EW 026 – How The Edmonton Regional Innovation Network Wins By Fostering Collaboration – with Janice Baskin, Manager of the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.016)
Janice, welcome to the show.

Janice Baskin (00:02.967)
Thank you so much for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:04.844)
Well, I'm really glad that you're here for, I guess, my own sake, but also for the audience's sake. Because they're going to hear a lot about the background that you've had in leading the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network. And also some of your background as well in there and some of the skills that you bring to that pedigree to help so many people, and whether it's direct or indirect, have a major influence on economic development.

in Edmonton and Alberta because of the part that you play in influencing so many service providers, so many entrepreneurs, so many people that are in sort of the tech and all the different types of ecosystem that you come along with and just going down your resume as well. You're a business owner, you got all that background pedigree and we don't have a full year to do this podcast to get the whole thing, but let's get started. If you had to introduce yourself at a party, what would you say?

Janice Baskin (00:53.989)
is this a business party or a... Just kidding, okay.

Gordon Sheppard (00:57.454)
What type of party are you talking about? Well, well, well.

Janice Baskin (01:02.005)
start off with a joke. If I were to introduce myself at a networking event, let's put it that way, I am the manager for the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network and so what we are is a coalition of organizations and individuals that work to support startups and entrepreneurs in the innovation ecosystem in Edmonton.

Gordon Sheppard (01:23.214)
Interesting, I know that having spent time around your organization, I'm gonna slow down there for a second so that people really kind of get it. say the acronym again and say the name again, but give me an example of the impact as well. So go ahead.

Janice Baskin (01:37.171)
So it's the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network, is the ERIN or the ARIN, however you choose to say it. And sorry, the impact is that?

Gordon Sheppard (01:50.489)
Yeah, impact. so because the impact of like, what's an example of a story in there? So you're the manager there. It's the regional innovation network. And I find when we go to explain this type of thing to someone who's hearing it for the first time, they're like, what does that mean? And how does that pull together? But I know that it pulls together service providers, universities.

government organizations that encourage entrepreneurs. brings entrepreneurs who are startup entrepreneurs all the way to medium and all the way up to big entrepreneurs into sort of again this ecosystem type setting. There's events that you put on that type of thing and you facilitate a lot of opportunities for collisions in that space is sort of how I would describe it from the outside. Tell me if that's accurate and then please lead us into maybe a story where you've had a direct impact. That'd be great.

Janice Baskin (02:32.79)
Yeah, and you're correct, actually. You said that very, very nicely. So thank you. One of my favorite stories and one of my favorite things about the work we do, and I love this because I think it's unique in Alberta and maybe across Canada, is that we have something called the Post-Secondary Institute Subcommittee. And so this is where seven of the post-secondary institutes from across the Edmonton region

They come together once a month. And we're talking people who are at the assistant dean or the assistant vice president level of position, whether it be an entrepreneurship or business school or innovation. And they come together once a month to figure out how they can work together. And the reason why I love it so much is because, I mean, a post-secondary institute is a business when you boil it down and they have to...

you know, get clients and they charge money for those clients. And so you could, you know, a person might come into a position like that and see it as a direct competitors. And so in that sense, we're having quote unquote, direct competitors who come into the room every month and figure out what they can do to support one another and to support the innovators and entrepreneurs that are within their institutions. And that's that's really special.

Gordon Sheppard (03:50.798)
So you're sort of a United Nations for post-secondary institutions, right? And in your ecosystem, you know, where you don't have skin in the game necessarily, because you're like a, you're a bringer together of folks. But one of the subcommittees that you have an opportunity to do is you get these representatives from these competitive institutions. They're competing to get those students into their classrooms. They'd rather have that happen. But they also realize there's a greater good.

that when they do participate, because they do influence sort of that younger generation of entrepreneurs, but also some very serious ventures coming through their post-secondaries as well. And if we look down the IP developments and all the kind of cool things contributing to major innovations as well. So you're getting that subcommittee coming together. What's it like to be in the room when that subcommittee is there?

