Innovation hotline: Answering burning questions from the tech sector

• Craweled on Dec. 19, 2024, 11:41 a.m.

Innovation hotline: Answering burning questions from the tech sector

For many in Canada’s tech sector, 2024 was a challenging year. At times, it seemed as if the only constant — whether it was the economy, geopolitical relations or health of the planet — was uncertainty. To take stock of the past year and look ahead to 2025, we reached out to members in the innovation community to hear what’s on their minds. Can tech help fix Canada’s productivity crisis? What will it take to foster real change? In the first call-in episode of the MaRS podcast, Solve for X, MaRS CEO Alison Nankivell answers their questions and shares her perspective on what it will take for Canadian startups to scale, improve inclusion and prepare for a rapidly changing world.

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Narration: Hey, how are you doing?

This past year has been a wild ride for most of us, and for many entrepreneurs and people working in the tech sector, 2024 has been a particular roller coaster. Investments and valuations were down, and while a few startups scored sky-high funding rounds, there were also a concerning number of layoffs. We’ve heard a lot about Canada’s productivity crisis , and then there’s the issue of growing geopolitical tensions . For Canadian startups looking to scale, the global landscape is getting harder and harder to navigate.

There’s something about the end of the year that makes you want to stop and take stock to figure out what just happened, what lessons we can take from that, so that we can hopefully get a sense of what the next year might bring.

Alison Nankivell: I would tell you that I think it’s going to get better, and I do think innovation will take us out of this current challenging period, but that means building businesses that we can truly scale.

Narration: So how can Canada build more scalable companies? That’s the multi-billion-dollar question. Today, we’re going to tackle that and do a little strategic planning, because 2025 probably has some surprises in store.

I’m Manjula Selvarajah, and this is Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World , a series where we explore the latest ideas in tech and science.

In this episode, we’re going to do something a little different. This is going to be our first call-in show, and we reached out to members of the tech sector to hear what’s on their minds. We got a lot of questions. Now, to help us answer them, I’m joined by Alison Nankivell. Alison is an expert in funding transformative technology, on what it takes to stimulate innovation on a macro scale. She’s also the CEO of MaRS . Before coming to MaRS, she oversaw investment in venture capital and growth funds for BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada.

Manjula Selvarajah: Alison, thanks for being here. Alison Nankivell: Well it’s a pleasure, Manjula. Thanks for inviting me. Manjula Selvarajah: Well, we’ve wanted to do this for a while, so it’s so good to have you here. We have questions that we’ve gathered from the tech community. You and I will listen to some of those later. But first, I have a couple of questions for you. You know, 2024 has been a big year. Alison Nankivell: Right. Manjula Selvarajah: If you think through everything that’s happened, and then were to characterize this past year, what comes to mind? Alison Nankivell: I think transition, writ large. We all know there’s an energy transition going on, there’s a business cycle transition going on and there is a geopolitical transition going on. And I think it’s very interesting, because you know, if you look at the venture capital ecosystem in Canada, it’s not actually that old. Where we are now is that we had unprecedented growth, say, for like, the last 10 to 12 years, and this market… Manjula Selvarajah: Just a run. Alison Nankivell: It’s just been a run — uninterrupted — a lot of optimism. And now we are at this position where finally we have a change in the business cycle. So for so many managers who are in the market, it’s their first time actually facing economic challenges. And I think knowing how to manage a down cycle is a new experience both for founders and startups, as well as for investors. For those of us who are older — and I’m putting up by hand there — who’ve been through previous business cycles, you understand how to navigate that. But a fair amount of the market is still quite young and not used to that. So if you think of that transition, but on top of that, you have this whole climate transition happening, this whole energy transition and at the same time, the most extraordinary geopolitical environment that we’re in now with, particularly the superpower geopolitical tensions — a much harder market for both companies and for investors to navigate to, “How do you build an at-scale, globally-minded company in this environment, in a way?” And I think this has given pause for thought to a lot of people as to how to operate with a lot more nuance and a lot more thoughtfulness about building a resilient business in a much more uncertain future environment. Manjula Selvarajah: This is a year of transitions, but there is one issue that I think that Canada has been dealing with for a while now. There have been a ton of media reports about Canada’s poor record on productivity. There have been comments about Canada’s lack of ambition when it comes to the tech ecosystem, stories of