Companies around the world need a well-rounded workforce, with a range of skills offered by various disciplines. Closer to home, technology entrepreneurs are driving the Canadian economy more than ever before. REAP is producing entrepreneurs who understand how research can help increase prosperity for individual organizations and the country as a whole.

Student Lab

Research is about exploring and developing good ideas. Research entrepreneurship is about making sure the best ideas do as much good as possible. Research Entrepreneurs Accelerating Prosperity is a new non-credit program from Canada’s most innovative university–the University of Waterloo. Its research entrepreneurs do not invent new products. Rather they use applied design thinking to combine emerging and existing technologies in new ways, creating new markets and greater opportunities.

REAP is also supporting industry by gathering and sharing information on best practices in entrepreneurship in a number of ways. Key to that is its sponsorship of the Accelerator Gazette, a new online publication that will help REAP fullfill its mandate to help identify the various ways technology accelerators successfully operate in various environments. The Gazette is where REAP will learn about what’s happening in research entrepreneurship worldwide and, equally, how REAP will tell its story, share best practices and build partnerships.

REAP’s mandate includes supporting Canadian prosperity at all levels. Prosperity is about more than just money. It involves creating opportunities, making connections and sustaining the innovation cycle. REAP strengthens Waterloo Region’s reputation as hotbed of technical innovation, contributes directly to Ontario’s economic agenda, and supports Canada’s aspirations to be a world-leader in digital technologies.