Janice Baskin (04:35.714)
It's really great. So what's really interesting is like the first few times that I was in that meeting, I was like, wow, I am quantifiably the dumbest person in this room because I don't have a PhD or a master's. But the thing that I think is really incredible is that you have these high level executive positions at universities, these folks have multiple degrees and PhDs, and they are salt of the earth people and

And they really, really do believe, and I wish someone could be a fly on the wall in those meetings. They really do believe in collaborating and they really do believe in supporting one another. And if someone comes in and says, hey, I don't have the bandwidth this month or my budget's been cut, I don't know if I can help out. Everyone's like, no problem, we got you. We can pick up the slack on this initiative or whatever it is. And it's really cool.

Gordon Sheppard (05:26.958)
And that's just one example of what the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network does. And I'm going to pick up on the word collaboration. And then you get to lead. You're the pied piper of collaboration. You get to lead the folks through these things. Because you as the manager in the middle of this, you've got a board you've got to report to. And you've got some of these subcommittees that do different things. And I don't mean to run down the full list. I know that people can go and find out later. But you gave us that great example.

As the Pied Piper, how would you describe your role in all of this and the impact that you're having in this situation?

Janice Baskin (06:02.199)
Yeah, that's a great question. I answer that question frequently and I think I always answer it differently. But if I had to describe my role, it's essentially the day-to-day operations of those multi-level collaborations that are happening. And so what are the things that need to go on behind the scenes? It's governance, it's making sure we're accountable for the money that we're spending, the funding that we get from Alberta Innovates. It's making sure that we're being equitable in the disbursement of those funds, that we're being transparent.

We have all those things in place that ensure that we're doing things above board. So that's a big chunk of the job. There's a lot of bringing together different groups for things like meetups. We have funding, community initiatives grants that we disperse. So there's work around that that happens. And then a lot of it is meeting with early stage founders and being that navigator.

for them and going, okay, well, here's where you're at. This is where you want to get to. How do we get you there? What are the services and programs that exist and sort of helping them to navigate it?

Gordon Sheppard (07:12.494)
I've had a chance to observe you in your role and this is the interesting part for me. In terms of how would you describe yourself, honestly, and I mean just to get the Janus secret sauce out here around your ability to make it all kind of go together. How would you describe your influence on the situation?

Janice Baskin (07:32.698)
am, I believe in community. I believe in volunteerism and giving back and it's not a philosophy. It's genuinely ingrained in me as a human being and I hope that transpires, like I hope that translates when people meet me that I genuinely just really want people to succeed and I truly and honestly believe and have experienced this in my own

business, that it can be done through working together, even if there is a perception of, you know, conflict or competitiveness or those types of things, it is truly possible. And I think I come to the table with that mindset. And it's it's just, it's a different way of looking at things. I think there are people who are collaboratively minded, but there's always because I don't have a like,

to what you said, I don't have skin in the game. I don't have to bring in clients, I don't have to bring in revenue, I don't have these types of things. The job is literally, how do we collaborate? And so, I mean, I couldn't have made up a better job for myself, I say that often.

Gordon Sheppard (08:49.216)
And yeah, that's, and honestly I've seen it in action. So I'm a witness and I can attest and have talked a lot about, and it's funny, your name comes up a lot. Cause I'm like, I'll meet, I'll meet somebody who's like, I need resources. I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm like, have you started with, you know, ear in and talk to Janice? Like that it's not, it's easy to throw that name around, your name around because you know, it's going to happen, but you also know what's going to happen when they come in contact with you. Cause there aren't barriers. You know what I mean? That, that immediate receptivity that you create, that you build is a unique thing and a super strength.

that I think you bring to what then leads to outcomes, right? So often in ecosystem type conversations, say, wow, you know, it's kind of fuzzy and whatever. But I'm going to say if we actually traced some of these through lines, we would see, I met that person, you know, in this month. Then we got them those resources and we introduced them to these post-secondaries or whoever else they got introduced to. And that actually contributed to real outcomes. Is that fair to say?