job losses, lower investment. Why are you still bullish on Canada’s potential? Alison Nankivell: Well, I think maybe part of it is having lived through other cycles. I do think it’s important to understand that tough times build more resilient companies. They build more interesting companies. And, you know, markets move on and cycles change, and they at some point have an upward trajectory. I think I’m optimistic we will be heading into a new environment. I also think if you look at Canada’s issues it has in productivity, a lot of the troubles where we’ve had a lot of productivity growth historically, like in the oil and gas sector, like in the mining sector and utilities, are actually being negatively impacted by energy transition now, right? There are a lot of costs that society and the macroeconomic environment needs to take on to go and transition through to a new template for how to have sustainable infrastructure, how to have sustainable manufacturing, you know, how to create new supply chains. And all of this is adding costs, adding, I would say, inefficiencies in the short term to the macro economy in a way that’s actually making it harder to recover our productivity, right? That is something that I think is transitional. I actually think that it’s almost like a lot of dust is being kicked up, and we can’t really see the future that clearly right now about what is going to happen with the trajectory of our productivity, the trajectory for growth, because there just is so much that needs to be adjusted as to what our mechanisms are of how we build toward a society and an economic infrastructure that makes sense for a more sustainable future. And I do think innovation will take us out of this current challenging period. That means building businesses that we can truly scale. Manjula Selvarajah: You really feel that there is, if we make this transition the right way, that there is a clear path ahead. Alison Nankivell: I truly believe that. Manjula Selvarajah: And that the innovation economy will drive that. Alison Nankivell: I think the innovation economy is essential to so many aspects of this, particularly on the sustainability and the energy transition side. But equally, if you think about healthcare, right? It’s just extraordinary, the leaps and bounds. And you know, with the application of AI now to drug discovery, that’s moving at a speed that gives us hope that things that we see as intractable healthcare problems absolutely have a path to cures. And I think that’s really an optimistic, you know, sort of way to look at the world that is really because of this great capacity of human nature to continue to find solutions. Manjula Selvarajah: Well, on that note, let’s hear the voices of some of the people in the tech ecosystem. Let’s listen to the first submitted question, Alison. This comes from Charles Plant at The Narwhal Project . They’ve been tracking the growth of Canada’s tech sector. They published The Narwhal List , a list of Canadian tech companies that are on their way to take off globally. Let’s listen to the question. Charles Plant: Hey Alison, it’s Charles Plant. I’ve got two questions today. First is: how do we encourage entrepreneurs to think “export first” and focus early on finding product-market fit in export markets? Second question is: How do we get scaleups to spend more on marketing and sales to improve their growth trajectories? Thanks! Alison Nankivell: Well, first of all, Charles, love the research you’ve done, and I love your questions, because you’re looking at somebody who spent most of their career abroad before I came back to Canada. And I spent the formative years of my early career in China, where, talk about working in a very, very competitive market, where things are changing enormously, and there’s global competition around you everywhere. I think it just made me intensely aware of the need every day to kind of get up and think, “How do I get better?” And you know, I would agree that it’s hard in Canada. Intuitively, most startups start very quickly into accessing the U.S. market for customers, often ironically, because they find it hard to get them in Canada. And that’s a technology adoption thing we all have to work on here… Manjula Selvarajah: And something that entrepreneurs keep talking about here. Alison Nankivell: Oh, absolutely, this issue about, “How do you think export first?” I think is an excellent question, because export doesn’t mean just OK, “How do I sell to the U.S. market?” Being export-oriented now, you have to think of the geopolitics: “Which markets? Which areas do I have competitive advantage?” So the judgment of where to go, I think, is really, really important. The problem is, most of our entrepreneurs are just struggling so much to scale up with the limited amount of funding because we all know Canadian startups just don’t get the capital that U.S. companies do. They’re mired in sort of that day-to-day survival, I think, mindset, and it stops them from thinking about very large, bigger plans from the start. I think part of the problem is, is our ecosystem of how we’ve developed on the trade piece, if you think about it, right? The export, whether it’s our Global Affairs Canada or Export Development Canada, others, our ecosystem was built for large companies. We used to have this mindset that people don’t export until they’re big, because it was around goods. It wasn’t around services. Now, exports have been flipped on its head. It’s small companies that are