Creative Minds Meet at Niagara Innovation: 2011

A participant at Niagara Innovation: 2011 Contacts to Contracts and Valerie Kuhns, Vice President, Market and Sector Development at Niagara Economic Development Corporation, discuss business in Niagara.
 

Innovation.
It was the one word that kept coming up at a major networking event for Niagara's business leaders in emerging industry clusters last week.
Niagara Innovation: 2011 Contacts to Contracts was billed as "a platform for creative minds to meet, build synergies and discover new ways of thinking."

Dozens of presidents and owners of the region's leading companies  in emerging sectors such as niche bio-product manufacturing; digital media and software development; environmental, energy and other 'green' technologies and health and wellness and life sciences were invited to the event. The diverse mix of companies and industries represented resulted in many cross-sector introductions and inspiring conversations, said organizers.

The event received positive feedback for its innovative and conversation-based format.
Albert Iannuantuono, President of Tri-Media Integrated Marketing Technologies, a marketing and technology company, said he found the "idea sharing and knowledge sharing" to be valuable. Participants were "helping each other out...if we can help someone else, I'm sure other companies would help us."
The event introduced him to the many exciting developments happening in Niagara.

Dr. Yousef Haj-Ahmad, President and CEO of Norgen Biotek Corp., a biotechnology company, agreed, saying Niagara Innovation was an "outstanding event, very timely and very innovative," adding he was happy to "talk to so many people" and is looking forward to seeing Niagara become a place known for growing and maturing companies.

"Collaboration among companies from a diverse range of industries is essential," said N'ora Kalb, Project Coordinator at nGen.
"In today's economy, opportunities exist across industries and sectors. When we gather all of these bright minds into a room, we see that there is no shortage of innovation and innovative capacity in Niagara, which is a sign of this Region's potential to succeed and lead in the global economy."

Valerie Kuhns, Vice President, Market and Sector Development at Niagara Economic Development Corporation, said the opportunity to have such a wide range of professionals in one room served the region's business community well and spurred much-needed discussion.
"Maintaining Niagara's competitiveness is very important to fostering innovation among our companies. This was an excellent opportunity to network and start the dialogue," she said.

nGen also provided a demonstration of its state-of-the-art Motion Capture digital animation equipment at the event, which is used by computer animators and video game designers as a significantly more cost effective alternative to manually animating their characters, said Kristen Nater, co-owner of Fourgrounds Media.

Niagara Innovation 2011: Contacts to Contracts was the inaugural event and formal launch of nGen (who hosted the event) as the new Regional Innovation Centre for Niagara. nGen, a hub for project and business development for Niagara's interactive media sector, has expanded its mandate to suppport entrepreneurs and companies active in the emerging industry clusters in Niagara. The event was held at St. Catharines' Quality Parkway Convention Centre. Partners included the Ontario Network of Excellence, St. Catharines-Thorold Chamber of Commerce and Niagara Economic Development Corporation.