The Creative Destruction Lab, one of the leading tech accelerators in the country, is in talks to set up a base in Halifax as part of its national expansion.

People familiar with the situation said CDL, which originated at the University of Toronto, has been in talks with Dalhousie University and Volta Labs about a Halifax location. As the Toronto-based organization expands, it’s considering placing sector-specific centres of excellence in each of its locations. The plans include making Halifax the “Green and Blue” accelerator — meaning it would focus on green technologies and ocean technologies.

“I’m really excited for CDL to be coming to Halifax,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “It’s a new model for accelerators.”

Representatives from the CDL and Dalhousie declined to comment for this article.

The Creative Destruction Lab is known as a demanding accelerator, and many companies that enter the program are asked to leave before completing the nine-month course. The CDL starts each cohort with a few-dozen teams, who attend a one- or two-day mentoring session to receive a set of milestones from mentors. They’re then sent away to work on these tasks. When the cohort convenes again about two months later, teams who missed their milestones are asked to leave. CDL repeats the process several times, so each cohort ends up with a handful of graduates.

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Despite the rigours of the program, Atlantic Canadian companies have done well in CDL. Fredericton-based Eigen Innvoations, which creates Internet of Things solutions for manufacturers, graduated last year. Charlottetown-based Retrievium, which has devised a predictive analytics system for chemists, and Halifax-based FundMetric, which produces software for charities, are in the program in Toronto. WoodsCamp, a Mahone Bay company whose digital platform can be used for woodlot management, is going through the CDL West program, the first cohort offered outside Toronto.

In the past year, CDL has set up a CDL West cohort in collaboration with University of British Columbia, and is now planning on bases in several cities. It has held meetings in Toronto on the expansion, which have been attended by such Atlantic Canadian representatives as Volta Labs CEO Jesse Rodgers (the founding director of CDL) and Jeff Larsen, the executive director of Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Dal.

The advent of CDL in Halifax could have several ramifications. First, it would provide a base for advanced Atlantic Canadian companies to connect with mentors with global reach. The entrepreneurs who have been exposed to the program rave about the quality of mentors. It could also help to raise standards for innovation entrepreneurs in the region, because CDL is a national program and Atlantic Canadian founders would likely have to compete with startups from elsewhere to get in and stay in.

Second, it could provide another component for Dalhousie’s entrepreneurship capacity, which now features its Launch Dal entrepreneurship program, the Shiftkey Labs sandbox, and will soon include the IDEA project on the Sexton Campus.

And finally, it could have huge benefits for the efforts to establish Halifax and the region as a centre for ocean technology. One of the shortcomings of that plan is the shortage of ocean-related startups in Nova Scotia. If CDL East does focus on oceans technology, it could help to attract more oceans-related companies.