Board of Directors

Left to right: Marie-Claude Côté, Gary Albach, John McDougall, Pierre Galarneau, Jim Smith, Laurier Schramm

Absent: Trevor Cornell, Alan Potter

Innoventures Canada Inc. (I-CAN^TM) was founded, in part, to link together Canada’s research and technology organizations (RTOs) with each other to improve Canada’s performance in commercializing research, thereby strengthening our national innovation system. I-CAN^TM is essential - there is a broadly recognized need for Canada to strengthen its innovation performance as a means of maintaining and improving Canada’s global competitiveness. With the addition of the National Research Council (NRC) as a member, we have increased our technological "depth" and we have substantially strengthened our coast-to-coast "reach" in Canada.

I-CAN^TM continues to work to help Canada’s RTOs come together to work on projects of regional and/or national interest that will enable industry to solve large technology problems and challenges that would be too broad, expensive or risky for any one individual RTO to address alone. I-CAN’s first major collaborative project, Carbon Algae Recycling System (CARS), is ready to move to a pre-pilot/demonstration stage and the Mountain Pine Beetle Project successfully completed its evolution through the full-scale demonstration and commercialization stages. New projects are continually being explored with potential partners and clients.

I-CAN^TM also continues to work to help strengthen Canada’s RTOs. The I-CAN^TM Innovation School is addressing the need for education and training in innovation and in the components and workings of effective innovation systems. The Second Annual Innovation School will be held later in 2011, focusing on the Canadian innovation system and on program development.

The I-CAN^TM Report 2011 theme is Accessing the System. There is an internal and an external meaning to this. Having the federal government’s premier research and development organization as a member provides a means for regional RTOs to access the federal innovation system. More importantly, Canadian companies can now access the majority of Canada’s applied research and development capacity through a single portal: I-CAN^TM. I encourage any Canadian company with a big technological challenge or opportunity to contact us.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to welcome Grant McVicar, I-CAN’s^TM new Chief Executive Officer. I would also like to thank our Board of Directors, our I-CAN^TM Member representatives and advocates and the many I-CAN^TM member employees that have worked so hard to help us grow and strengthen Innoventures Canada.

Dr. Laurier Schramm
Chair of the Board, 2011