Janice Baskin (09:41.516)
Yeah, for sure. kind of the downside of my job is that it's really difficult for me to continue to follow people. I do my best, if I meet with six or seven people a week, you think over the course of the year, that's a lot of people. I do touch back with them at least once and make sure that the resources are working out, but I wish I could get more of those stories.

Gordon Sheppard (10:06.99)
if we look at the village that it takes to raise a jobber in the Edmonton community, right? Because they were founders at one point. came maybe out of a post-secondary. Maybe they came through a program at Edmonton Unlimited. Maybe they came through wherever they came from. And then again, they would have collided with one of your events or something that you were sponsoring, a conversation. And again, I'm just really taking the time to paint this out for anybody that's not aware of what it takes to create regional collaboration.

and then the kind of the people and the influencers that are involved. So think we've kind of set the stage to get to this moment in the interview where we say, okay, great. Given that we understand you and where you work, if you had to describe one of your biggest wins in the last couple of years, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Janice Baskin (10:48.577)
So I remember when I started thinking about this, I was like, does this have to be like quantifiable, like an actual like targeted? But I really do think that the biggest win over the last year that I've been a bit that I've been in this role is I do believe that we have increased the visibility and the accessibility of the ERIN.

When I started this job, the chair of the steering committee at the time who was on your podcast, James Keirstedt, he said to me, I want the ERIN to be a household name. That is my ultimate goal. And I don't think we're there yet. But I think over the last year, actually, I know over the last year, we did the work that we needed to do to start to build that visibility. People know that we're around people are talking about us.

And that's huge for me because again, I feel like I'm succeeding in that thing that matters most to me, which is building that community.

Gordon Sheppard (11:50.518)
And building that place to go again where any entrepreneur at any stage is gonna flow through here and get moved forward, right? Like that's what it sort of all comes together to do, whether it's mentorship, specifics, funding, funding recommended resources, all those things that again, go through what you're doing. That's great. So the win is increasing the visibility and the accessibility. Wonderful. When we get in here now, I like to talk about the anatomy of the win.

So this idea of like, what is the strategy, the work plan, the people, operations, and results behind the win? So if the win is visibility and accessibility improvement for the earring, what was the strategy behind that? So when we say strategy, I mean like, what is the vision or the mission in a sense? And we got an indicator from what James said to you in a sense, make it a household name. But if you had to describe the strategic highlight about this win, what would you say it was?

Janice Baskin (12:42.571)
So I came into the job where a strategic plan had already been in place for a couple of years. And so I took a look at that and with some of the things that James was telling me. And I think that the strategy of being visible as a physical presence, actually being in the community. This job is intense in terms of the background work.

that needs to be done in the day-to-day operational stuff, but I don't think you can build a community from sitting at a desk. So whether it is me or members of my steering committee or some of our volunteers who are present, and you'll see them everywhere out in the community talking about the work that we do, that was the number one strategy for me.

I was like, a lot of the desk work has been done. My predecessor did a load of work in terms of building out some of those policies and frameworks and things that set us up to be in this position. And now it was, let's get out there and talk to people. That was my number one strategy.

Gordon Sheppard (13:54.924)
And that, so super clear, build the household name, get out and talk to people, build this visibility, accessibility, that's great. So that's strategically, we can hear kind of the highlight there. The next step is a work plan. So you arrive, it's at a certain state, and then this period of time goes by to get you to the win. What was the period of time that we can frame here? And what are some of the highlights along the way that actually got you the win?

Janice Baskin (14:18.858)
So I think the win is still happening, which is kind of nice. It's like ongoing. If I had to put some sort of a solid date on it, I would say that honestly, it probably wasn't until about where I felt it really clicked was at startup week last year. So in October, second week of October, startup week in Edmonton, that's where I started to feel like, okay, I walk into a room, I kind of know who the people are, I feel

comfortable talking about the work that we're doing and how I can support them. I know what questions to ask and I just genuinely also felt like people knew me and so that was sort of the turning point. I will say that it will be impossible to ever know everyone and everything about this ecosystem. It's huge and forever changing. So that will continually be ongoing. And then, sorry, what was the second?

