After almost three years, it is time for me to say farewell to my role at Global Advantage.I’m please to say we’ve accomplished much during the last three years. Global Advantage has grown from a small, three-person consultancy to a dynamic, scaling company with a new downtown location, a newly-created software division with two excellent developers, a wonderful network of consultants working on a wide range of projects.
We’ve expanded enough to hire groups of coop students year-round, and I’m proud to say that we’ll be hiring our first graduate from these students in September.
We’ve also expanded the mapping, with more than 20 new mapping projects completed or underway. Looking back, the list is quite incredible: we’ve mapped Canadian industrial sectors such Oil and Gas, Nanotechnology, Regenerative Medicine, and Forestry. We’ve mapped organizations and their impact on their ecosystems, including the University of Toronto, the University of Concordia, MaRS, the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, and Ontario Genomics. And we’ve mapped ecosystems such as the Canadian Knowledge Transfer ecosystem, the College Applied Research ecosystem, and Technology Clusters in Canada.
Our website has been modernized, and our marketing processes are going through a full revitalization, including this newsletter. Our blog now has regular contributors sharing thoughtful insights about pertinent issues affecting Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
Global Advantage is also expanding into software. Looking to make our maps available online, we hired two developers directly from Algonquin’s amazing Applied Research program to construct a SAAS-based portal and to digitize our maps. This new Digital Maps app is designed to offer clients continuous access to their own map or any other map they might like and is fully compatible with phones, tablets, and laptops. All data are linked back to their original sources, making the map an excellent workstation. Additionally, the service is being expanded to allow continuous updates of the data on the map, so clients will always have the latest picture of any ecosystem available.
I am grateful to all the amazing people who helped to make all this happen: Liisa, our marketing and office manager; Edmer, our graphic designer and web specialist; Shannon, our lead developer; our fantastic coop students; and of course Dave and Dawnita, Global Advantage’s founders.
There will be many incredible opportunities coming for Global Advantage as the firm seeks to foster better public policy through data-driven decision making, and I’m happy to have been a small part in all of this. It has been an excellent experience, both professionally and personally. But, it is time for me to be off on my next adventure.
And so, I am bidding everyone a fond farewell. Thanks to everyone for being part of this journey, and I hope we have the opportunity to collaborate in the future.
