As an innovator, you’re building the future—one idea, one risk, one breakthrough at a time. At this year’s Elevate Festival, Innovation Factory joined entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers from across the country to explore how Canada can translate its creativity and research strengths into global impact.

What we heard was clear: the next decade of Canadian innovation will belong to those who can combine bold ideas with the courage to scale, collaborate, and lead.

Elevating Canada’s potential

At Elevate’s Canada’s Moment: Entrepreneurship in an Era of Change panel, voices from across the ecosystem challenged Canada’s innovators to think bigger. Arlene Dickinson, Founder of District Ventures Capital, opened with a simple exercise that said everything about the Canadian entrepreneurial mindset.

She asked the audience to raise their hands as high as they could. Then she asked them to raise them higher. Everyone did. That moment set the tone for the entire discussion. Canadians often hesitate to stand out. We temper ambition so we don’t seem too bold or too confident. But as Dickinson reminded the room, that humility can also hold us back. 

She urged founders to believe they have the right to reach higher, and to ground that belief in three things: a sense of self, a clear value system, and trust in Canada’s potential. Too often, she noted, Canada behaves like a business with one major customer, relying heavily on the United States. To grow stronger, we must think of the world as our market and trust that Canadian companies can compete and lead globally.

According to the OECD and Statistics Canada, Canada invests roughly 1.7 percent of its GDP in research and development, below the G7 average of 2.7 percent. To close that gap, entrepreneurs and accelerators alike must prioritize securing pathways to commercialization and global partnerships, building on Canada’s research expertise.

“We’ve proven that we have the talent to create brilliant ideas,” says David Carter, CEO of Innovation Factory. “The opportunity for the next decade is building up the conditions where those ideas can grow into globally competitive companies without leaving Canadian soil.” 

Scaling beyond borders

Massi Basiri, co-founder of ApplyBoard, shared how early decisions to think globally helped his company reach millions of students worldwide. His advice? Embrace scale early and think in ecosystems, not silos.

As a founder, seeking out accelerators, mentors, and partners who challenge you to look beyond local success can help you design a business built to last.

At Innovation Factory, we regularly see founders with strong technology and vision, ready to scale but looking for the right systems of support. “Our role as an accelerator is shifting,” Carter adds. “Beyond early-stage support, we need to figure out how to sustain local growth and talent while creating pathways for international collaboration and investment.”

Claudette McGowan, CEO of Protexxa and co-founder of The Firehood, added a powerful layer to that vision: mindset. She reminded founders that Canada’s global reputation for trust, diversity, and collaboration is already a competitive advantage. “No country is better poised to serve global customers than Canada,” she said. “We are respected, we are trusted, and the world needs what we build.”

Thinking globally doesn’t mean looking outward at the expense of home. From the start, it means asking:

• Can your business model adapt to different markets or regulatory environments?
• Are your supply chains future-ready?
• Does your brand communicate in a way that transcends geography?

Adopting this mindset early can help you attract investors, talent, and customers who can bring long-term potential back to Canada, fueling a cycle of innovation that benefits the entire ecosystem.

Turning collaboration into competitive growth

Panels on AI, clean technology, and circular economy design underscored another theme: the next wave of innovation will be infrastructure-driven. Whether it’s AI-powered manufacturing, sustainable healthtech, or climate-resilient construction, progress requires deep partnerships between government, academia, and industry.

Nuha Siddiqui, CEO and founder of erthos®, a climate-tech company specializing in biomaterial alternatives to plastics, reminded the audience that innovation can’t thrive in isolation. “Less than 20% of materials in Canada are recycled,” she noted. “Consumers and regulatory markets are interlinked, and we can’t expect change without policy support.” When research institutions and policymakers help start-ups turn breakthroughs into viable products through shared expertise and purpose, that’s when innovation compounds.

That collaborative spirit is Canada’s true competitive edge. Each partnership formed strengthens the collective capacity of our ecosystem, translating shared knowledge into measurable growth for individual companies and for Canada’s economy as a whole.

Preparing for the next decade of innovation

As you plan for your company’s next phase, ask yourself: how will you help build Canada’s next decade of innovation?

Canada’s innovation economy can only shift the needle if we move from potential to persistence. We have the ideas, the talent and the networks. What’s required now is the commitment to invest in each other and build the conditions where innovation doesn’t just start in Canada but stays and succeeds here.

“If the last decade was about proving that Canadian innovators belong on the world stage,” Carter says, “the next decade is about showing we can lead from it. Supporting founders now means anticipating what their next challenges will be, from market readiness to talent pipelines, and building the infrastructure that gets them there.”