The room was full of founders, researchers, and policy watchers waiting to see how Alberta’s publicly funded provincial innovation agency planned to navigate a tighter future.
On stage in Calgary, Alberta Innovates CEO Mike Mahon drew on a sports image to explain the shift.
“Rather than seeing ourselves as the individual or team at the finish line, we’re the coaches that get that individual or team to the finish line,” he said.
That set the tone for the fireside chat on Sept. 16, where Alberta Innovates’ leaders described their new 2025-2028 business plan as a move toward partnership and collaboration.
At the session, Alberta Innovates leaders walked through a business plan that sets goals for streamlining programs, sharpening focus, and landing impact with a reduced budget. They spoke about cutting overlap with Platform Calgary and Edmonton Unlimited, looking beyond funding results, and paying closer attention to dual-use technologies as military spending grows. They also hinted at a shift in how partnerships are defined, opening the door to a different way of working with the ecosystem.
The plan lands at a critical moment.
Alberta, like the rest of Canada, is grappling with a productivity gap, declining R&D investment relative to peers, and heightened global competition.
At the same time, Alberta’s innovation ecosystem has matured. Startups, accelerators, universities, and industry consortia are more active and capable than they were a decade ago.
For Alberta Innovates, the challenge now is looking for initiatives where it can add the most value rather than trying to fill every gap itself.
The conversation in Calgary, featuring Mahon, board chair Tony Williams, Nicole Shokoples, VP of stakeholder engagement and communications, and VP of clean energy Bryan Helfenbaum, was designed to give shape to this new direction.
They explored how Alberta Innovates is rethinking its role, why it is narrowing its focus, and what lessons other regions and organizations might take away.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s in the business plan, and what Alberta Innovates says it’s going to do next:
Three goals to anchor the strategy
At the centre of the 2025-2028 business plan are three goals. Each responds to feedback from hundreds of stakeholders who told the agency what was working, what was not, and where the opportunities lie.
- Improve access to innovation supports by streamlining programs, cutting red tape, and making it easier for startups and researchers to find the right pathways.
- Accelerate commercialization and scaling so that Alberta-made technologies move more quickly from research into markets at home and abroad.
- Build a more effective culture and operating model inside Alberta Innovates, modernizing systems and processes so more dollars flow directly to innovators.
Mahon acknowledged that changing the culture of a large organization is going to take work.
“Turning a ship within a culture change is not always the easiest thing to do,” he said. But he also argued that efficiency and responsiveness inside the agency are critical to delivering results externally.
Four cross-cutting areas of focus
The organization’s goals are supported by four areas of focus that span industries.
Rather than creating narrowly defined programs in individual sectors, the agency is concentrating on spaces where breakthroughs emerge at the intersections.
- Applied digital and emerging technologies: Artificial intelligence, quantum, cybersecurity, and data-driven tools that transform industries. These are tools that transform multiple sectors at once, from agriculture to health to energy.
- Health, agriculture, and life sciences: Innovations in precision health, biotechnology, bio-industrial solutions, and sustainable agriculture. It reflects how issues like health, food, and the environment are increasingly interconnected.
- Natural resource recovery: Cleaner, more efficient approaches to energy and resource development, including hydrogen and carbon capture.
- Advanced materials and aerospace: Everything from turning bitumen into carbon fibre to new aerospace and defence technologies.
These focus areas are intentionally broad and overlapping.
“This is where the spaces of innovation take place,” said Mahon. “It’s in those cracks in between the things we already understand.”
For now, defence sits under advanced materials and aerospace, but growing federal contracts and interest in military and dual-use technologies suggest it may soon warrant a category of its own in Alberta’s innovation plans. Dual-use technologies include drones, advanced materials, and cybersecurity tools that serve both civilian markets and defence needs.
The idea of elevating defence aligns with national trends.
Canada committed more than $9 billion in additional defence-related investments for 2025-26, with funding directed toward procurement, capability modernization, digital foundations, and strengthening its defence industry.
Collaboration as a deliberate choice
The discussion made clear that this shift is about creating a stronger ecosystem where leadership is shared.
“There’s so many opportunities, and Alberta Innovates is a conduit for both dollars, connecting people together and then driving that into the ecosystem,” explained Williams.
For Shokoples, the change also includes how the organization defines partnership.
“We’re looking at partnerships as more than transactional,” she said. “So it’s not just a funding relationship and then we have a partnership.”
She described a move toward co-developing initiatives with local partners and amplifying success stories in a way that builds confidence in the broader ecosystem.
Helfenbaum gave examples from the clean energy portfolio. Alberta’s oil sands and lithium resources are globally unique, he says, but developing them requires specialized expertise that does not always exist locally.
“Our focus has always been very much on building up the local,” he said. “However, we do provide these connections, and we’re building on those to be able to bring in that outside expertise.”
Alberta Innovates also said it’s cutting back overlap by working with groups such as Platform Calgary and Edmonton Unlimited, rather than running similar programs itself.
The discussion underscored that collaboration means Alberta Innovates no longer needs to lead every initiative. The agency is leaning on partners where they have expertise, bringing in outside knowledge when it is needed, and focusing its own efforts on areas where it can make the most difference.
It reflects a system that has grown more confident in sharing responsibility and more capable of building strength through connection.
Focus in a world of distractions
Staying focused is going to be an important step for Alberta Innovates to execute on its business plan, and the board chair hit that point home by telling a story of his cats.
At home, Williams said, they are forever chasing something new — a flicker of movement, a shadow on the wall, anything that catches their eye.
“They see the new thing. They get excited. They race after it,” he said.
It was a simple image, but one that landed. Innovation systems, like restless cats, can get distracted fast. The challenge is to keep them from sprinting after everything that moves.
With constant turbulence in global politics, shifting alliances, and new technologies demanding attention, it can be easy to lose focus.
“There’s so many things for us to do now,” Williams added. “It’s about focus and getting the job done.”
As part of its efforts to focus, Alberta Innovates cut the number of programs nearly in half, Mahon said. The effort was done to save money, but also create room for new approaches that are better aligned with current needs.
For Mahon, a big next step is going to be showing that collaboration and focus translates into measurable impact.
That means not just showing outputs like the number of companies funded, but demonstrating outcomes like jobs created, technologies commercialized, and markets reached. It also means telling the story in a way that resonates beyond the innovation community.
On the comms side Shokoples noted there is work to be done in communicating impact to elected officials and the public, not just those already convinced of the importance of innovation.
While the discussion was about Alberta, the lessons are broader. Many regions and organizations are wrestling with the same issues. How do you focus in an environment full of possibilities? How do you build a system that works across sectors instead of in silos? How do you shift from funding research to proving commercialization, while also changing culture inside your own institution?
Alberta Innovates’ answer is to act as a coach and collaborator, with fewer programs, clearer priorities, and a commitment to telling the story of impact. That is a strategy that will feel familiar to anyone trying to build focus and prove impact in their own ecosystem.
Final shots
- Ask what role your organization should play. Sometimes impact comes from being the connector or coach, not the star.
- Simplify access for those you serve. Complexity may signal activity, but clarity builds trust and results.
- Commercialization is not an afterthought. Build the pathways early so research does not get stuck in the lab.
- Culture change inside your organization is as critical as strategy outside it. Without it, even the best plan will stall.
- Focus beats distraction. Choosing fewer priorities is not a weakness. It creates the space to do what matters most.
