Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster Members & Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce Members and Community Members are officially invited to the Spring Quarterly Membership Breakfast.

March 23 breakfast invite

What is innovation? At the Lisbon Council’s 2010 Innovation Summit, attendee’s answer what innovation means to them.

What does it mean to you?

Please Join the Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster and the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce for the “Quarterly Membership Breakfast”. With special guest: James Gastle of Gastle & Associates

Date: Friday March 23rd, 2012
Venue: Gathering Space, Gzowski College, Trent University
Time: 7:30 – 9:30 a.m.
Cost: $15.00 for non-members (Free for GPIC & GPCC members)

Speaker Details:
Mr. Gastle presentation titled “Intellectual Property:  Is it Really Worth the Trouble?” The focus of the presentation will be on Innovation and Commercialization becoming popular buzzwords in Canada. With Federal programs relying on these words, and in some cases requiring it
for funding in Small Medium Enterprises. Mr. Gastle will be asking the questions, “What
about protection?”, “Is protection really worth the expense?” – “Is there any way to reduce
these expenses?”, “Can we rely on trade secrets, trademarks and copyright instead?”, “How do
companies protect their Innovations?”

Please Join Us
Please Register (with payment) by March 16th, 2012 to:
Shannon Clark, Interim Program Officer 705-748-0111 Ext: 7392, sclark@innovationcluster.ca

Community Innovation Forum: Knowledge in Action

You’re invited to join Fleming College’s School of Business, Computing and Hospitality, the Trent Centre for Community Based Education and the Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster to learn how your organization can excel and how our community can thrive through collaboration and innovation.

Date: Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Venue: Peterborough Golf and Country Club
Time: 12:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Cost: Free

Agenda
12:30 p.m. Open to Public – Registration
12:50 p.m. Opening Remarks
1:00 – 4:00p.m. Student Talent Showcase
2:00 – 2:55 p.m. Concurrent Panel One – Attracting Investment
3:00 – 3:55 p.m. Concurrent Panel Two – “Winning” Stories
4:00 – 4:45 p.m. Reception and Networking
4:45 – 5:15 p.m. Showcase Awards for Student Innovation
5:20 – 5:50 p.m. Keynote Speaker, Kevin Stolarick, Martin Prosperity Institute
5:50 – 6:00 p.m. Closing Remarks

There is no cost to attend this event. Please RSVP by April 3rd, 2012 at:

http://communityinnovationforum.eventbrite.com/

If you have any questions please contact:
Karlee Tarbett- k_tarbett@hotmail.com

or

Victoria Gare – victoria_gare@live.ca

Community Innovation: Forum Knowledge In Action 2012 Invite

Eastern Ontario Development Program (EODP) Announces up to $100,000 non‐repayable available for Business Innovators

Innovation is the creation of unique improvements or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.

Eligibility: Commercial enterprises including individuals, corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, or trusts

Examples of such projects include, but are not limited to, projects that:

Are innovative;

Expand export and/or domestic markets;

Develop economic infrastructure;

Develop and/or maintain economic development networks;

Support tourism, marketing and product development

Eligible Costs may include:

• salaries, wages and employee benefits;
• material and supplies;
• communications, publicity and promotion;
• consultant and other professional services;
• environmental assessments;
• training;
• equipment purchases or leases;
• information technology;
• telecommunications network services;
• transportation and administrative expenses;
• Eligible Costs may also include the cost of equipment and buildings, but will not include the cost of land.

Funding contributions to Private Sector For‐Profit Eligible Project Recipients will be non‐repayable contributions, not to exceed 50% of the total Eligible Project Costs of the approved amount, to a maximum contribution of $100,000.

Partnerships and projects with leveraged funds will be given priority.

Funding contributions to Not‐for‐Profit Eligible Project Recipients, please visit website at www.cdc.on.ca, Eastern Ontario Develop Program

Peterborough Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC) is a provincially incorporated, federally funded lending agency whose mandate includes: Access to Capital, Strategic Community Planning & Development, Economic Development and Business Consulting and Planning

The Peterborough CFDC has been helping small business in the City and County of Peterborough since September, 1985.  It has invested $20 million in small business enterprises assisting over 639 businesses.  The CFDC has created or maintained more than 2,600 jobs since its incorporation.

The Centre of Excellence in Goat Research,

will be seeking expressions of interest, in respect to goat research proposals. The call will focus on research in three broad areas:

• Market Penetration/Development andApplied Research
• Genetics
• Production and Animal Health

In order to provide interested applicants with information regarding the Centre of Excellence and the proposal process, a workshop will be held,

Friday, February 10^th, 2012

The Arboretum, Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1

12:30 – 4:00 p.m.