exporting, and they’re exporting from the moment they’re almost built. What does that mean? That means that the trade mechanisms that we have — all the public policy support — needs to understand the mindset of an early-stage, technology-enabled company, and what they need to navigate… Manjula Selvarajah: And be able to respond to that… Alison Nankivell: And to respond to the international markets. And I think we’re not… we haven’t fully made that transition in our support structures that we have to assist Canadian tech companies in that journey. So I think that’s one thing we could do. We could all be thinking a little bit more about, “How do we bring that trade infrastructure closer to the innovation economy that is the next generation of exporters?” I think the second thing is that we do need to bring some of that expertise that sits in probably larger, established executive… Manjula Selvarajah: Who’ve made mindset… Alison Nankivell: Who’ve been doing this… Manjula Selvarajah: Who made this happen… Alison Nankivell: Made this happen. Bring it down much closer to being the advisors to startups. Advisors that work with startups are often more coming from the capital side, or are coming from “I did this in a very similar way, you know, into the U.S. market,” but how many advisors out there have said, “Well, actually, you know, I learned how to scale…” Manjula Selvarajah: That’s an interesting approach. Alison Nankivell: …Into Asia, or I learned how to scale this into Latin America… Manjula Selvarajah: To have someone that has export market ideas or has done it already come into the picture at an early stage… Alison Nankivell: At an earlier stage, right? So I think that’s part of it. But I love Charles’ point about sales and marketing. I think this is the single-biggest weakness we have in Canada. Part of it is because we do not have the established C-suite of experienced entrepreneurs who have done that or have been executives in firms who’ve scaled and really developed sophisticated business development and marketing initiatives for companies, and then can come back and do that for Canadian companies. Now, I do think, and this is something at MaRS we’re very, very focused on, is, “How do we as a community spend more time building some of the training and that capability to earlier on, give more of that know-how to young executives in teams?” Maybe they haven’t done it yet, but there’s a certain amount of know-how that can be passed on. And I do believe there’s a capability for us to do a better job of that training earlier. Manjula Selvarajah: That second part of his question about marketing investment, do you think that is because they are tight on capital? Do you think it’s because there’s such a focus on innovation and research? This was the question that he had about why is it that Canadian companies don’t spend on sales and marketing? Why? First of all, do you think that’s so? Alison Nankivell: I wouldn’t disagree. I… Manjula Selvarajah: Why do you think that is, then? Alison Nankivell: I think… Manjula Selvarajah: Because you would imagine that it’s crucial for scale-up, that you have to think about those two aspects, marketing and sales from day one. Alison Nankivell: Well, you might think that. But I think if you are a technical founder, you’re enamoured with the technology and the product you’re building. I think a lot of new businesses in Canada, in the innovation space, are driven by founders who have wonderful technical capabilities and solutions they want to share with the world. Manjula Selvarajah: The, “I will make the content, and they will come” approach. Alison Nankivell: Well, I think it’s just, you know, people have different skillsets, and if you come with a strong technical background, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to sell, right? So you have to bring that talent in, and a good leader does that. But it isn’t necessarily the case that talent is evident in great supply in Canada, of been-there-done-that type of people. Manjula Selvarajah: Is it a lot to ask of a founder? I mean, you have this technical brain, innovation brain, you have this operations brain. You’ve got to be this person who can fundraise, and then also to understand sales and marketing. Alison Nankivell: Absolutely. And I think that’s going to continue to be a really critical thing, which, again, is around leadership, right? Because one of the things earliest stage founders have to spend a lot of time on is understanding, “How do you build teams where you can share a collective vision?” And you can be a generous enough founder in terms of your vision and leadership that you can welcome in other co-founders and leaders to be part of something bigger than yourself. It’s intuitive for some people, but for some people, it’s a skill that’s acquired over time. Manjula Selvarajah: I want to come back to something that you said before that sparked my interest. You know, you watched the economy grow in China and you’ve said that, you know, in the environment, there was this combination of deep-seated energy and a slight paranoia to stay on top. How do we do on that front, the energy plus paranoia front? Alison Nankivell: I think there is a fair amount of energy, not as much paranoia as we perhaps need. Manjula Selvarajah: We need the paranoia. Alison Nankivell: I think, listen, I’m probably using the wrong phrase here, but I think you have to wake up every day and look over your shoulder. And I think increasingly that is even more