Digital Strategy Round Tables at Industry Canada.

OCRI is a diverse and dynamic organization that aims to be responsive to the needs of our local business community. If you are interested in learning more about OCRI and the many ways that our programs, services and individuals contribute to the economic well being of the city visit our website www.ocri.ca, stop by the Entrepreneurship Centre at Ottawa City Hall or get in touch with one of our program managers.

Being from North America, I am always impressed by the beauty of many of Europe’s old districts. None is as spectacular as Cambridge with the combination of its medieval architecture and parkland around Cambridge University. My visit this time was enhanced by record high temperatures and wall to wall sun. None of the cold, wet, dreary climate for which the UK is known.

In Cambridge - a beautiful historic location

Conversations in the hallways and in the streets during my first day of meetings in Cambridge were dominated by one topic, the rather poor showing of the England Football team in the World Cup and their loss to and elimination by Germany the day before. You could not turn on a radio or TV or pass someone in the street without hearing national disgust at the game and the terrible state of football in the UK now that it had been taken over by the financial interests of club football. Sounded like the comments in North America about the NFL, NBA and NHL. Welcome to the world of professional sport.

I was meeting my colleague Terry Mughan at Anglia Ruskin University to discuss an open innovation project that we were working on with other North European cities, but our conversation got slightly sidetracked. The new coalition government in the UK had come down with its emergency budget and one item involved the cutting or elimination of funds to the Regional Development Agencies (RDA’s). The cuts would be greatest in the regions of England doing well, London, the Southeast and East England, the location of Cambridge. The project that we were working together on was likely to be affected. Terry indicated that several other projects affecting initiatives to ensure Cambridge competitiveness would also be affected.

Entrance to Robinson Hall

What turned out to be cathartic for me was being in picturesque Cambridge on a sunny day and trying to right the wrongs of the world. Terry and I got into a discussion on globalization and how public policy was still trying to desperately catch up with our post financial crisis world or even the tech crash of earlier this decade. The UK was looking to take the standard path: the areas around London were doing well, areas like the midlands and the north were doing poorly, therefore send the money to the regions not doing as well and let the prosperous regions fend for themselves. Standard redistribution of wealth. Now we were talking about one of my favourite topics. The unfortunate necessity in wealth redistribution is that you have to have wealth to redistribute.

For at last 50 years, the driving force of the modern Canadian economy has been the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa triangle. A fact of life in Canadian public policy has been to let Southern Ontario survive, it is doing well, and see how the government can help the rest of Canada’s economy catch up, often using the tax revenue from Ontario. Obviously, the UK has some of the same issues. Since both Terry and I are involved in knowledge-based industries and how they compete and survive (albeit coming at the question from different perspectives), we got into the discussion.

Both Ottawa and Cambridge are exporting regions, dominated by knowledge-based and highly innovative and entrepreneurial companies. Both regions are examples of the new economic reality: we compete globally and the vast majority of revenue is generated from exports. We have to be constantly adjusting to retain our competitive edge. We have as many or more alliances with like regions in other countries than with regions at home. The standard national policy response in crisis periods is to throw money at the regions in need and let the less affected regions fend on their own, as is being considered in the UK now. But the UK is also looking for an export led recovery, depending on regions like Cambridge.

And here we have the dilemma. You have the high performing regions battling it out in a global economy with an ever changing competitive environment. Yet, they are not to be supported. How does public policy establish the national framework that supports their Cambridges and Ottawas to achieve those export related goals at an international level and yet not have it appear at the national level that support is being given to the haves. As I talked to other companies throughout the week, this theme kept resurfacing. Strategies were being developed to solidify Cambridge’s global reputation, and yet these could be forgotten as the national government responded to regional disparity concerns. The investment needed to keep that export engine turning is often relatively small. There is not the big dollar, ribbon cutting opportunity of new factories or hundreds of jobs.

Every once in awhile, it is great to break out of the churn of daily business, and debate the larger challenges of our business. It is also great to hear that we were not the only region facing the challenge of responding to international competitiveness in the face of old public policy concepts. It will be interesting to see what country will understand this new dimension of national policy and respond.

My primary reason to be in Cambridge was to attend the Future of Wireless International Conference being held by Cambridge Wireless. Canada and Ontario were major sponsors, Bob Crowe of RIM was a keynote speaker (he gave an excellent talk, right on target with the conference theme) and we were to sign a cooperation agreement with Cambridge Wireless. We were accompanied by five Ottawa companies, Alcatel-Lucent Ottawa Research and Innovation Centre, SiGe Semiconductor, TIL-TEK Antennae Inc., Kavveri Telecom Products Limited and Teldio Corporation.

