Innovacorp has launched a new competition called Spark West to identify and provide seed capital for startups in western Nova Scotia.

Spark West is the counterpart to Spark Cape Breton, which for the past three years has been helping to launch companies in Cape Breton and the Mulgrave area. Each year, it has awarded development capital of up to $50,000 to companies that have the potential to

Government, private investors and academia came together Tuesday to announce $220 million in funding for the Ocean Frontier Institute, a new research group led by Dalhousie University.

The OFI, which is a partnership between Dal, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Prince Edward Island, promises to be one of the world's most significant ocean science research organizations.

Our Jobs of the Week column today highlights a couple of postings by iWave Information Systems, a P.E.I. company that helps non-profits with their fundraising efforts.

Based in Charlottetown, iWave has developed software that helps researchers, fundraisers and other development professionals learn more about their prospects and donors.The company is now looking for a sales manager and an acting

Innovacorp and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency last week awarded a total of $225,000 in development money to seven winners of their 2016 Spark Cape Breton Innovation Challenge.

The Spark competition is designed to find promising young companies in Cape Breton and the Mulgrave area and provide a bit of seed capital to allow them to grow. The cash prizes this year range from $20,000 to

John McLaughlin, Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus of the University of New Brunswick, has been awarded Startup Canada’s 2016 Adam Chowaniec Lifetime Achievement Award for the Atlantic Region.

The national organization dedicated to developing startups announced McLaughlin’s award and the other Atlantic Canadian Startup Canada Award winners last week. The awards will be presented at a

Palmer to Head Propel ICT’s Growth Program

Propel ICT, the Atlantic Canadian regional accelerator, has named Steve Palmer as the head of its new Growth Program.

The Growth Program, which the organization announced earlier in the year, is designed to help Propel alumni and other scaling companies to grow from mature startups into bona fide corporations. The plan is to help them continue to grow

The need for Atlantic Canadian businesses to increase sales, particularly global sales, is a hot subject. With that in mind, technical industry association Digital Nova Scotia is piloting a sales development program in Halifax for small to medium-sized businesses.

The program aims to help participants focus on issues such as generating cash flow, attracting investment, developing strategic

EyeRead Changes Name to Squiggle Park

EyeRead, the Halifax startup dedicated to helping children learn to read, has changed its name to Squiggle Park.

A spinout from the Halifax web development company Norex, Squiggle Park uses the camera facing the reader on a laptop or other device to track the eye as the child reads. By tracking the eye, the software can detect where the child is having

Well, we're not really fishing, but there was a time when that sign used to hang in office windows if people were away. We will be taking our annual summer break next week. We're having a bit of down time and recharging our batteries before a busy autumn. 

We'll be back on Tuesday, Sept. 6, wihch coincidentally will be the fifth anniversary of our launch in 2011. 

Stay well, everyone, and have

Trevor MacAusland is returning to Propel ICT.

The regional accelerator said Wednesday that MacAusland, who had overseen the organization’s first program, Launch36, has accepted a position as Entrepreneur-in-Residence in Moncton.

“Propel ICT continues to evolve and we identified certain opportunities to enhance our services to our program participants, to our alumni and other stakeholders,” said