Three of the leading centres that support the growth of new companies in Ontario’s booming high tech and digital media space have come together to offer entrepreneurs access to their shared resources and facilities.
Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, Toronto-based OneEleven and Communitech in Waterloo are now partners in their efforts to accelerate the growth of early stage technology companies and entrepreneurial start-ups working in information and communications technology sectors.
The Digital Media Zone at Ryerson Univerity in Toronto.
People participating in one incubator program will be able to access to the facilities of the other two incubators, and they’ll be able to arrange for a place to hold a business meeting, network with other business developers, and gain additional access to funding agents if not end customers.
Interestingly, one additional advantage in the partnership was described by Brendan Dellandrea, DMZ’s director of marketing and communications, as a way to ease the process for entrepreneurs who travel between the two technology hubs.
Shortly after the partnership announcement, Toronto Mayor John Tory visited the DMZ, in part to speak about new application for big data analytics in easy traffic congestion (the DMZ is located in downtown Toronto, never far from a traffic jam or congested urban artery).
Tory said that Toronto has fallen behind in its efforts to track and manage traffic flow, and he noted that’s partly due to a lack of reliable and actionable digital data about traffic flow and volume.
The Mayor said that gap can be addressed by working with tech companies starting up at locations like the DMZ, OneEleven or Communitech, companies such as Physicalytics, which has demonstrated its technology application previously.
High tech start-up company Physicalytics conducts a demo at the DMZ.
Physicalytics uses small sensors and sophisticated algorithms to measure and analyze traffic congestion, be it caused by vehicular traffic in and around a downtown urban centre, or by pedestrian traffic at major civic, sporting or entertainment type events.
Another key reason for the incubators’ partnership has to be a kind of truce among what can be seen as competing interests among business incubators and start-up support groups, a fact noted by the Digital Media Zone’s executive director, Valerie Fox, who underscored the value of collaboration among the organizations, each of which has its own strength and value for entrepreneurs. (Fox, by the way, has just announced her plans to leave the DMZ in June.)
The three are among more than 30 business incubators and start-up organizations in Toronto alone that can be easily found online, representing both private and public initiatives. Business development centres can be found in cities large and small, right across the country.
So this latest announcement formalizes a pre-existing albeit informal relationship among these three organizations.
Ryerson’s DMZ launched in 2010, and is now one of Canada’s largest incubators and multi-disciplinary co-working spaces.
OneEleven is a newer accelerator for entrepreneurs building big data enterprises, one that is fuelled by strategic investments from OMERS Ventures and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).
Ryerson is OneEleven’s founding academic partner, helping to develop and support the education component of the accelerator, and it works with other big data incubators.
Communitech’s business incubation and networking facilities.
Qualified startups coming from Ryerson’s zones, including the Digital Media Zone, would be able to graduate to OneEleven if they meet the threshold for admission.
Communitech is based in the high tech Waterloo Region in southern Ontario, and it has enjoyed an informal arrangement with OneEleven for a number of months, one which is expected to grow as a result of the formalization of shared efforts and enhance communications between the incubators to support its cohorts while guarding against misuse.
Communitech companies will be provided access to the same resources available to regular members for up to a week at both locations, during normal office hours. Similarly, when member companies from the DMZ and OneEleven are in the Waterloo Region, they will have access to Communitech.
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submitted by Lee Rickwood
