While SpaceBound was packed with examples of business opportunity and innovation, one panel focused particularly on the collaborations that business can bring to widen opportunities to different sectors – the government, academia and various communities being just a few examples.
There were a wide range of themes and examples brought up in this discussion based on personal experiences, but what seemed to unite the panellists was the belief that diverse thinking would create projects better able to serve different interests.
The panellists included:
- Dr. Sarah Gallagher, Director, Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University
- Jasmine Danial, Advisor, Strategic Projects, Invest Brampton
- Jean-Francois Lavigne, Solutions Manager, INO
- Daniel Schulten, Director, Business Development Space Canada, Airbus Defence and Space
- Stéphanie Durand, Vice President, Policy, Communications and Strategic Planning, CSA
- Moderator: Julien LeBlanc, Co-Founder and President, Blueprint North America
Here are some of the recommendations they had for folks looking to make their own collaborations that cross different sectors:
View different sectors as different communities of practice. From a business perspective, for example, each sector is accountable to different sets of individuals: industry to shareholders or stakeholders; academia to peer review; government to taxpayers; and communities to members of that community. But in Canada, the shared goal among these different groups tends to be putting forward the interests of the country and the communities, and it is by blending perspectives in a healthy way that this can be achieved.
The challenge of STEM is right-sizing it. STEM is a large portfolio that could include anything from preschoolers to post-graduate, but what the panellists agreed on is it is important. The most important step in any STEM initiative is providing the right information to a variety of different communities, and to so in a way that – to quote a different conversation witnessed by SpaceQ on site – will “bring wonder” to a student’s life and keep engendering curiosity. Collaboration among different groups, and creating trust by listening and adaptation, are some of the principles that were shared.
Don’t be afraid to make introductions. There were many shared by the panellists, but here is one anecdote: Danial recalled a past SpaceBound that helped her join the nonprofits she sees in Brampton with the tech industry. Kyle Boyko, the president and board chair at InspireTech Canada, expressed an interest in attending the conference to learn more about opportunities, which allowed Danial to connect Boyko with Canon – who is putting some of their lenses onto satellites – as well as MDA Space. These connections allowed InspireTech to create Moonshot, an event series for high school students considering careers in space, rockets and rovers.
Embrace iterations when a project can’t get off the ground. Gallagher mentioned an active project Western University has with the city of London to monitor the methane emissions from an active landfill. Initially, an interdisciplinary team she was part of applied to do this work for a Western academic-and-partner collaboration for a set of projects collectively known as Carbon Solutions. The proposal was interesting to all involved, but didn’t quite meet the needs, so they put the work temporarily aside. But a month later, Environment Canada put out a call for methane monitoring solutions, which more closely fit the expertise and aims of Gallagher’s team. It’s been a fruitful project since, she said, as it is allowing the team to learn more about landfill emission variations over time, such as when there’s snow cover on the ground.
There are always ways to think bigger. Whether it’s Canadian companies getting the chance to bid for more European Space Agency contracts under funding announced this week, or giving high school students the chance to build science experiments in after-school clubs that could launch in the atmosphere on balloons or rockets, there are always avenues to think about bringing multiple industries together. The panellists also emphasized the need to think about diversity, citing examples such as Indigenous groups and international students, to give opportunities and robust science practice for future projects