Greetings!
We end 2012 and look to 2013 with inspiration from Ralph Benmergui who asks us: how can we dare to be great ? At HalTech, it's something that we strive for every day. How can we help our clients be great ? How can we build great partnerships ? How can we help the Halton community be greater ? Thank you for being a part of HalTech's year of growth and change. We look forward to 2013 being filled with great events, new opportunities and the chance to help our clients dare to be great !
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What's Hot ?!
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Client Services and Portfolio growth over the Past Year:
This past year HalTech has gone through a considerable metamorphosis and, in our own way, we've journeyed through the life of a start-up ourselves. The Innovation Center went through its own R&D effort and implemented a product/service suite of offerings that was similar to those offered across the ONE network. Consequently, we went into customer acquisition mode to validate our services with our target market here in Halton.
Our engagement and feedback from the Halton community across all four municipalities has been, and continues to be, a great asset to the success of HalTech and its client companies. We have learned over the past months what companies need in the community to start, grow and thrive. Through that, we have catered to these needs through our resources in addition to partnering with other Halton based organizations sharing a similar mandate.
Our successes speak for themselves, with over 83% growth in our client portfolio since May and over $6 million in investment dollars raised for those clients. Being recognized by the community and tech leaders alike as a knowledge base for all that is tech has been a great achievement. We are looking forward to taking this momentum into 2013 and continuing to help the Halton Tech community grow and thrive.
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Come On Out
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With December coming to a close, we at HalTech would like to take this opportunity to thank our clients, sponsors, mentors and staff for a great 2012. It has been a very successful year with a lot of great events. Our most recent, the Innovation Lunch Series with Ralph Benmergui, brought guests together in the beautiful Sheridan College Library atrium to see how disruptive innovation could produce better students. Looking to 2013, here are some of our plans:
January 11, 2013: P2P Marketing - topic to be determined 10:00 -11:30am Sheridan College, Trafalgar Campus: Innovation Seminar Room
January 25, 2013: Creating Your Opportunities - Social Innovation with Kanika Gupta 12:00 - 1:00pm Sheridan College, Hazel McCallion Campus
We are expanding our peer groups to include a Need To Know (N2K) group that will meet to discuss operational issues for new or seasoned business owners. Plans are already in the works for our next successful Halton Entrepreneurship event as well as other partnered events in the Halton community.
Look to our website for more details !
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From the President
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As we close off 2012 I wanted to extend a sincere thank-you from all of us here at HalTech for your business, confidence, and time over the last 12 months. We have started to see a positive up-kick in results, funding and reputation - much of which because of your interest and support.
2013 will offer many opportunities for the organization to capitalize on the rich experience, talent and financial assets we have here in the Halton Region. HalTech is fortunate within Halton to have access to a diverse population of experienced, well educated and financially secure individuals. From this pool of rich resources, we draw our mentors and supporters to grow and support the entrepreneurial base in the region. It is by capitalizing on Halton's fast growing population of youth and young professionals and combining innovation with our base of experienced residents, that we will develop a unique and scalable model to roll out for the tech community.
The HalTech Board, team and I are looking forward to working with all of you over the next year to strengthen and grow the base of clients, support programs and positive results we have begun to develop and foster over the last 12 months.
Happy New Year to you all. |
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Sincerely,
The HalTech Team
HalTech Regional Innovation Centre |
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Spotlight on Success
Dare To Be Great
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Each one of us on the HalTech team took away something different (and amazing) from the December Lunch Speaker's Series, which featured Sheridan's Ralph Benmergui, Executive Advisor to President Jeff Zabudsky. The series is presented by the Office of Applied Research and Innovation in partnership with HalTech, and is sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Benmergui's talk, called "Dare to be Great," focused on the evolution of education and educators, and the new ways that industry and business must partner with post-secondary institutions and students. "We have to go beyond teaching hard skills," he says. "We have to invest in the entire human being. We're no longer talking about 'job-ready' or 'just-in-time' graduates because our students may have five careers in their lifetimes. They need to be agile and adaptable, and industry needs to understand this and invest in this with us." Benmergui says the Sheridan Creative Campus (Sheridan's focus on releasing the creative potential of each student) is about critical thinking, and "not asking people for average." He says today's students want to make a difference, not just be clever, and this is what inspires the best kind of innovation. "You have to feel for the people you're creating for," he says. "Anyone can innovate. Everyone is creative. Innovation happens when you're not trying to be clever, you're trying to be compassionate." The team at HalTech works hard every day to help those who think big and strive for excellence in creating products and processes that enhance people's lives. Contact us so we can help you dare to be great !
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