For Directions please click the link http://www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum/Rentals/Directions.htm

Please confirm your attendance, ASAP to

Shannon Clark

sclark@innovationcluster.ca

705-748-1011 ext: 7392

There are always lessons from history if we take the time to search them out.  It seems as though Peterborough is going through an economic transformation and there are lessons from past transformations that can shed some light on what needs to be done.

Peterborough, in general terms, has seen two quite different economic eras—an era when natural resources and agriculture dominated—the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a manufacturing era that was at its peak in the middle of the last century. Between these two eras was a period of transformation. In this period new ways of doing business began to emerge, new roles for government became clearer, even the roles within families and families themselves changed to take advantage of the new opportunities of the manufacturing era.

All indications are that we have all the pieces in place that can lead to a new era of prosperity here in Peterborough. We have a creative class that can lead innovation. We have the resources—people, money, and technologies—necessary to move forward. The question is: Do we have the will to embrace new ways of doing business, new roles for government, new approaches to education, etc., so that we can use the resources we have at hand to their best advantage? How can we combine and integrate what we do have in creative, productive ways.

If you’d like to read more on this topic check out click here.

M-Trilogix: Giving Business a Return on their IT investment…..Cloud Computing and Distributed Solutions Provider

The Innovation Cluster will be providing highlights of its members and patrons throughout the New Year.  The Innovation Cluster works with our members to help facilitate economic development through innovation.

I would like to welcome M-Trilogix as the newest member of the Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster.  M-Trilogix is based in Toronto Canada with partners and offices in the US and Europe. They make businesses more competitive through Cloud and Mobile Computing solutions.  They have over 10 years experience in developing and deploying distributed software solutions for medium sized and larger corporations in the following domains:

- Cloud Computing

- Sales Force Automation

- Warehouse and Logistics management

- Mobile hand-held solutions

As well, they have launched a Cloud initiative in Water Management -Clean Lakes Software www.cllss.org .

This new endeavour is a software information platform to aggregrate all relevant data around lake, water and water-shed management. Their cloud-computing database structure will combine and aggregate all information around water management which now exists in stand-alone silos. They will provide pertinent data around water management including: scientific analysis, research and studies, historical data, source conditions, trends, tools and solutions.

By creating such a platform governments and researchers can more effectively manage water resources and resolve problems such as pollution; aggregate contamination; agricultural runoff; septic leakage; unnatural flora and fauna growth; quality and drinkability and portability.  The idea is to centralize all the relevant information and data-warehouse it, generating information to end-users through various reporting formats based on enquiries which use complex search terms or data relationships. The platform will integrate with existing GIS and database systems, turning the silos of information into a seamless platform.

Listen to Stuart Harrison of the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce talk about the benefits of the Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster to MyPtbo.

Click Here MyPtbo-StuartHarrison – Innovation

With Canada suffering less than most industrial nations from the global economic malaise we tend to think that we are ahead in the economic ‘game.’ In fact, for more than a decade we have lagged behind in productivity – for instance, the production of goods and services per worker – than most industrial nations. Each year the gap between us and other, more productive, nations gets bigger. We talk – more like whisper – about this, but we rarely do anything concrete about it. We wait for something to happen that we turn us around. Maybe a decade of waiting is long enough. It is time to act. In 2012 let’s stop waiting for big government, bigger corporations, the rest of the world, or the ‘universe’ to do it for us and do what it takes, right here in Peterborough, to become more productive.

We can think of it this way. We, in Peterborough, have received a Christmas present – a new jigsaw puzzle. In its sturdy box, the puzzle contains all the pieces we need to solve the productivity puzzle. We’ve unwrapped the puzzle, looked at the picture on the front of the box, but we have not yet opened the box. Between Christmas and New Years we’ve talked to family and friends about the picture on the box (no one seems to know exactly what it is – kind of abstract, it seems), so we still haven’t opened it.

According to the instructions there are pieces that represent aspects of the work being done at Fleming College, Trent University, PRHC, OMNR, GE, Siemens, SGS Lakefield Research, Rolls Royce, QTG Pepsico-Frito Lay, Operitel, McColl Turner, LLF, Merit Precision, Steel Works, Page Design, the City and County of Peterborough, a vibrant and creative downtown, talented and ambitious people, and enough technology to sustain much larger communities than Peterborough. Still, we’re talking more about putting the pieces together than actually trying to do it. We are not alone in this. Many communities are in the same situation. The competitive reality is that the community that puts the puzzle together first will reap the greatest economic benefit.

When we finally open the box and spread the pieces on the table there is one thing we can be sure of. The puzzle will not be put together by the invisible hand of the market. It will only come together from our will to act, and the action itself.

We, in Peterborough, have all the pieces – resources – we need but we need to complete it but we need a new way to put this difficult puzzle together. Old ways of putting puzzles together simply will not work. We need to creatively and collectively find new ways to solve the puzzle – news ways to benefit from the resources available for us to use – and we need to do it right here in Peterborough.