Cambridge has established itself as a major centre of innovation in Europe and Cambridge Wireless is viewed as a model for cluster organization. Our companies were there to do business, and that they did, but my interest was in better understanding the Cambridge Wireless model and more importantly, how it addressed the question of volunteer involvement and volunteer fatigue.

At OCRI, we are undergoing a review of our cluster support model. We are looking at how we can better support our exporting SME’s and take maximum advantage of the Multi National Enterprise (MNE) presence in Ottawa. Our concentration is on our high growth sectors: Wireless, Digital Media, Cleantech and Security and Defence.

Cambridge Wireless has addressed two major problems in formalized cluster organizations through its creation of “SIG’s” special interest groups. Clusters are often thought of as homogeneous because they bring together the supply chain or ecosystem for a single sector, for example wireless. But this sector is far from homogeneous. Companies will be interested in different markets, different technologies and different applications. Given the ongoing restructuring in the tech world, most companies are running lean. The most precious commodity is time. The SIG concept moves the organizing concept away from general participation to meeting the specific needs of the member.

The other major benefit of the SIG concept within Cambridge Wireless is that it is run by SIG Champions. These champions are volunteers who agree to run with the SIG. They mobilize the other interested companies and define the events and activities that will be undertaken. The role of the staff of Cambridge Wireless is then to help execute the plans that the members have defined. You therefore respond to those questions of volunteer involvement and volunteer fatigue while also near guaranteeing success of every event or activity.

There was little question that the system was working well in Cambridge. The continuing success of the Future of Wireless International Conference and the other events put on by Cambridge Wireless and the obvious enthusiasm of the private sector clearly show that the concept is successful. There is little question that SIG’s will be a part of our new model.

This particular conference was being dubbed the “Canadian Invasion”. Besides the Ottawa contingent, there were the reps from Canada, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec resident in our High Commission in London, Wavefront from BC and RIM from Waterloo. Interestingly, not only RIM showed up in slide decks, but also QNX Software Systems Ltd.

As mentioned earlier, RIM’s presentation should have been voted best of show. When David Cleevely introduced the foreign heads of delegation at the gala dinner on the first evening, it was a near all Canada show. Although the Canadian reps, including your truly, had one minute or less, it was clear that friendly regional rivalries exist. He commented that the regional banter and rivalry was another common trait between the UK and Canada.

The cooperation agreement signed between Cambridge Wireless and OCRI was a recognition of the commonalities between the two regions. Our success is built on an intelligent workforce, an entrepreneurial DNA and a culture of innovation. Together, we can offer mutual assistance to our members and to build trade, investment and research links between our two regions.

Stay tuned as we turn words and intent into wealth.

By Mayor Larry O’Brien

On April 6th, I embarked on a 10-day economic development mission to the Chinese cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The mission, coordinated by OCRI, aims to strengthen existing relationships between our cities and to further establish Ottawa as one of China’s strategic partners.

Friday evening marked the conclusion of our delegation’s visit to the City of Beijing. We spent two short but jam-packed days in back-to-back meetings with government officials and professionals from a number of hi tech industries.

As Mayor of the City of Ottawa, my first and most important responsibility is to ensure the safety and security of the City’s residents, which means ensuring access to clean drinking water, waste management, fire and police services. But I also recognize the role of the City in ensuring the prosperity of our citizens, which means creating the kind of environment in which our citizens and companies can prosper. With that focus in mind, I am pleased to report that our mission to Beijing to promote investment and partnership opportunities was extremely successful.

On Thursday of last week I announced that Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong and I had signed a Memorandum of Understanding re-committing to the principles of our original 1999 sister-city agreement.  That was just the beginning of a waterfall of successes stemming from this mission.  OCRI has now signed a new agreement with the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau, and the Ottawa companies who are participating in this mission have had a number of successful meetings with potential customers, investors and partners. I was very pleased to see Tourism Ottawa sign a collaboration agreement with Badaling Special Zone Administration, the managers of the Great Wall of China.

The goal of our visit to Beijing was to promote partnerships in the areas of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Cleantech. For that reason, we were delighted to hear about Beijing’s commitment to building a world-class environmentally sustainable city when we visited the Beijing Urban Planning Exhibition. We met with the Beijing Energy-Saving and Environmental Protection Center where we were introduced to their impressive plans and programs for meeting the goals of the city.  During that meeting, we received confirmation that a delegation from Beijing will be traveling to Ottawa to meet with a broad range of our Cleantech companies.  This is important given the ongoing negotiations between the City of Beijing and Plasco regarding the  implementation of a waste-to-electricity facility in Beijing based on the leading-edge solution which has been developed and demonstrated in Ottawa.