Gordon Sheppard (15:16.215)
So we're in October and it kind of, like you arrived in the job earlier than October, things happen, you're getting to know people. October, you can feel the click in a sense. And there's those indicators of, a second, I can walk into a room, people know who I am, your messaging is rolling off the tongue, I'm sure a little bit better. And that's one of the highlights along the way that's getting you into this win, which is an ongoing type of win. So we've got to feel for some of those break moments. And it takes a bunch of work to get up to there, because you got to go meet people for the first time.

make things happen and try events and, you know, succeed and fail and those types of things along the way. So that's one of the highlights from the work plan. The third step in there is people. So we talked a lot about you in terms of your style and your flavor and why that's sort of important, but there's more than you that it takes to get this type of visibility. When you mentioned some of the steering committee members that are out there in the community kind of carrying the message, who are sort of the major players and how would you describe their attitudes? I guess if we talked about the people that are.

Janice Baskin (16:13.46)
Yeah, so I mean, the people involved goes all the way up and down, you know, to Alberta Innovates and our technology development advisors that work right alongside me. I mean, they are accessible by text to me anytime I ask lots of questions. That's part of my personality. And so they always make themselves available. You know, I have seven other colleagues who also run regional innovation networks across the province. We have a tight-knit group.

where we can bounce ideas off of one another and work pan provincially on initiatives. you know, there's that. And then there is my steering committee and all my subcommittees. So we have at any given time of the year, anywhere between 25 to 30 volunteers working on various different things for the year in which is, you know, huge because there's no way that I could do it all myself. And then I have, I call him my brain, but his name is Michael.

and he does all of the data work and he loves to build interfaces and databases and stuff and he really complements the stuff that's not where my strengths lie. And that's really important. But to your question of what is the attitude of those people in the room, regardless of whether it's Edmonton Unlimited, it's the government of Alberta, it's Alberta Innovates, it's the chair of our steering committee,

any one of our volunteers, the number one piece of it has to be that we, the attitude has to be that you remove your self-interest and truly come in with the purpose of truly and honestly collaborating. Because self-interest, I think, interferes with the ability to ultimately do the work of the regional innovation networks.

Gordon Sheppard (18:06.986)
Interesting. So it truly is, like if we looked up a definition of collaboration, self-interest would be, please remove self-interest. That's a great way to describe it. And you've wrangled dozens of people to drop their self-interest at a volunteer level. You've got sort of benevolent people at different agencies from the province on through to Albert Innovates, on through to your collaborative partners. Cause you could, if I've got eight regional innovation networks across the province, I could see that either as competitive.

Janice Baskin (18:19.776)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (18:36.062)
or collaborative, right? But you can hear the mood that's kind of permeating the whole thing along the way. And I love the way you've described it. think that's great. And ultimately, again, if the outcome of raising this awareness and this collaboration leads to the next company that succeeds in the province, that's the goal. That's the true north, certainly, of all of the efforts that go into doing that along the way. Wow, we could talk on and on about that, because now I'm like...

That's interesting when you're in a meeting, it must be lots of fun. Anyway, that's good. So we've got the strategy work plan people. Operationally, you got to do stuff. And maybe you can just run me down a bit of an a la carte laundry list of some of the things the IRIN does. Now you mentioned you have steering committees or volunteer committees. That's one aspect. I know that there are events, that type of thing. Maybe you could highlight some of the events and just help me out with some of the activities of the IRIN so that we understand operationally how you're actually getting the word out.

