President Hamdullahpur opens day two of the Waterloo Innovation Summit

Thank you, Amanda for that introduction.  

And thank you David, both for your remarks, and for serving as Chair of this, the fourth Waterloo Innovation Summit.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ministers Navdeep Bains and
Bardish Chagger, colleagues and all of our guests, welcome to the University of Waterloo.

We are honoured to host you here on campus this first full day of the Summit.

I enjoyed connecting with many of you last night at the opening reception, and I look forward to meeting and speaking with more of you over the next two days.  

When I look out at this group today, I can’t help but think this is the perfect audience to tackle our theme: Growth – the Innovation Imperative.

Business innovators, policy makers, and university members connecting on ideas for growing our economy, creating brand new possibilities and enriching our society.

It’s the right conversation for growth in the midst of this Fourth Industrial Revolution.

And it is happening in the right place – Waterloo region.

Minister Bains, we are honoured that you and your colleagues are playing such a significant role in this Summit.

Minister, you said something recently which resonated with me.

It was in an op-ed you wrote for the Toronto Star.

You said that we need to adopt innovation as a national value, and part of our national culture.

You are right.

In many ways, the Waterloo region is a testament to that very notion of values and culture supporting a hub for innovation.

A collaborative, entrepreneurial optimism flows throughout our academic and research institutions, within local governments, and across the broad spectrum of businesses that flourish here.

So Ministers, as I said earlier, you have come to the right place.  

We whole heartedly support the concept of a national, inclusive Innovation Agenda, which all of us will have the opportunity to help shape.

The University of Waterloo, together with Communitech, is very proud to provide this forum, to move the innovation agenda forward.

How does a university like Waterloo increase our contributions to the growth imperative of innovation?

At the core of our mission of course is to create talent and knowledge as the foundation for our key differentiating strengths.

We will continue to offer the world’s largest co-operative education program of its kind, spanning more than 60 countries and including more than 6,300 employers.

We will continue to attract the most entrepreneurial researchers and students by supporting the policy that the creator, not the university, owns his or her IP.    As a result, the number of patents generated here are at numbers three times the national average (631 per million).

We will continue to run the largest free startup incubator on any campus in the world.    Companies in our Velocity family of programs have now attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. 

But --- we are not content with the status quo.

In this age of disruption, we need to disrupt ourselves.

We need to take risks.   We need to be bold.   We want to be first in the world.

Take quantum computing.  

A shining example of deepest level fundamental research with enormous potential for commercialization – all in full partnership with government and industry funders.

Quantum computing and devices will change technology as we know it.  And Waterloo researchers have the unrelenting ambition not only to do the deep research, but also to drive the practical applications: in medicine, navigation, the environment – and beyond.

So last week Waterloo was the grateful recipient of $76 million dollars in funding from the Government of Canada for the Transformative Quantum Technologies initiative led by our Institute for Quantum Computing

Thank you again, Ministers, for this visionary partnership.

Next, the University of Waterloo will transform how we collaborate with industry and government to open the door on the full spectrum of innovation.

Our vision is to create a dynamic link between research, industry and disruptive startups.

For industry partners, this new front door will provide expert concierge, disruption analysis, project management and navigation services through the university innovation ecosystem.

We believe this is a powerful way to unlock the talent, insight and invention that lives inside our university so that we can more fully realize the economic benefits for Canadians.

We are determined to make access to disruptive innovation faster and easier.  

We have talked to many of you about this opportunity which we call -- the Global Entrepreneurship and Disruptive Innovation Initiative.

Or GEDI for short.  This name just kind of stuck.  

We will have more details to share in the next few weeks – including how GEDI can help to strongly anchor this end of the Toronto Waterloo Innovation Corridor.

Waterloo is proud to produce world leading talent to power the innovation revolution.  But we do much more than that.

Institutions like the University of Waterloo create the environment where connections that enable innovation are made.  

Connections between brilliant ideas, discovery and invention, AND the economic and social needs of our nation and world.

This Summit is also about making those same connections, to help our society and economy achieve the growth imperative.

The University of Waterloo and Communitech are pleased  to bring you this Summit because only by engaging — directly and personally — can we accomplish the growth imperative: for individual innovators, for Waterloo, for Canada, and the world.

I am very pleased to now introduce the Honourable Navdeep Bains.

Minister Bains will share with us his vision as he leads the Government of Canada’s ambitious Innovation Agenda.

Minister Bains is the Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Malton and was appointed Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development last November.

I’m proud to say that Minister Bains was an adjunct lecturer at the Master of Public Service Program here at Waterloo.

Minister, you’re bringing our experiential education theme to an impressive new level.

Thanks in part to Minister Bains’ leadership, universities have a strong partner in the Government of Canada.

Ladies and gentlemen, our friend and colleague, the Honourable Navdeep Bains.