Edmonton needs buyer-led innovation, MIT REAP cohort says

Entrepreneurs in the Edmonton region are full of good ideas, but all of that creativity is for naught if they're solving problems that no one wants to pay for, the Edmonton cohort of the MIT Regional Entrepreneurial Acceleration Program has concluded. MIT REAP Edmonton — made up of representatives from startups, government, corporations, risk capital, and post-secondary institutions — has spent the past two years analyzing Edmonton's innovation ecosystem and entrepreneurial capacity, as well as attending in-person workshops in Boston and Germany with regional cohorts from around the world.

Christiana Manzocco, director of investments at Alberta Enterprise Corporation, said the cohort determined through engagement that Edmonton's innovation ecosystem falls short on the demand side. "What that means is not necessarily about the startups and what they're producing, but who down the line actually wants those solutions," Manzocco said at an Edmonton Startup Week event on Oct. 6. "If we only have startups in an ecosystem and we don't have anyone ready to receive or pay for what they're building, then we have a mismatch." The group has decided its "must-win battle" should be to engage more organizations to surface and share business problems that they are willing to pay for. Manzocco said the first place to apply the model is in defence and dual-use technologies, but it can work across sectors.

Though the cohort has now ended this partnership with MIT, participants said they are determined to keep the momentum going. Edmonton Unlimited will be the backbone organization administering a steering committee aimed at retaining and furthering lessons learned through the program, as well as evaluating the progress on the must-win battle. The group will have a slightly different name, dropping the "MIT" and changing the P in REAP to Partnership. It will include the original delegation in the MIT cohort as founding members, as well as general members who join going forward.