| | | | Welcome to Rainforest Alberta - yeg's Monthly Newsletter | | Hi Guest, Rainforest Pulse goes out once per month to keep you up-to-date on the progress made towards supporting the growth of Alberta's innovation-based economy! | | | | - Upcoming Events
- November Summit Announcement
- What is the Rainforest?
- Core Value focus: Team Sport
| | | | Every month, Rainforest brings entrepreneurs, investors, service providers and other innovators and changemakers together. These events are a core principle of the Rainforest - creating trust through connections and conversation.
Who should attend a Rainforest event? - Anyone interested in starting or growing an innovation-based business in Alberta
- Former entrepreneurs and business owners looking to share their experience and give back to the community that helped make them successful
- Anyone exploring entrepreneurship as a potential career path
- Individuals or companies who provide services to entrepreneurs at any stage of growth, from pre-start to growth to succession
- Anyone interested in improving the culture of innovation and trust in Alberta, making a meaningful impact on the growth of the emerging innovation economy, or individuals who want to be part of the solution
- Researchers, inventors, or makers who are looking for help in making their idea a reality
| | October Rainforest Events | | | | | | November Summit Announcement | | The third Rainforest Summit in Edmonton will be held on November 27th! Bigger and better than ever, the November Summit will be co-hosted by Jim Gibson and James Keirstead.
Jim Gibson, along with Brad Zumwalt, orginally brought the Rainforest concept to Alberta, and James Keirstead has stewarded the growth of the Edmonton Rainforest over the past 18 months.
Every 6 months we host a summit that helps us measure the quality of our ecosystem using the Rainforest Scorecard Assessment tool. This summit will include the launch of the new and improved Assessment scorecard. We then bring a group of innovators, doers, strategists, and thought leaders together to discuss the results and make improvements. Our goal is to increase the quality of the current ecosystem from 464/1000 to 800/1000 by 2020.
Registration details will be released shortly. In the meantime, please Save the Date (full day - November 27th at the Shaw Conference Centre)! | | | | Rainforest Alberta is a grassroots, community-based initiative of people working together to improve the invisible infrastructure that empowers Alberta's innovation-based economy. We want Albertans to know that they don’t have to move away to invent, prosper, and move their ideas forward. To that end, our goal is grow the same invisible infrastructure that underlies successful, innovative communities like Silicon Valley, Denver, Boston, or Israel, right here in Alberta. The Rainforest is based on simple social principles contained in our social contract, which guides the way that individuals interact within the ecosystem. | | | | | | Core Value Focus: Team Sport | | The importance of Teamwork in the Innovation Process | | Innovation is not a brilliant idea; it is a process. A brilliant idea becomes an innovation when it is monetized into a product or system that produces significantly improved results for an end-user or customer. The process of innovation takes an idea from a thought, to a commercialized product.
Many organizations fail at innovation because leaders don't understand that innovation is a multi-step process, and the talents required at each step of the process are very different. For innovation to succeed, it needs to be a team-based process.
In the book The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, authors Hwang and Horowitt describe innovation as "body contact sport". Like any sport, a team wins or losses based on the actions of the individual members, each specialized for their role, and how well they act together towards a shared outcome. Similarly for innovation, where commercialization of an idea requires individuals from diverse backgrounds and with unique skillsets who together can create something greater than themselves. The researcher cannot succeed without the marketing expert, the sales expert, the human resources experts, nor the customer service experts.
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