the case in a market where you have now great technology companies being built in every market — emerging markets and developed markets. So your competition is global. And I think to the extent that you are curious about the rest of the world and have a sense of what might be going on in other communities, I think you tend to get a greater awareness of that, and think about, “How do I build something that can stay ahead, or at least be a key contender in the markets where I want to focus?” Maybe you’re not there yet, but you start paying attention to it earlier than you’re ready for it to start to sort of build the foundations of where you want to go as a company. Manjula Selvarajah: Well, thank you to Charles for that question. My, did he spark off a couple of ideas. Alison Nankivell: I think we’re gonna have to follow it up with a coffee discussion, absolutely. Manjula Selvarajah: Let’s go to our next one. Kris Bennatti: Hey, Alison, it’s Kris here from Hudson Labs, and I have a somewhat self-serving question for you, because I get asked this relatively frequently. Private markets are becoming increasingly important, given that companies like ours — startups — are a lot less likely to want to go public due to the burden of being a public company, which has a lot to do with reporting requirements. My question for you is around sustainability disclosure and ESG, and where you think the line is between ensuring corporate transparency versus creating a burden that is excessive and is going to have a net-negative impact on society by preventing startups from ever reaching public markets. Manjula Selvarajah: Interesting question. There seems to be this sort of hint about ESG getting politicized and getting caught up in the culture wars south of the border. When you hear Kris’s question, what comes to mind right away? Alison Nankivell: All companies, regardless of their size, need to think about sustainability reporting, or let’s call it ESG reporting writ large. Why? Because regardless of the politics of how ESG becomes in and out of fashion, there’s a risk element that, as an investor, you’re looking to try to understand what are the tail risks this company is facing? And we all know with climate that those tail risks are getting increasingly large. You might be a company that somewhere where you’re the data centre you’re using is flooding because of a, you know, an atmospheric river event, and suddenly, you know, your capacity to deliver to customers goes down. Or it could be that you’re operating in an area where there’s a water shortage and you are now considered a burden in that community because you’re drawing water for digital purposes when it’s needed for agriculture nearby. Manjula Selvarajah: At some point that will come back to you. Alison Nankivell: This will come back to you whether you’re a startup, whether you’re in a growth stage, whether you’re a large company. So what I’ve tried to say to companies at all levels is, “Listen, I don’t expect you to master this, of, how do you report.” But if you don’t start just very early on in your company, formation and journey of thinking, “What kind of company am I trying to build? What do I imagine the positive impacts I want to have? What are the things I need to think about as negative impacts?” And if you’re not creating a board that can help you with those questions, you’re probably going to find later on you run into some of these issues, and it starts to become an impediment to your growth. It starts to become a risk in terms of your attractiveness for customers to work with you. There is a regulatory element that we all know is coming, especially for publicly-listed companies. The International Sustainability Standards Board, which the Canadian version, CSSB , here, is going to be at some point, releasing standards for publicly-listed companies. And once there are publicly-listed standards, those cascade down into the largest parts of the private sector community. And those groups then pass that down to the smaller of the private sector companies. And so, we know regulation is coming and we should just understand that, you know, we’re on a journey to grow our capacity to meet those standards, which will be there for anybody who has aspirations to be a public company. Manjula Selvarajah: How then do you address this idea that Kris has brought up about this being a burden? Alison Nankivell: It absolutely is. Absolutely… Manjula Selvarajah: And if this is a feeling that multiple companies have, and that’s certainly what I’m hearing on the ground as well, what is it that leaders in this space can do to make it less onerous? Alison Nankivell: There are a lot of guidelines and templates now that help people along. So I think the ecosystem, broadly, should be making a lot of these things available so that it’s easier for companies to acquire and embed this kind of capacity within their administrative structures, but I don’t think it’s all there yet, and I do think it is a burden in the short-term. But let’s come back to the positive. If you’re an entrepreneur, well, ultimately, what you want to do is be very successful, both with your customers, with your bottom line, but also with your reputation, right? A company that has good ESG capabilities and is reporting and is transparent is going to be worth far more money than will a company that has none of those things. And why? Because at least you understand that they’ve thought through the risks and they’re mitigating and they’re