Turning ideas into innovations

Right this minute, researchers across campus and inventors all over Alberta are working on an army of ‘next big things.’ The new Creative Destruction Lab Rockies at the Haskayne School of Business wants to get those ideas into the marketplace.

The Lab — one of three new locations of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) that started at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management — is looking for science-based ideas to match with money, entrepreneurial mentors and MBA students. The program delivers nine months of coaching and support to help early-stage ventures design objectives with measurable deliverables.

“We want ‘seed’ and ‘pre-seed’ companies,” says Michael Robinson, the director of CDL-Rockies and a finance professor at Haskayne. “It might not even be a company yet. It might be a graduate student working on their master’s or PhD thesis that’s come up with an idea and they think they might be able to commercialize it somehow.”

Half the ideas selected by CDL-Rockies will be innovations around the energy sector and the other half will be in a variety of industries. “We will have a number of energy ventures, and we will also grow and nurture others in digital economy or health care or bio tech,” says one of CDL-Rockies’ associate directors, technology entrepreneur Alice Reimer, BSc’99, MBA’03.

Since the launch in May 2017, 12 founding partners have pledged $3.6 million to support the establishment and operations of CDL-Rockies. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of support for the Creative Destruction Lab,” says Reimer, who is meeting with a lengthy list of potential investors in industry. “There is just a ton of buzz and excitement about the Lab coming to Haskayne.”

Entrepreneurs are excited too. Within weeks of launching, CDL-Rockies had received applications numbering in the double digits. “We will screen them, look at different characteristics, the background of the entrepreneur, the uniqueness of the business problem they’re trying to solve and the characteristics of the science they have behind their business idea,” says Robinson, who has worked with startups and in venture capital.

This first year, 50 semi-finalists will be identified. In early November, those 50 groups will pitch their ideas to CDL-Rockies staff and Haskayne MBA students who will do real-life due diligence. From this first screening, 25 finalists will be selected to present their venture to a group including CDL-Rockies chief scientists, UCalgary faculty Steven Bryant and Steve Larter, as well as mentors and investors (called G7 Fellows and Associates). The number of finalists will double to 50 next year and eventually rise to 75 ventures per year.

The original CDL program launched at Rotman in 2012 with the goal of creating $50 million in equity value over five years. It’s at $1 billion and counting. CDL has expanded the successful program across the country, first with CDL-West at the University of British Columbia’s UBC Sauder School of Business. In May 2017, it created CDL-Montreal at HEC Montréal, CDL-Atlantic at Dalhousie University’s Rowe School of Business in Halifax and CDL-Rockies at Haskayne.

“Calgary is a great place for CDL,” says Reimer, who built, grew and sold technology company Evoco and is very much a part of the technology ecosystem in the city. We have an entrepreneurial culture — those who have ‘been there and done that,’ she says — and the city has deep knowledge and experience in the energy sector. Eventually,

CDL-Rockies will become “a world-class centre,” adds Robinson.

“Inventions are interesting, but they become innovations when they create economic or social value,” says Reimer. “What the Creative Destruction Lab Rockies has the potential for in Calgary, Alberta and the prairie provinces is to demonstrate that we can create global billion dollar businesses right here.”

Interested in getting involved with CDL-Rockies?