As vice-president and director of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC), Paul Smith has helped guide many a manufacturing startup over what he calls “the valley of death.”
Though he’s not the first to notice that Canadian startups have a tendency to sell out instead of scaling up, Smith and team are uniquely qualified to offer advice: since 2012 the centre has been offering external clients its expertise and infrastructure as a paid service, and in 2013 began collaborating with other organizations that also support the start-up community. (Smith himself has been working at the Centre since 1995.)
“We have some of the most educated students in the world,” Smith says. “We have an amazing higher education system and university structure, and we spend a lot of money educating them. Why would we want them to go across the border? We want them to stay in Canada and grow here.”
