Innovation and Technology

Innovation is how a coastal economy diversifies, lifts its productivity, and stays competitive over time. Through this priority, we focus our investments on the new initiatives, knowledge infrastructure, and technologies that create good local jobs and strengthen local businesses across Vancouver Island and the coast.

We encourage proposals that foster innovation and open new opportunities for entrepreneurs and local businesses to grow and compete. We invest in technology that raises the productivity and competitiveness of coastal businesses and economic sectors, from modernizing established industries to extending the digital infrastructure that connects remote island and coastal communities. Much of this work depends on partnerships among the private sector, industry associations, and research and academic institutions to develop new and emerging sectors and the long-term, sustainable solutions our changing coastal economy needs.

Through investments in shared infrastructure, applied innovation, and the partnerships behind it, we help build a more diversified and resilient coastal economy: one that creates family-supporting jobs, keeps talent and opportunity close to home, grows new and sustainable industries, and ensures the gains of innovation reach the communities that create them.