BC digital tech supercluster looks to bring outcomes of research projects beyond regional, country borders

A British Columbia-based consortium is seeking funding through the Innovation Supercluster Initiative (ISI) to research and to develop digital technology products and services for the domestic and foreign markets. The consortium recently released an Executive Summary of its proposal which includes sample projects (see chart) that focus on addressing challenges and trends around big data and digitization in different industries.

Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster is one of nine consortia shortlisted last year under the ISI to compete for $950 million over five years under a matching scheme. Three to five superclusters from across the country are expected to be chosen early this year.

The proposed projects of the BC Digital Technology Supercluster have applications in health, natural resources and for industrial use but with primary focus on big data –  its acquisition, visualization and storage -  as well as data analysis, says Bill Tam, co-chair of the supercluster and immediate past president of the BC Tech Association.

“The real capability here in BC is the visualization level with the growth of virtual, augmented and mixed reality, as data becomes more complex and more voluminous,” says Tam in an interview with RE$EARCH MONEY. “Our focus is taking the core data elements which are the data acquisition engines of the Internet of Things. … BC has had the benefit of companies that have built capabilities in 3D virtualization and VR and augmented reality.”

Tam adds that in BC alone there’s already data that companies in natural resources, health and other sectors have collected. If properly combined and leveraged, these data sets can yield greater insights and discoveries and better outcomes, he adds. And they can be adopted across Canada. “The future of how data and digitalization will be envisioned, and the applications of these across industry sectors can yield tremendous benefits for Canada outside of BC,” says Tam.

In its submission, the consortium cited industry data indicating the explosion of data and opportunities in other emerging technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, and cloud and quantum computing. For example, the proposal says that by “2020, the accumulated digital universe of data will grow from 4.4 zettabytes today to around 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.” By 2021, “the global VR/MR/AR (virtual/mixed/augmented reality) market will grow from being smaller than BC’s forestry sector to twice as big as Canada’s oil and gas industry, or bigger than the entire BC economy,” the proposal states.

Tam says BC is better positioned for these opportunities because of the province’s strategic advantages, including its location on the west coast, which is close to the Asia Pacific markets, and its proximity to the Cascadian Innovation Corridor, which includes Seattle, WA, headquarters of technology giants Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com, Inc. The supercluster also boasted provincial technology revenues reaching $26 billion per year, making BC the fastest growing technology sector in the country.

“We believe that we’re well positioned from a BC perspective because we’re fortunate to pull together a consortium that has a broad collaboration of industry players,” adds Tam.

The consortium has grown to include more than 200 members, including 25 post-secondary institutions and more than a dozen large companies from different industries, including LifeLabs, TimberWest, Urthecast and Avcorp. Some of the founding members of the consortium include big names such as Telus, Microsoft, Teck Resources, Change Healthcare and Providence Health Care. Other large organizations such as Shoppers Drug Mart, Canfor, GE Digital, Terry Fox Research Institute, University Health Network and SickKids later joined the consortium to be included in the full proposal.

Total committed funding exceeds $500 million. Along with ISI funding, the consortium is projected to generate up to 50,000 new jobs in 10 years and an estimated $15 billion in incremental GDP.

Tam says that their consortium is unique in that, right from start, it includes customers and adopters of technology. “The key for this consortium … is to actually create the conditions where no single company would have proceeded with the project but through this consortium,” Tam says. “There is a natural buy-in from the customers who would adopt this technology right into the system. It’s not just a series of research projects (because there) is the hope that there would be a customer at the end. There’s a collaboration, co-creation, co-development model right from the beginning.”

He says this is strategic because Canada is a small domestic market. “You have to create the conditions where you have winning products and solutions right from the very beginning so that you can shorten the time window by which you actually create something that is more just what the Canadian domestic market would want. Ultimately if we produce the kind of products that are valuable here, then we can create paths to greater export outcomes as well.”

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