Janice Baskin (19:28.48)
Yeah, so all of our committees meet once a month, so there's that work. And then our events, we have committed to doing one in-person and one online event every month throughout the year. the purpose of that is not only to have an opportunity to bring our members and community people together, but also to highlight the things that are going on within the region. So we always partner with a service provider

and another entrepreneur or a tech founder, we want to utilize those meetups as an opportunity to showcase some of the things that are going on and how people can get access to those services or whatever it may be, which is really special to me. And then we do that for our online meetups as well. So like this month, we're going to be with Messed Up Mondays. They're celebrating their one year anniversary. You know, we thought, well, why don't we just partner in with them to help them celebrate that?

because ultimately we're here to elevate the things that are happening, not necessarily create our own programming that once again might compete. That's not what we want to do. And then outside of meetups, and like I explained before, writing policies, things like that, we also have a large flagship event that you've participated in, which is our Get to Know Day. And so this is something that is...

you know, we do in partnership with Alberta Innovates. And really the idea is to get all the people from the ecosystem that we can in a room together for a day and create experiences where they get to meet each other, you know, network, but also learn together. And then where we can gather feedback as the original innovation network to ensure that we're doing the work that we need to do, and we can be responsive to the community.

I'm like, I'm sitting here going, what else do I do all day? Like, I do a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things I

Gordon Sheppard (21:25.836)
It's, I mean, it's honestly, that's a good flavor right there. James, when he was on, was self-described Energizer Bunny. And I'm gonna put you in that category, because I'm getting tired listening to you. Do know what I mean? Like that takes a lot. That's a lot of output, right? And a lot of in-person and a lot of planning and a lot of sort of, again, hit and miss. I just need to jump in quickly. Messed Up Mondays, who you're collaborating with. Messed Up Mondays, I'm gonna say Tristan Keller's out there doing the good work of pulling people together once a week.

to help them along with their business development efforts in a very collaborative, in this crazy collaborative way, like this open forum. please, big shout out to those folks. If you ever get a chance to check out Messed Up Mondays and how nice that the EARIN is supporting them because they support entrepreneurs. It's a natural extension, maybe not the main space that you spend time in, but you saw that collaborative effort. You can pull that together. Again, if we went down more laundry list, we would see.

At the beginning, we said the win is visibility and accessibility improvement. And we can see now also when all the things you're saying, what it takes to do that. It's enormous. It takes volunteers. takes you and your full-time role. Michael's in his full-time role. We've got these other people collaborating in and again, trying to raise all these boats together in this collaborative, no self-interest kind of way to get that kind of mood going. And that takes a long time to because now there's somewhere in there too, you're building trust.

There's something in there that's a layering on piece. Like, I got here, it was kind of, I got to know people, it's October, things are feeling better. And you can feel now that trust building year over year. And if I talk to you in a year and a year after that, we would see, I think, that that trust is going to go even deeper because you're iterating along the way, maybe just like a startup. You're iterating, you're making it better as you kind of go forward. Wonderful. So strategy, work plan, people, operations, we've heard a bunch of that. Finally, there's results. If we have a win, there's results. There's qualitative results and quantitative results.

How would you describe, you know, if you can pick either one, maybe, I know you're a member-based organization, maybe give me an update on sort of where it was and where you are now from the member point of view, and then we can talk about some other things as well.

Janice Baskin (23:23.741)
Yeah, so I mean, obviously we're government funded programs. So we keep lots of, we have lots of data that we use to measure our wins. so membership wise, you know, last year we grew by 111 members. It was almost a 50 % growth, which was incredible. It's the largest growth we've seen year over year since the beginning of the year end. The other thing that I'm particularly proud of that I think is a huge indication of success

of this visibility and accessibility is our community initiatives grant. So the first year, so I guess we have $100,000 a year that we give away in the form of grants to folks who are running initiatives that will help to support entrepreneurs in the community. And those can be events, they can be workshops, all types of things. And in the first year, and this was before my time, but in the first year that this grant was offered, they gave away

they disbursed $40,000 in grants. And then the second year they did $70,000 in grants. Last year, so being the third year, we were able to reallocate some funds plus use some of those carryover funds from the previous year. And we gave out almost or just slightly over $300,000 just last year. And so that to me speaks that the word about the grants is getting out there that people are applying. So

whatever we're doing in terms of making that accessible to people is working. I get a lot of people reaching out asking me to review grant applications in advance, happy to do it. So I've seen the uptick in that particular program.

