There has been a lot of talk lately about superclusters and innovation corridors. So what? Why should local citizens and businesses care?
The supercluster concept is a high-tech collaboration strategy aimed at bringing companies, academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations together to foster growth and create jobs. It’s a made-in-Canada Silicon Valley meant to create tens of thousands of jobs.
The federal government has committed $950 million to fund five superclusters across Canada. One of those is the advanced manufacturing supercluster in the Toronto — Waterloo Region Innovation Corridor, with Milton as the geographic centre of that corridor.
Milton’s economic development strategy is dedicated to bringing knowledge-based employment and partnerships for innovation to our community. That strategy, combined with Milton’s abundance of highly-skilled, highly educated local talent, makes us an ideal partner in the innovation corridor. With the expectation the superclusters will help create more than 13,500 new high-skilled, well-paying, middle-class jobs and add more than $13.5 billion to our national economy over the next 10 years, that’s an incredible opportunity. It’s why Miltonians should care about superclusters and innovation corridors.
Ten chambers of commerce and boards of trade, including the Milton chamber, have formed a team to build up the corridor. It’s called Canada’s Innovation Corridor Business Council (CICBC).
To support CICBC and ensure local technology businesses play an active role in advanced manufacturing supercluster (AMS) projects, our Milton chamber has also created the AMS Milton Working Group, chaired by Richard Bolton (Centricity360). The working group is made up of individuals from Halton Region, the Town of Milton, Milton Education Village Innovation Centre, as well as people from Silicon Halton, Haltech, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and other private technology companies.
The AMS Milton Working Group’s current focus is asset mapping, or the creation of a database of local tech and ancillary businesses that might be able to partner on supercluster projects.
The end goal is to ensure that local technology businesses play an active role in the supercluster and that Milton shines as a leader in innovation.
