Innovation, Development, Enrichment and Action (IDEA Lab)
Fostering innovation and diversity in British Columbia's SMB sector.
Project Overview
Updated October 10, 2024
This project was cancelled shortly after its initial phase. However, the project expanded the business network of its partners and increased the project team’s access to the latest knowledge on innovation, specifically innovation practices of organizations, including SMEs.
The Problem
There is a significant opportunity to accelerate the rate of post-pandemic economic recovery by quickly improving the quality and quantity of innovation leaders within BC’s SMB sector. With these leaders, BC’s economic engine can generate significantly more value in the form of winning business strategies, innovative business models, and the commercialization of new products and services. Fostering diversity and inclusion is also a key part of economic growth, and a future-focused innovation outlook includes an integrated strategy to prioritize diversity and inclusion.
How We Are Solving It
The IDEA-Lab program will work with up-and-coming innovation leaders within selected BC-based small and medium sized companies and run them through a talent incubator created within their organization. Through a practical framework, IDEA-Lab will work hand-in-hand with these companies looking to inject a continuous supply of fresh ideas and strategies that will evolve their businesses and grow revenue faster. To spark creativity, the chosen individuals will be diverse, curious, adaptable, collaborative, and growth minded.
Led by Evolve Strategies Corp., in partnership with DigiBC and the YWCA Metro Vancouver, the IDEA-Lab program will:
- Help more small and medium sized companies with their innovation and diversity strategies
- Identify and recruit innovation champions in the tech sector, focusing first on mid-level leaders who by nature are curious, creative, collaborative and open-minded
- Focus on building diversity through inclusion of underrepresented groups, including Indigenous peoples, racialized Canadians and members of the LGBTQ community
- Deliver experiential, social and self-directed learning modules for innovation champions
- Support leaders in transforming procedures, products and corporate culture to drive growth beyond the pandemic
The IDEA-Lab consortium will initially produce a report that aggregates feedback from 50 or more companies to pinpoint innovation challenges to inform the longer-term focus of IDEA-Lab. The team will also develop an interactive learning component with course descriptions, lesson plans and assessment materials to enable the program to carry on with new cohorts in other industries.
