Calgary Challenging Start-ups to ‘Think Green’

The City of Calgary’s Innovation Challenge seeks to make Calgary a more resilient community through innovative energy solutions.

Individuals, teams, and businesses from around the world are invited to pitch an idea for a pre-commercial venture, a commercial-ready product that just needs a push, or a new way to improve policies and processes.

Finalists will get to meet with experts and mentors from the community to help refine their business cases and then pitch their ideas to a panel of community and business leaders led by Mayor Nenshi. The winners will work with the City of Calgary and ENMAX to further refine their idea, and with Western Economic Diversification Canada to discuss opportunities to garner support from the federal government.

Challenge-based procurements are being offered throughout Canada to tackle community issues while driving economic development. Notable examples include:

• Kingston, Ontario – Student-led teams pitching ideas to make a smarter, more livable, leading city.
• Guelph, Ontario – Through their Civic Accelerator, they have created solutions for complex municipal problems by embedding private-sector start-ups inside their civic administration.
• Edmonton, Alberta – Community Solutions Accelerator was formed to create a collaborative and innovative forum that changes the way it approaches local challenges and solutions.

This isn’t the first time the City of Calgary has hosted a challenge like this. In fact, all of the cities mentioned in this article have held prior competitions with positive results.

Competitions like this fuel innovative thinking, which benefits the whole community when executed effectively. Perhaps it's time to consider hosting your own innovation challenge.

For more information on challenge-based procurements or municipal innovation challenges, contact dblackburn [at] auma.ca (subject: Challenge%20inquiry) (Dan Blackburn), AUMA's Senior Director of Growth & Innovation.