Thomson Reuters, the global news and data company, recently opened its second Thomson Reuters Lab and it is located in the heart of the Communitech hub in downtown Kitchener.

Though the official opening is not until Techtoberfest next week, the Thomson Reuters Lab is already operating in the corporate innovation zone, joining such blue chip partners as Canadian Tire, TD Financial, Google, Deloitte and Manulife Financial.

The Thomson Reuters team is focusing mainly on linking up clients (largely in the financial and legal segments) with startups or innovators that might be able to provide solutions to specific problems.

“The ideal situation would be a Thomson Reuters client has a problem that fits the expertise and product of one of our startups,” said Brian Zubert, Director of the Thomson Reuters Labs – Waterloo Region, in an interview last week. He added that the company had already managed to link up three clients with innovators from the region.

The innovators could be researchers at the region’s universities, who Zubert described as people that corporations “just can’t hire” because they have expertise and are linked to research facilities that only exist in institutions.

A former executive with Blackberry, Zubert spent more than a year as Executive-in-Residence at Communitech.

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Toronto-based Thomson Reuters said in a statement the lab has the duel objective of innovation and partnership. “Innovation will come through applied research and experimentation on Thomson Reuters vast and unique data sets, helping to produce solutions for Thomson Reuters’ customers,” said the statement. “Partnership involves collaboration with academics, students and startups to put new technologies into practice, and meeting the business challenges faced by Thomson Reuters’ customers.”

The multinational formed its first Data Innovation Lab last year in Boston, and the program was successful enough that it expanded with a second facility in Kitchener.

Thomson Reuters is also partnering with the University of Waterloo, which has been named the most innovative university in Canada and has one the world’s largest concentrations of mathematical and computer science talent.

The Communitech corporate innovation program lets some of the country’s and world’s leading companies locate offices right in the Hub complex so they have access to the innovation talent that prowls the facility. The programs on offer range from Google For Entrepreneurs, an accelerator for idea-stage companies, to Deloitte’s innovation lab for rapid prototyping.

The idea is to get startup founders working with corporations so they can understand the problems faced by large businesses and their customers.

“Where there’s a business opportunity, startups will find a way to benefit from it,” said Zubert.