proactively managing. That means there’s no surprises. I think that a lot of companies haven’t seen enough examples yet, because this is a very new… Manjula Selvarajah: It is… Alison Nankivell: A very, very new sort of trend. Manjula Selvarajah: Yeah. Alison Nankivell: To see what the results… Manjula Selvarajah: So the role models aren’t in place yet. Alison Nankivell: The role models aren’t there, but they’re coming, and we already are seeing evidence of that. Manjula Selvarajah: Now, where do you expect the debate to end up in 2025? Do you think that this is an area that’ll get further politicized? Alison Nankivell: I think the word ESG probably should just be cast aside. It’s kind of become too politicized. But the underlying sort of, I guess, rationale of, “What risks am I trying to identify?” is legitimate. It always has been. If it comes down to business and it comes down to, “How do I make this company resilient as it faces different types of challenges?” Then that’s all you’re trying to really get at. Manjula Selvarajah: Certainly something to watch over the next while. OK, let’s move on to our next question. Lise Birikundavyi: Hi Alison. This is Lise Birikundavyi from BKR Capital . I’d love to have your thoughts on the different actions our ecosystem could take to make sure that it’s more diverse and that it’s including people from different walks of life or different backgrounds for important decision making, and just to ensure that the technology that we’re developing is much more inclusive than where it is today. Thank you. Alison Nankivell: The way I see it is you absolutely are being short-sighted if you are a business and you aren’t thinking about how you reach out to a maximum set of clientele, which, of course, is people from all different communities, all different ethnicities, all different regions of the country. It just comes back to common sense. I’ve never understood why people look at things as if it’s some kind of gesture of support for undeserving communities. What makes some community less creative than another? That’s ridiculous, right? Manjula Selvarajah: It’s like taking a room and just assuming that 50 percent of the ideas you just don’t want to hear. Alison Nankivell: That’s right, yeah, and we all know where that leads in terms of creating businesses that often produce products or services that actually don’t meet the needs of what a community needs or wants. Manjula Selvarajah: So what Lise is interested in is what it would take to make that change. What do you think it would take? Alison Nankivell: So all of the ecosystem has to look like society, whether you’re working on the ecosystem building side at an accelerator, but also if you’re an investor, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you are in the C-suites of major corporate potential customers, right? All of that needs to be diverse, because it allows inclusion to happen at every step for people who want to grow and scale their companies. Now, what does it take in terms of, immediately, where Canada’s going? I think it’s a recognition that this is just as capable of returning and being as financially successful as investing, you know, in a white male entrepreneur, right? And I think that degree of skepticism is still there because people, you know it’s so funny, the venture capital industry thinks of itself as very innovative. It’s actually not. It likes to go on… Manjula Selvarajah: This is interesting. Alison Nankivell: On established patterns of recognition. It’s hard to get people to lead and step out and do something new. That’s what actually diverse managers do every day. They step out and they fund somebody who’s a new idea, a new business, who look different, and they bring them into the mainstream and they say, “You should trust this. Come along with me in this journey.” Manjula Selvarajah: It’s interesting that you’re talking about these patterns of recognition, because it’s not just to the technology that they fund, but it’s also to the people that they find. Alison Nankivell: Correct. Absolutely. I mean, what is the one thing that’s hardest to do is to get people to back an unproven entrepreneur. You want repeat entrepreneurs, right? People who’ve been there and done that. I get that. It’s absolutely a formula for success. But there’s also a lot of things out there that need to be backed — new kinds of solutions, different technologies, different types of entrepreneurs — that require somebody to step out and take a chance on somebody new. And I think that part — that takes a certain amount of courage in the venture ecosystem, and you want to have a community of investors like entrepreneurs in this ecosystem, who can be courageous, who are prepared to step out and say, “I’m backing that, I will lead that,” when others won’t. Manjula Selvarajah: And when you then, of course, you get to that tipping point where, when you have enough people, then that representation itself fuels others. I mean, one of the things that I’ve always found interesting… people who grow and scale companies here, everyone within the company, employees, even managers, then go on to start other things. So if you get a couple of these companies that are successful, then they go on to start other things, and you could have that happen with diversity as well. Lise, thank you for that question. That was a great question. So let’s get to our last listener question. This comes from Corey Ellis. He’s the co-founder of Growcer . It’s an Ottawa startup