How Alberta Innovates Plans to Streamline Support System for Local Entrepreneurs

Alberta’s primary innovation engine is redesigning how it supports entrepreneurs in the province.

Alberta Innovates provides funding, programs, and facilities to accelerate research and innovation for entrepreneurs throughout the region.

The organization last year conducted a “comprehensive program review,” and in response launched a new “Strategic Plan.”

The new business plan, effective through 2028, gives Alberta Innovates “a clear direction.”

This direction is toward “a more connected, faster, and easier-to-navigate system that puts the innovator’s path to commercialization at the centre of everything.”

Alberta Innovates is now eyeing a more “consistent and user-friendly experience for innovators,” according to a recent statement.

“The world around us has changed, and our approach must change with it,” chief executive officer Mike Mahon commented in the report. “We must evolve as an organization—from how we operate, to how we work with stakeholders, to how we invest.”

This includes faster access to funding for startups, a more collaborative partner-based approach to supporting innovators, and an ongoing trimming of legacy curriculum.

Immediate impact includes the organization halting acceptances for six different programs at the end of May, such as Alberta Digital Traction and Industry Commercialization Associates.

Applications submitted before the May 29 deadline will continue to be reviewed, however, and all existing funding agreements remain in place.

Intake is still expected to continue in other areas, including One Health and Energy, Aerospace, Defence, and Advanced Materials.

Alberta Innovates intends to roll out an evolved and updated suite of programs this summer, stating that the redesigned programs will feature a single entry point into the organization’s full range of financial and technological supports.

Mahon remarked last year that the org is “deepening collaboration with our technology and innovation ecosystem” because “advancing innovation requires strong connections—across disciplines, between sectors, and beyond provincial borders.”

“We’re linking innovators, researchers and entrepreneurs, government and industry, capital and ideas,” he stated, while “elevating Alberta’s profile on the world stage to attract partners who can help scale our innovations, technologies, and supply chains globally.”