Gordon Sheppard (25:07.563)
And a community initiative, somebody independently is putting on something that helps entrepreneurs. And you folks look at it and you've got a group that looks at it and evaluates that and then distributes somewhere in the neighborhood of what, up to $10,000, possibly more, depending less, depending on what it is. But you're the folks that can then curate that. then so we can hear that there's responsible curation of the dollars going out the door. And it's one thing to spend 40,000 on a few initiatives. Now, if you're talking about the 300,000, something's working.

Janice Baskin (25:12.372)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (25:36.521)
Right? Because you're not just throwing that money around. It's going out to, can you give an example of maybe one or two community initiatives? Like just so that can get like a quick one liner on maybe one or two.

Janice Baskin (25:45.949)
Yeah, for sure. So my favorite one is, I shouldn't say that we don't have favorite. I'm a mom, I know better than that. One of my favorite ones is the Yag Startup Community Awards, right? So it's a totally grassroots led event. It's people from the community just putting it together, highlighting and showcasing the incredible startups that we have in the community. mean, that's, that's, it embodies the spirit of what the grant is meant to be for.

Gordon Sheppard (25:49.395)
He he he he he he he he he.

Janice Baskin (26:14.846)
The other one I really like is, and we've funded it think for three or four years now, is the Neural Alberta Techs Hackathon. So they host this for four days every year in November and it's these second and third year computer science students who don't sleep for four days and they hack out some sort of, you know, neuro technology device. It's fascinating, it's inspiring, it's great to watch.

you know, all the stakeholders come together and help out with it. Edmonton Unlimited is there, you know, the University of Alberta is there. It's a really, really great event. And again, it embodies sort of all those pieces that we're looking for in terms of outcomes for the grants.

Gordon Sheppard (27:00.053)
We've got membership growth. I've attended the startup awards. It was charming there at the art gallery this year, but because of the backbone that you give in really just the, I'm say a pittance amount of money. It's not like you're funding a program. It's like, no, you're getting them, you know, you're getting them a chance to get a venue and, you know, buy some finger foods and make sure people can come together. But that event itself, I know those people, I've seen them on the stage. They're so proud to be acknowledged, right? The hackathon you're describing, I'm not fully aware of other than,

This grant enables that chance to start to get your next computer science wizard to come through the system and get a shot at their first kick of the cat as they kind of come through. And again, this ecosystem vibe of looking at all the different stages that people come through to create something, build something, and actually get it up onto its feet. We can hear that in there. well, anyway, again, I'm sure we can go on and on with other types of results, but those are great highlights to sort of put in there. If you had to put a bow on this, sort of, you know, for people on the way out here towards the end of the interview,

What's the sort of one thing you'd like to say about this win or about the year in that you want people really to know?

Janice Baskin (28:05.054)
Oh gosh, bow. I think, oh, that's such a great question, Gorda. I think the bow on it is this, I want people to understand that we really are, we exist in the ecosystem to be that unbiased collaborator. It really is, so I'm never gonna solicit you to join a program to,

sell you something to and as long as I'm around it's really important that I think that we stick to that model because it allows us to stay arms reach from the government so we're not being unduly influenced there but also having you know the community making decisions that's best for the community and that's what's really important to me and so as we continue to grow and change that I hope will continue to stay as the bedrock of

some of the decisions that we're making.

Gordon Sheppard (29:06.483)
It's clear that that's happening. It's clear that you're a big part of helping to make that occur, although there's an army in behind you. just, how lucky to have you on the show here today to share this great win. Janice, thank you so much for being here.

Janice Baskin (29:18.588)
Yes, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.