that’s designed a vertical farming system. So let’s listen to this. Corey Ellis: This is Corey with Growcer here. I’d like to ask you about getting investors more involved in climate adaptation. We’ve noticed Growcer is seen as a solution for communities impacted by climate crises like wildfires and food shortages. It seems as if climate resilience and adaptation become high priority when it’s in your own backyard. But what can we do when it isn’t? How do we get climate adaptation out of the blind spot for investors and entrepreneurs alike? Manjula Selvarajah: Corey mentions wildfires. He’s talking about food shortages in his question. And we’ve seen this fall of just terrible things. We’ve had back-to-back hurricanes. There’s been these sort of terrible cascading effects of climate change around the world, and we’ve been seeing this for some time now. You know, why do you think it’s so hard to get investors interested in adaptation? Alison Nankivell: Corey is on the cusp of something that’s now just being recognized. So I actually read the other day, I was reading the Financial Times of London — geek way I do — and there was a very prominent article on the fact that in countries that represent 50 percent of global food supply, there are water shortages . This is actually hitting the radar now. We have to understand that actually this is our reality. We need to adapt to it. We need to work our systems of industrial, agricultural, other resource production around the realities of what our climate is now. And as you do that, you have to create businesses that do that adaptation. So it is coming, I would tell you, most of it is under the radar that happens now. Manjula Selvarajah: So you’re saying investment is under the radar… Alison Nankivell: Investment is under the radar. And actually you’re just just starting to see now investment theses and specific venture capital and growth equity funds being developed around this thesis. Many of the best-performing assets that people are investing in are exactly in this space. It’s not a dedicated investment focus yet, but it sits within people’s portfolios. And there are a lot of what I would call just small, family oriented, mid-sized businesses all across the country, in the United States, in other jurisdictions, that are doing this type of adaptation work that’s highly successful. Here’s a great example at the large end: Stantec. It was in the Report on Business magazine a little while ago. Stantec, 20 percent of their business now comes around some kind of environmental sustainability work, often around adaptation and remediation. They expect to grow 50 percent a year over the next few years on this type of work. So this isn’t just small business. This isn’t just a technology. This is a mainstream engineering, environmental, architecture, logistics, you name it. This is a mainstream push. I think part of it for companies like Corey’s and Growcer is telling that story that we are an adaptation play, and this is about resilience and creating, in their case, food security and stability in regions where otherwise you could imperil that, you know, ability to have availability of food in the way that your community needs. It’s just a new concept, and new concepts take time to adjust. All the best businesses, I’m sure like Corey’s, right, get developed and move along a path well before the investor community sort of twigs onto it and says, “Oh yes, of course, this makes perfect sense.” So I’m very optimistic these businesses will grow and this will be seen as a much more mainstream area of sustainability and that energy transition and climate change realities that we’re all, you know, dealing with. Manjula Selvarajah: You know, it’s interesting. I’m actually surprised to hear that the investment isn’t higher. I believe it’s something like one-tenth — around one-tenth of investment in climate tech — goes toward adaptation. I understand that this will have to happen at some point, that it’s coming, but for companies like Corey’s to grow, they need that capital now. Yeah, so I’m just a little surprised that it isn’t higher, because I would imagine that people investing in climate tech understand that adaptation is important? Alison Nankivell: Yeah, I think part of the reason is, is adaptation is a very broad term for a lot of different types of businesses. It’s not just a venture business. As I said, it’s growth equity, private equity, mid-sized businesses. I mean, there are, like I said, family-owned businesses that go and would do fireproofing, for example, of your home, and that’s just a family-owned business, right, that you might be doing in a certain region. So it’s hard to categorize this. And so sometimes when investors look at this, they don’t see the overarching theme, and they don’t know how to pull that together and say, “Actually, this is a trend that we should… and if we do see it as a trend, well, how do we invest in it? What is this exactly, what segment of this? And how should we think about that?” It will, I think, gain significant traction over the next few years. I think this year, you know, just look at, look at in Toronto, right? We had, what was it, two or three floodings of the TTC , you know, we’ve had… Manjula Selvarajah: We’ve had a couple of 100-year floods . Alison Nankivell: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, and, and, you know, if you look at what’s happened with Hurricane Milton in the United States, I mean, this is all everyday stuff now. And