Our delegation also had the privilege of attending and participating in the ICT and Cleantech Cross-Investment Seminar at Z-Park which included presentations by Canadian investment groups like Wesley Clover and Cleantech Capital. It was there that we learned of Huawei’s plans to significantly increase the number of people in their Ottawa R&D centre.

While the focus of our mission is clearly business development, it was a pleasure last evening to be hosted by Mayor Guo at a banquet where we were able to talk frankly about the role of Mayors in our two cultures and the tremendous opportunities of our bilateral relationship. As we begin to emerge from the global economic recession and move forward in a new economy, China has emerged as the key global market- 1.3 billion people, an impressive education system and strong economic growth.  Business partnerships with China will continue to become a more integral part of our economic progress both here in Ottawa and across the country.

My hope is that this mission will continue to provide opportunities to strengthen relationships, and that by working together we can further grow the prosperity of the people of both Ottawa and Beijing.

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OTTAWA, ON, Saturday April 10, 2010 – OCRI has signed a cooperation agreement with the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau two days into a 10 day trade mission to China. This memorandum of understanding was signed with the privilege of being witnessed by the Mayor of Beijing Guo Jin Long and Mayor of Ottawa Larry O’Brien.

The agreement outlines the intent of both parties to work together to promote economic exchange and cooperation between Ottawa and Beijing.

“By signing this agreement, we confirm our intention to develop long term and beneficial working relationships with the city of Beijing,” says Claude Haw, President and CEO, OCRI. “We look forward to working with the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau to promote trade, investment and cooperation between our great cities.”

On April 6, Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien, along with nine local companies and representatives from Ottawa Tourism and OCRI, embarked on the trade mission to encourage cooperation between Ottawa and China in a number of sectors including ICT and clean technologies, and to encourage increased Chinese investment in Ottawa-based companies. The mission, coordinated by OCRI, the city’s lead economic development agency, will strengthen existing relationships and further establish Ottawa as a valuable strategic partner.

On the same day, Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mayor of Beijing marking the start of a very successful mission. 

Monday, the delegation will travel to Chongqing to meet with senior municipal officials, trade commissioners and companies followed by two days of meetings in Shenzhen. The mission wraps up in Hong Kong on April 16th.

For regular updates on the Mission to China please visit http://ocriblogs.com/ .

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About OCRI:

Leading the way for Ottawa, OCRI is the city’s economic development agency. OCRI is the rallying point to bring business, education, research and talent together to create the winning economic conditions that allow Ottawa’s knowledge-based companies to thrive locally and compete globally. At OCRI we promote sustainable economic development to maintain our high quality of life. For more information on OCRI visit our website at www.ocri.ca and for more information on the Ottawa Region please visit www.ottawaregion.com. In 2010, Ottawa was named one of the world’s top seven intelligent communities by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

For information contact:

Kim Cunningham
Manager, External Communications
OCRI
Office: (613) 828-6274 ext. 256
Cell: (613) 851-0768
kcunningham@ocri.ca

Day 2: Wednesday, April 7th – Beijing

Nihao from Beijing (and that covers the full range of my Mandarin vocabulary). Air Canada treated us very well over the 20 hours between arriving at the Ottawa airport, transiting through Vancouver and finally landing in Beijing. Leaving early morning from Ottawa was easy enough and the planes for both legs were not completely full. Travelling in economy was quite comfortable when the seat beside was available to spread out papers and such.

It seemed strange to leave Ottawa in sunny early morning, travel almost around the clock in sunlight to arrive in Beijing mid-afternoon of the next day. We were well received in China with the coordinator from the Beijing Foreign Office  coming to the airport to meet us. After traveling nearly 12,000 km, this was a wonderful personal touch.

First impressions of Beijing from a sleep-deprived state of mind was …. well a fog actually, not the crystal clear air of the Rockies at least. The route from the airport downtown was very much that of a modern city with many tall buildings, both commercial office towers and residential, a few older apartment buildings and much more English writing on buildings than I expected. Mid-afternoon traffic from the airport to our hotel in central Beijing was moderate to heavy but moved well. There were bicycles and motorbikes on the road but not a huge number. The block around the hotel holds dealerships for Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin, shops for Gucci, etc. and even a Starbucks.

People at the airport, on roads, streets and hotel seem courteous and friendly. The Regent Hotel people were very helpful and fast on check-in. There was whole contingent at the door to welcome the Mayor including the hotel manager. Our home for the next five days and four nights looks to be excellent.

Lucky for us the itinerary for our first short day was to get settled in our hotel, get a briefing from the Vice Counsel from the Canadian Embassy in Beijing followed by a light dinner and then off to bed to attempt to synchronize our body clock with the local time. Asking my body to stay awake for more than 24 hours was so much easier a couple of decades ago – oh to be 30 again!

More to come after a very full day tomorrow….