British Columbia Innovation Council

Last week I had the honour of sitting on the admissions panel for the brand new Entrepreneurship@Wavefront program out of Wavefront AC, the community-based commercialization centre supporting the growth of Canada's wireless and new media development companies. Entrepreneurship@Wavefront, in partnership with BCIC, will support and nurture up to eight early-stage BC wireless companies from concept to commercialization over 12 months.

The call for applications in July attracted more than 35 applications from emerging wireless companies - a number that, from my perspective, highlights the significant need for business acceleration programs such as this. Encouraging startup growth in this cluster is important, with over 250 companies in the Vancouver wireless sector that generates approximately $1 billion in revenue and employs 5500 people. It's clear that BC startups are looking for opportunities to take their companies and ideas to the next step.

And BCIC, with our mission to promote entrepreneurial development and the commercialization of technology, is dedicated and focused on creating those opportunities. Through partnerships with industry and academia, BCIC, through our Entrepreneruship@ programs at Wavefront, UBC and UVic so far, is slowly shaping BC's entrepreneurship ecosystem to support technology startups from concept to commercialization in a way that hasn't been done in our province before.

I'm excited to see where the eight wireless companies in the Entrepreneurship@Wavefront program net out at the end of this 12 month program.

Here are the eight participating companies:

• Awesense Wireless - who designed a platform solution to help utility companies identify electrical distribution losses to quickly and easily increase efficiencies and recover lost revenue
• D2D Campaign Solutions - who provide a mobile campaign platform to augment face-to-face communications in building and mobilizing a support base
• ikamobile Limited - who created Movie Finder to help Android users search for movies playing at local cinemas in 16 countries
• Marine Drive Mobile - who deliver universal accessibility for people with visual and dexterity challenges
• PortaLife Solutions, Inc. - who develop mobile solutions for healthy lifestyles including CarrotLines, a mobile application to help consumers make informed buying decisions based on their dietary and lifestyle preferences
• QR Loyalty - who increases customer loyalty and profits for restaurant operators by enabling customers to participate in a loyalty program on a self-serve basis using their smartphones
• Revonet Consulting Inc. - whose Memor appointment solutions software that uses wireless phones to synchronize appointments between businesses and their customers
• Single Digit Labs - who are creating new and captivating ways of using camera smartphones

Press release: Wavefront, BCIC announce BC companies picked for entrepreneurship program

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