that means that societies, cities, factories that are interrupted by this need to get up and back to business fast, or GDP is lost. So adaptation businesses are about getting societies or companies or industries back up and running after an incident, or if that incident is happening, proofing that facility from having the worst of what would happen to them with this climate catastrophe that is, that is underway. Manjula Selvarajah: I think it’s interesting that you’re saying to companies like Corey’s to lean in… Alison Nankivell: Absolutely… Manjula Selvarajah: Into the message… Alison Nankivell: Into the message! Manjula Selvarajah: Into the message, into that adaptation play. One of the things that stands out and this has emerged throughout the podcast. I didn’t realize it till I was a couple of interviews into, I think, season one, and now we’re in season three, of course. But that this was an issue that was more than just investors. It’s kind of how all of us think: We’re not really primed to be proactive. So it just seems like if the risk isn’t right in front of us, there seems to be this hesitation to act. So, how do you get that broader social buy in, beyond investors? Alison Nankivell: All of us, all of society, we don’t learn through facts, we learn through stories. We learn through, you know, a narrative that helps us explain where we were and where we’re going. And I think more of that needs to be done in the climate area to show the strength of the path we’re on, that we have come very far in providing solutions, and it’s within our power to get to those next steps to mitigate the worst. We’re not going to mitigate it all, but to mitigate the worst of what we could be facing. And I think especially the younger community needs to feel that much, much more than they are now by having, as I said, all of that creative talent we have put to telling those powerful stories. Manjula Selvarajah: It’s interesting to me to note even the transformation that’s happened, I would say, in the last five years. So I think there is a space for storytellers here. The other thing that we do in the podcast, we often think ahead to what 20 years from now, maybe 30, 40 years from now, what it’s going to look like. But thinking ahead to the near future, what are you most optimistic about for 2025? Alison Nankivell: I am optimistic that I think the worst of the macro-economic cycle will be over. We’re seeing interest rates come down. I think the cycle of businesses will move back into, you know, a growth cycle. So, I’m optimistic that will help people understand what the path can look like going forward to be more in a mindset of being expansive in their thinking about opportunity, as opposed to thinking that they’re hunkering down and weathering risks, which is what it feels like now. I think I’m very excited about just the sheer, as I said, level of innovative thinking I’m seeing in the community. And one of the things I’m most excited about is the interdisciplinary collaboration that increasingly is happening, where you have people from different areas of technology. You might come from AI, you might come from biochemistry, you might come from material science, and you might all be working together on one solution. And I think that’s very exciting, because I actually think the best companies and the best of any type of organizations come with people who come from different walks of life, both in their academic disciplines or their scientific disciplines, as well as maybe culturally or in even socioeconomically. And that will give us a host of solutions and the building of new companies that will look infinitely more inspiring and in their capability to deliver hard-to-solve issues in a way that we haven’t seen in the past. So, you know, I’m looking for that. I’m gunning for the big bold in 2025 and they’re going for the harder solutions. It’s something, you know, I can’t ever, I can’t ever, sitting here from the vantage point of MaRS, and not think of what Dr. Evans , who was the founder of MaRS, used to say, he always used to say, “Do the hard stuff.” And that’s exactly what I want this innovation ecosystem to do: be bold and do the hard stuff. Manjula Selvarajah: Great note of optimism there. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Alison, Alison Nankivell: Absolutely enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. Manjula Selvarajah: Thank you. Narration: And that’s a wrap for 2024! Thanks so much for coming along with us as we explore new ideas and innovations to solve some of the toughest problems we face today, and there’s so much more to season three, stay tuned for new episodes in the weeks to come. Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS. This episode was produced by Ellen Payne Smith and written by executive producer Kathryn Hayward. Lara Torvi and Sana Maqbool are the associate producers. Sarah Liss is the senior editor. Mack Swain composed the theme song and the music in this episode. Gab Harpelle is our mix engineer. I’m your host Manjula Selvarajah, and we want to hear from you. If you have a burning question or an idea that you’re curious about, email us at media@marsdd.com . Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and a registered charity. MaRS supports startups and accelerates the adoption of high-impact solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. For more information, visit marsdd.com . Illustration by Workhouse

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