By Av Utukuri

In my last blog I told you that Canadians seem to be a pretty innovative lot, but that knowing where to turn for help and, particularly, being able to secure funds to move an idea forward, seemed to be the major obstacles faced by Canadian innovators.

A few years ago I decided that, instead of simply talking about the situation, someone should do something proactive to try and address it. And so, for the last three years, Nytric has been the sponsor and major prize donor of the Great Canadian Innovation Competition.

We teamed up with Rogers Communications, Canadian Business Magazine and leading Intellectual Property law firm Bereskin and Parr, to promote a competition that is open to all Canadians over the age of majority, and that enables them to compete for a prize of nearly $100K to help them turn their innovative idea into reality.

The quality of the ideas that have been entered in the competition for the last few years certainly shows how innovative Canadians are. It also shows that great ideas are not limited by either age or sex, nor is education a major influence on whether an idea is good or not.

Next month I will talk about some of the entries and winners of the competition, but for now I will simply say that choosing a winner from all of the great entries that we have had, has been the major challenge faced by Nytric. To me, further proof of the innovative nature of this wonderfully diverse country of ours.