What happens when Alberta’s two largest innovation hubs resist treating each other like rivals and start designing a shared strategy?
“We can leave the competition on the ice,” says Terry Rock, president and CEO of Platform Calgary, dubbed the city’s ‘home for innovators.’
At Inventures 2025, Rock and Tom Viinikka, CEO of fellow innovation hub Edmonton Unlimited, made it clear that they’re not only comparing notes, they’re aligning resources to serve entrepreneurs across the province.
Their approach reflects a broader shift in Canada’s innovation landscape. As ecosystems mature, leaders are asking what structural collaboration really looks like, and what kind of institutional coordination is needed to support founders, attract investment, and deliver on regional goals.
For Rock and Viinikka, that work is already underway.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Building a corridor without borders
The conversation between Calgary and Edmonton’s innovation leaders has matured from informal calls to true structured integration.
Rock recalls the early days of coordination, when he and then-Innovate Edmonton CEO Cheryll Watson launched the Alberta Innovation Corridor, later disrupted by the pandemic. What remained was Alberta Catalyzer, a co-delivered venture-building program that now serves founders across the province.
That collaboration has since deepened.
“[Our] teams are effectively integrated,” says Rock. “And today we made public that we’ve signed a Memorandum of Collaboration to do more.”
The goal is to add structure to what already works informally.
“I’m looking forward to that kind of infrastructure that really does help facilitate what we do,” adds Viinikka. “I know that when we do have conversations, there’s a lot of value in just catching each other up. Our information is not symmetrical, and so we can get a lot from talking.”
This infrastructure is aimed at improving founder outcomes. Rock points to Calgary’s National Bank Investor Hub as a resource Edmonton founders could tap into. In return, Edmonton’s strength in mentorship programming could help Calgary startups move faster.
“It’s just a simple fact that by combining resources, we can do more to help the people that we’re trying to serve,” says Rock.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Competition is not the obstacle
The optics of the so-called ‘Battle of Alberta’ — often joked about online, on stage, and (most often) on the ice — don’t hold up when you examine how the two hubs actually operate. While some natural rivalry exists, both leaders reject the idea that collaboration threatens their own momentum.
“There’s not a lot that’s zero-sum when you think about supporting entrepreneurs,” says Rock. “They really thrive on connections to whatever resource or something that’s going to help them get over the hurdle they’re currently facing, whatever milestone that might be.”
Viinikka agrees, acknowledging that while day-to-day priorities can sometimes interfere, the bigger picture is clear.
“The challenges of collaboration are always that… we each have the things we need to get done,” he says. “But making sure there’s always time for these other pieces — so that we can kind of lift the tide, as well as just working on our own boats.”
Funding is also less of a flashpoint than some might assume. While funding is often seen as a fault line between city-based organizations, Viinikka notes that government support (particularly at the provincial and federal levels) tends to favour coordinated efforts over siloed asks.
“From a government perspective, it’s probably more an advantage working together than it is a competitive piece,” says Viinikka.
Rock adds that most fundraising and sponsorship decisions rarely pit the two organizations directly against each other.
“There’s just enough distance between the two cities,” he says. “That’s probably the most difficult thing for us to overcome.”
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Beyond the city limits
The vision isn’t limited to two cities, though.
Both leaders stress that provincial resources must benefit all regions of Alberta. Rock stressed that the new collaboration should not be seen as exclusionary.
“It’s really a prioritization of getting the resources of 95% of the tech investment and activity in the province lined up and really working,” he says. “And then ensuring that those resources are available in a non-competitive way to the rest of the province.”
While collaboration with hubs in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Vancouver have been tabled, it’s been under a different context, with Viinikka pointing to the unique nature of the Edmonton-Calgary partnership.
“Sometimes with the idea of being collaborative, it’s really easy to start saying, let’s go Canada, let’s go North America,” says Viinikka. “But for collaboration to work really well, there does need to be a real reason. There’s a real reason for us to do this.”
The point isn’t to build a new brand or initiative. It’s simply their way of doing things.
“This is our attitude,” Viinikka says. “And the way we’re going to do our business — not a new thing that’s going to blow up and take over the world.”
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Next steps, and the urgency to deliver
Both organizations have recently launched updated strategies. Viinikka says the priority now is execution.
“Our community… has watched us not get this off the ground as fast as they’d like,” he says. “So we have this, we have this new strategy that the community’s been excited about and bought into.”
He adds “it really is about making some stuff happen in the next year.”
In Calgary, Rock describes a similar inflection point.
“We’ve shown a lot of momentum here,” he says, referring to the new city-wide innovation strategy launched with Calgary Economic Development and the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund. “The next level of growth is within our grasp. We can see it, but it’s going to take a double-down on collaboration in the city.”
That sense of momentum (and the pressure to maintain it) is something both leaders acknowledged. After years of groundwork, the priority now is execution.
For Rock and Viinikka, collaboration is the practical lever they’re betting on to meet rising expectations from founders, partners, and their own teams.
“Does it make the environment our entrepreneurs work in… measurably better, which means they have more access to capital, great talent, and customers?” Rock asks. “If the answer is yes, then we need to double down. And 80% of that opportunity is just three hours north of here.”
Watch the interview:
