Practically a 12 months after it was introduced within the province’s finances, a Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) is lastly coming to fruition in Barrie.
The province is investing $1 million into the downtown’s Sandbox Centre, reworking the financial mentorship hub right into a full-fledged RIC.
“Up to now, we have executed chat mentoring the place it is simply discovering the proper particular person for a couple of minutes, however going ahead now, we’ll even have mentoring funding,” stated Craig Busch, founder and CEO of the Sandbox Centre. “We’ll have tracked 5 levels to take companies from like that preliminary incubation all the best way to market and permitting us to actually have a concentrate on constructing mental property insights.”
RIC’s purpose to assist entrepreneurs and innovators work via challenges with a view to achieve increasing their enterprise concepts. The brand new centre in Barrie is the seventeenth Regional Innovation Centre within the province.
Tuesday’s announcement comes after Lakehead College introduced within the fall, that it deliberate to create a stem campus contained in the downtown transit terminal.
“You possibly can dwell right here, you’ll be able to benefit from the setting and you may develop a enterprise right here and get an unimaginable job,” stated Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall. “This regional innovation centre is a recreation changer for Barrie and it is a recreation changer for the whole area.”
The Sandbox stated it is tentatively aiming to launch the RIC within the spring.
