Digital. Transformation.

Through ambitious, collaborative partnerships, we facilitate and fund projects that develop digital products and platforms to transform industries and propel the economic growth of Canada.

Technology R&D Programs

We’re working on the first phase of projects in four Program areas:

Precision Health: Projects that enable the delivery of precision health services domestically and around the world through digital technologies that improve data collection, management and access in environments with global leading security and consent protocols.
Digital Twins: Projects that leverage AR/VR technologies to create real-time, virtual production environments for operations management, simulation, modelling and Training.
Data Commons: Projects that aggregate big data resources from multiple stakeholders into shared platforms for exploration, machine learning and innovative application development.
Capacity Building: Enhance a connected, competitive, and resilient innovation ecosystem, develop a diverse pool of digital talent and support companies to scale.

We announced our first group of projects in March 2019. More information on the projects is available in Project Overviews.

Progress Timeline

In February 2018, our Supercluster was one of five superclusters selected to share in $950 million dedicated by the Government of Canada to the Innovation Supercluster Initiative - an exciting strategy aimed at driving commercially successful innovation, fostering growth and creating jobs across Canada.

Our collaborations allow firms to pursue ambitious projects in a shared investment model, ultimately accelerating the pace of innovation. This will enhance the robustness of the innovation ecosystem, enrich the local supply chain and create more opportunities to develop talent, diversity and capacity in the technology ecosystem.

We selected health, natural resources, and industrial sectors as the starting point, recognizing the strength of these industry sectors in British Columbia. Over time, we will extend the digital technology capabilities to an increasing number of industry sectors, applying key platform technologies, products, and processes to well-defined industrial challenges in each.

We connect a range of digital technology market participants, from start-ups and innovative SMEs to postsecondary institutions, to large multinational corporations. In short, we are the link between technology developers and adopters in the BC, Canadian and global economy.

We’re enabling start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses to gain pathways to customers, markets and partnerships that they could not access on their own, thereby providing them with the opportunity to leverage their expertise and innovations with that of large and multinational enterprises, public sector organizations and academia.

For Canada’s larger firms, we provide an unprecedented opportunity to leverage their expertise and experience with the learnings of other organizations and support heir own digital transformation efforts. For universities and research organizations, we provide platforms to work with multiple private sector partners simultaneously, thereby accelerating the commercial opportunities for their research while creating work-integrated learning opportunities for students.

Benefit to Canadians

Canada becomes a world leader:
Canada is globally recognized as a leader in the development and successful deployment of digital technologies where the world seeks out Canadian expertise and companies for future development of innovative technologies.
Economic growth for Canada:
As digital products and platforms is deployed domestically and internationally, Canadian companies grow, increasing our GDP and the benefits that flow from a robust and successful economic environment.
Job creation:
Jobs are created to both develop and implement technologies, lead and manage projects and deploy and market resulting products and platforms.
Small companies and startups expand their reach:
Start-up companies led by Canadian entrepreneurs and small organizations can join supercluster projects and benefit from the experience and expertise of large enterprises while also leveraging funding and expanding their reach and presence leading to market opportunities for technology products.
Job ready training:
Employee groups who might otherwise not be employed will be exposed to and offered training and education opportunities for ‘new economy’ positions.
Research moves to commercial opportunities:
Researchers and academics are partnering with private sector companies to identify and capitalize on market opportunities for digital technology developments and ideas.
Skills development for employees across multiple organizations:
Employees across multiple organizations are being given the opportunity to be involved in projects through proposal development, research, implementation and management, providing them with skills and experiences not available in any other environment.
Market exposure for SMEs:
Small organizations are introduced to market potential and revenue growth faster and broader than they could do on their own.
Ecosystem building:
Community groups will be able to leverage ideas to expand engagement and workforce participation for under-represented groups through collaborative ecosystem development projects.

Get Involved

There are two ways that your organization can join the Supercluster and start to get involved in collaborative projects designed to build world class digital technologies while growing our ecosystem and capacity as we become a world leader in the digital transformation of our economies and our society.

Join Us