The Ontario Chamber of Commerce with key partners and sponsors celebrated business success at the 28th annual Ontario Business Achievement Awards featuring the Ontario Global Trader Awards on September 20th, 2010.

12 Outstanding Business were recognized for their tenacity, creative vision, export excellence and entrepreneurial spirit. Read more about this event: http://occ.on.ca/2010/09/28th-annual-ontario-business-achievement-awards/

OES welcomes three new speakers to our agenda!

Thought leaders (listed below) from each of these organizations will be joining us at the 6th Annual Summit.

Big Impact Infrastructure

Fausto Natarelli – Director, Ministry of Transportation
Bringing knowledge from the Windsor Border Initiatives Implementation Group

A Knowledge Driven, Creative Economy: Our Pathway to Prosperity

Dr. Diana Pliura – President, ALBRY Inc. & Entrepreneur In Residence, The Health Technology Exchange (HSX)
HSX supports the growth of a dynamic, prosperous Ontario medical and assistive technologies industry sector.

Sara Diamond – President, Ontario College of Art and Design
OCAD is Canada’s “University of the Imagination”

Check out the preliminary agenda to find out more!

Blog submitted by Sara Diamond – President, Ontario College of Art and Design

We have a terrific opportunity in Ontario to leverage creative industries; introduce design thinking and methods to traditional industries and use the digital revolution to leap forward.  Ontario cultural industries, representing content, services and platforms, are economically important, with an 8% growth rate since 2000; billions of dollars of profit each year and high-paying knowledge-industry jobs, and with a strong ethnic diversity that can reach global and Canadian markets. Technology strengths include micro-electronics for display technologies, animation, mobile technology and applications. While the GTA is the powerhouse, through effective clustering these industries have positive impacts on local economies. Migrating into Ontario are two international gaming companies, Electronic Arts and UbiSoft; their presence is testimony to existing capacity in Ontario—they will stimulate the further development of Canadian gaming companies. 

Here are three proposals:

Ontario has the fourth most powerful design labor force in North America and Ontario has top ranked PSE design programs.  We have the talent, but too few Ontario manufacturers hire this talent base. Studies show that manufacturing industries that take advantage of design knowledge thrive. They develop unique intellectual property; they diversify products effectively; they find business efficiencies and anticipate consumer trends and demand. Designers can look at existing technology and imagine new applications. Designers have the skills to collaborate with workers on the shop floor who are an under utilized source of creative ideas for new products and processes for their industries. Let’s create incentives to bring design companies, designers and design researchers together with the manufacturing sector to help traditional industry thrive. 

Core industrial sectors, such as financial and health services are going digital, and mobile. This transition requires fastidious attention to the interface between humans and the technology working in the background.  That is a cultural problem.  Significant profits can be made by bringing together creative industries, service industries, and the mobile sector.  Ontario has capacity in these areas, but requires action on policy and investment to ensure that companies are internationally competitive.  

Digital media is booming and can continue to boom, with national as well as international markets. Digital media is rooted in traditional cultural knowledge and production. While technology platforms, content enablers and creative content have often developed side by side, without strategic integration, there is growing success in intertwining capacities, through clustering related industries together, providing research capabilities to industries through our post-secondary sector and creating efficiencies within production and distribution.  Ontario firms need capitalization to grow to the next stage, as well as business development support and cross-sector match-making.

We can have our Silicon Valley, and more.

As an example of Ontario talent Xenophile Media, Toronto, continues to win prestigious international Emmys!

Ontario Students developing their talent: OCAD/Telus Design Collaboration.

Sara Diamond
President, Ontario College of Art and Design

For the first time, Fortune has opened its coveted list of the 100 fastest growing companies up to non American firms, and what do you know, but RIM, proudly Ontarian, has topped the list.

Fortune credits RIM’s dominance in the business mobile market as well as its ability to meet its challengers in the consumer market. Of course, the numbers speak for themselves: three year average earnings-per-share growth of 84%; annualized revenue growth of 77%; and a three year annualized return of 45% of its shares.

Chairman and Co-CEO, James Balsillie, participated at the inaugural Ontario Economic Summit and RIM has been represented on our delegate list almost every year since then.  RIM is also a member of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.

Paul Rowan co-founder and VP Design joins the 6^th annual OES to talk about the creative economy.

Paul is a natural addition to our panel – known as the “heart and soul” of Umbra, Paul leads a design team of 30 bright, creative minds, challenging the team to constantly think outside the box. Paul’s efforts result in new designs being developed each day for every room in our homes.  

With Paul’s participation, this panel is sure to help you discover how to inject a little more creativity into your business environment.

Check out the rest of the preliminary program agenda.

Picture by: eyeline_Imagery