Imagine you’ve worked nearly your whole life for one company – you excel at your role, love the industry, and plan to work there until you retire. Then, one day you arrive at work to learn you no longer have a job. Downsizing, lack of demand, new industry regulations or moving the company altogether – […]
Throwing money at a non-profit has traditionally been the way businesses give back to their communities. Corporate sponsorships, paid volunteer time, or placing a donation container at the company’s reception desk used to do the trick. But, in an economy where consumers and employees are more socially-conscious than ever before, and where the success of […]
Gone are the days where students accept passively sitting in an auditorium, listening to a professor drone on as their post-secondary experience. Today’s students are more active on their campuses and in their communities than ever before. As a result, universities are engaging students by nurturing entrepreneurial thinking and providing more opportunities to build skills that […]
Building on Canada’s competitive advantages such as its strong export potential, its rapidly developing innovation ecosystem, and its skilled workforce, will help create regional economic prosperity and good, middle-class jobs. That is why the Government of Canada is enabling Volta to provide targeted programming to Atlantic Canadian startups as they move from early-stage to growth-stage, […]
The line between technology product startups and consumer product startups is blurring. At Barrington Edge, we believe that this blurring represents a significant opportunity for Atlantic Canadian consumer packaged goods (CPG) startups, but in order to seize the opportunity, we need to better understand the industry drivers. In this post, we want to briefly examine […]
Atlantic Canada’s startup ecosystem, undoubtedly, is evolving at an incredibly fast pace. Less than 20 years ago, for example, the infrastructure, agencies and support systems that are now in place to empower startups, were more an idea than a reality. The Internet was just becoming mainstay, and as a result, tech-enabled companies – let alone […]
Despite our global connectivity, the world is not “flat.” That’s according to Fiona Murray, Associate Dean of Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Co-Director of MIT’s Innovation Initiative, who spoke at Volta’s inaugural Innovate Atlantic conference last year. Murray – referencing Thomas L. Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” – explained that […]
You’ve probably heard the story before; a driven founder eager to fund their company is rejected by hundreds of venture capitalists before finding one that will take a chance on them. Through it all, perseverance and the willingness to turn rejection into resilience propels them forward. In business, the road to success is often paved […]
In the startup world, speed is everything. New ideas are, well, rarely ever new. The odds are that dozens of entrepreneurs around the world are working on a similar concept as you. So the faster and more efficient you are at making progress, the more likely you are to surpass your competitors to achieve product-market […]
New client leads, brand exposure and unique marketing opportunities are just some of the mutual benefits organizations can expect when they engage in corporate partnerships. But, what Grant Thornton didn’t anticipate when it launched its partnership with Volta back in 2018, is the impact it has had on the accounting and advisory firm’s younger employees. […]