Media Releases

Globally impactful organizations and investors honoured by University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab

December 11, 2015

Toron­to, ON – Two world renowned Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tions and a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist are the recip­i­ents of the first annu­al awards pre­sent­ed by the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab (CDL) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

The Lab is a pro­gram which lever­ages the University’s lead­ing fac­ul­ty and indus­try net­work as well as its loca­tion in the heart of Canada’s busi­ness cap­i­tal to accel­er­ate mas­sive­ly scal­able, tech­nol­o­gy-based ven­tures that have the poten­tial to trans­form our social, indus­tri­al, and eco­nom­ic land­scape.

The awards are designed around the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ents in the pre­vail­ing mod­els for eco­nom­ic growth: labour, cap­i­tal, and ideas.

The win­ner of the Labour Award is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo for their Engi­neer­ing and Co-Op pro­gram.  This award rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion that has had a first-order impact on Canada’s com­pet­i­tive­ness through the devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion of human cap­i­tal in the areas of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and com­merce.  While the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo has con­tributed to the bet­ter­ment of Cana­di­an soci­ety in many ways, this award rec­og­nizes the cre­ativ­i­ty, vision, and lead­er­ship of UW’s Engi­neer­ing and Co-op pro­grams that demon­strate a unique and effec­tive mod­el for edu­ca­tion, com­bin­ing schol­ar­ly inquiry, hands-on tin­ker­ing, entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, and pro­fes­sion­al train­ing — and began doing so long before STEM edu­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neur­ship became fash­ion­able.

The win­ner of the Cap­i­tal Award is Haig Far­ris.  This award rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion that has had a first-order impact on Canada’s com­pet­i­tive­ness through the vision­ary appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal to the areas of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and com­merce. Although Mr. Far­ris has con­tributed to the bet­ter­ment of Cana­di­an soci­ety on many dimen­sions, this award rec­og­nizes in par­tic­u­lar his work as a pio­neer of the nation’s tech­nol­o­gy ven­ture cap­i­tal indus­try through the found­ing of Brown, Far­ris & Jef­fer­son Ltd (1968) and Ven­tures West (1973), his edu­ca­tion of entre­pre­neurs, sci­en­tists, and investors on the top­ic of financ­ing through the course he cre­at­ed and taught for over a decade at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia,  and through his lead­er­ship and advo­ca­cy for financ­ing edu­ca­tion and research in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  This award rec­og­nizes Mr. Far­ris’ unre­lent­ing efforts on behalf of Cana­di­ans as a vision­ary financier, lay­ing foun­da­tions for the nation’s future-look­ing allo­ca­tion of cap­i­tal to this sec­tor, decades before tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neur­ship, ven­ture invest­ing, and STEM edu­ca­tion were wide­ly acknowl­edged as impor­tant.

The win­ner of the Ideas Award is the Cana­di­an Insti­tute for Advanced Research (CIFAR.) This award rec­og­nizes an indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion that has had a first-order impact on the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Cana­da through the advance­ment of new ideas in the area of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.   While CIFAR has sup­port­ed Canada’s con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge to ben­e­fit humankind in many fields, this award rec­og­nizes in par­tic­u­lar CIFAR’s sup­port for the curios­i­ty-dri­ven research that led to advances in the area now com­mon­ly referred to as deep learn­ing and relat­ed areas of inquiry.  Although there is now clear evi­dence that devel­op­ments in this field are deliv­er­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic impact and there­fore research is able to attract broad sup­port from a wide range of indus­tries and gov­ern­ment fund­ing agen­cies, CIFAR pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal sup­port for many years when this line of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry was con­sid­ered periph­er­al, risky, and unex­cit­ing among experts in the field.

The awards will be pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence at the Rot­man School on Decem­ber 15 host­ed by the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab on the eco­nom­ics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) called “Machine Learn­ing and the Mar­ket for Intel­li­gence.” The focus of the day-long event is on the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties that AI is spawn­ing: what has already hap­pened, trends, and what the future could look like.

Found­ed by Rot­man Pro­fes­sor Ajay Agraw­al, the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab is a pro­gram based at Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. The Lab lever­ages the University’s lead­ing fac­ul­ty and indus­try net­work as well as its loca­tion in the heart of Canada’s busi­ness cap­i­tal to accel­er­ate mas­sive­ly scal­able, tech­nol­o­gy-based ven­tures that have the poten­tial to trans­form our social, indus­tri­al, and eco­nom­ic land­scape. The Lab has helped many nascent star­tups, includ­ing Atom­wise, Bridg­It, Min­u­um, Nymi, NVBots, OTI Lumion­ics, Push, Thalmic Labs, Per­cep­tiv Labs, Nev­er­frost, Chargespot, and Vote­Com­pass, among oth­ers.

The Lab pro­vides a unique style of mile­stone-based coach­ing with the goal of max­i­miz­ing equi­ty-val­ue cre­ation. Its men­tors are some of Canada’s most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs, with years of expe­ri­ence in build­ing and scal­ing tech­nol­o­gy-based com­pa­nies.   In Fall 2015, the Lab launched a pro­gram that focus­es exclu­sive­ly on Machine Learn­ing (ML) and Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) ven­tures. The addi­tion of this cohort dou­bles the num­ber of ven­tures that par­tic­i­pate in the CDL pro­gram annu­al­ly. To learn more about the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab, vis­it www.creativedestructionlab.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness chal­lenges. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:
Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool