Cooperathon 2018 Launch Party — Kicked-off with a Bang
Wednesday, September 26th, the third edition of Cooperathon launched with a bang. The kick-off took place at the newly renovated Grand Quai Alexandra. With an expansive and luxurious lobby, clear glass windows allowed participants a spectacular view of the riverfront.
This year a record-breaking 2,800 entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, students, young graduates, professionals, managers, intrapreneurs, hackers, citizens and experts from every field showed up to participate in the largest open innovation project that runs for 25 days. Its mission is to “connect passion, talent, communities and academics.” So that together they can “develop a socially responsible future.” Essentially, innovation with a conscience. It’s an ambitious goal, empowering citizens to build a startup or providing them with the opportunity to get involved in a project with social impact in 4 major tracks: Health, Finance, Education and Environment or Energy. It enables diverse and complementary talent to come together, share ideas and exchange viewpoints while creating or joining a project for 25 days of personal training with a chance at $100,000 in prizes. “A competition for citizens who want to make a positive impact on their community.”
Cooperathon is the brainchild of Desjardins Lab and its partners. Since its inception in 2015, at the time called “Defi Innovation Sante”, has grown exponentially from a simple hackathon into the biggest open innovation challenge. In the last 3 years, Montreal New Tech a close partner, “has been an integral part of its development, helping construct and promote programming and partnerships for this unique collective initiative”, said Ilias Benjelloun, Open Innovation Catalyst at Desjardins Lab and one of the major architects spearheading Cooperathon.
Cooperathon is sponsored and supported by several community leaders including Deloitte, Investissement Quebec, Desjardins, Fintech, Prompt, Interac, Mallette, Alithya, Fibrenoire, Mastercard, Microsoft, Ville De Quebec, Hello and Arche. They also worked in collaboration with Hacking Health, Hydro Quebec, College Durocher Saint-Lambert and FormFintech.
As guests arrived they were handed their badges and a Visitors guide that included a map, important dates and information for future events. As they made their way to the larger lobby room, they were welcomed by friendly volunteers and staff that gave personal guided tours. The room was divided into 5 main areas. 4 sections that showcased the 4 major tracks/ themes: Health, Finance, Education and Energy/ Environment. In the back was a kiosk center where visitors could go to register which projects they were interested in joining which was also projected on a large screen.
Corinne Bouve, a volunteer and ex-employee of Desjardins, was inspired to get involved with Cooperathon as she’s passionate about helping others to make a tangible impact in society. And what better way to do that than through mobilizing a community of citizens to build the next big game-changing start-up. As she passionately expressed “children are innately born with a sense of curiosity and the school system is all about learning, however, instead of nurturing creativity schools often end-up undermining creativity. They don’t typically teach the next generation the skill sets they need, like financial literacy — how to calculate for your retirement fund, how to reduce your debt, how to save for a mortgage, etc.” She fervently believes that big companies like Desjardins through Cooperthon are playing a pivotal role in value creation by providing opportunities for ordinary citizens to come together and share their unique knowledge and experiences, as she puts it, “to make your dream of a better world.”
I met Delphine Davan at the ‘Hacking Health’ (a worldwide movement that promotes health through innovation) booth, where she was enthusiastically greeting visitors and helping participants to learn about the 30+ projects in the health track. Delphine, Business Development consultant with Covalent Development, strongly believes that everyone should have access to health care. She commented, “Thanks to technology and innovation, we have the tools that can help people to connect together to find solutions to some of the leading healthcare challenges we face today.”
Also, at Hacking Health track was Julie-Alexandra Langue Dube, Project Manager in provincial project healthcare trajectories at CIUSSS. As Julie-Alexandra described, Hacking Health runs health hackathons — where professionals in the health care field, from health care practitioners, administrators, hospitals, healthcare institutions and other stakeholders can assemble and collaborate to derive at solutions to the health care problems faced by the system. As she explained, Hacking Health and Cooperathon are partnering where, “it’s a super intensive environment where entrepreneurs are given the tools they need, including importantly, mentor-ship to enable learning and growth.”
A gold sponsor of the energy stream track at Cooperathon is Prompt, a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating partnerships and R&D financing between businesses and the public research sector. As Antoine Auger, business development lead at Prompt says, “we help start-up’s and small to medium enterprises to find financing for their research and development work. We focus mainly on the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) industry, including wireless and 5G, Artificial Intelligence, big data, advanced analytics, intelligent cities and transport, digital aircraft, health IT, photonics optics, cybersecurity, microelectronics, 3D simulation and virtual reality. We’re sponsoring the energy stream track at Cooperathon. We’re looking for start-ups and projects that are interested in creating a big social impact — one example would be the projects working on the goal of reducing gas house emissions.”
Fortuitously, I ran into Philippe Telio, founder of Startupfest, a well-recognized face in the Montreal start-up ecosystem. He’s a big supporter of Montreal New Tech and Desjardins — “it’s nice to see Desjardins and its partners connecting together such a large group of talent to bring about social impact.” He remarked that “gone are the days of capitalism — in this new age of entrepreneurship, companies need something more than just a brand. The brand has to stand for something, it needs moral fibre. Entrepreneurs need to ask themselves “how can I have a positive impact on the world.” We talked some time about the Montreal Start-up ecosystem and the challenges involved. Building a business isn’t just about maximizing shareholder value, although that’s important it’s also crucial to invest in society. He elaborated, “the density of entrepreneurs is high. The city of Montreal recently came out with a report that stated that about 1 out of 4 people have a desire to start a business, that they are hungry to build and create new businesses. I think the turnout for Cooperathon is a live demonstration of that desire.”
Leading the Fintech track at Cooperathon is FormFintech — which brings together the most talented individuals to find innovative solutions to corporate challenges. I had the pleasure of speaking with Jan Christopher Arp, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Holt Accelerator. He’s also one of the Founders of FormFintech. Jan commented, “we’re here to build the next generation of entrepreneurs, getting them ready to build the next big product.” As Jan elaborates, “at Holt we take the time to support and provide guidance to early-stage start-up’s. We’re committed to sharing our knowledge and know-how in the fin-tech space so that we can elevate the ecosystem as a whole.” Projects that do well will have the opportunity to be incubated at FormFintech, so that they can continue to get the mentorship and guidance to scale and grow.
District 3 Innovation Center (D3), a leading innovation hub and Accelerator located within Concordia University in Montreal, is working with Cooperathon to empower ambitious entrepreneurs to create meaningful impact. Diana Horrqque Ratto, service designer and Project Officer at District 3, commented “one of our major goals is to equip entrepreneurs with the knowledge, understanding, and self-awareness to take an idea to fruition. We aim to provide entrepreneurs with the “know-how” through one-on-one coaching, team mentorship, workshops, conferences, networking opportunities and events — so that they can become self-reliant and grow in their entrepreneurial journey”.
Diversity and Inclusion is a central theme at this years Cooperathon. “Because we have a fundamental belief that a diverse and inclusive world leads to innovation and an openness to seeing humanity in a new light.” As Audrey Cuirassier, responsible for diversity and inclusion at Desjardins commented, “it’s really important to ensure that teams are diverse and inclusive — you need a variety of backgrounds: ages, genders, cultures, abilities, experiences, sexual orientations, and ideas to build a company.” The Cooperathon team has worked hard this year to incentivize teams through a bonus program that allows them to earn points the more diverse and inclusive the make-up of their team.
At the heart of it, Cooperathon is about responsible innovation. It brings together experts from every field imaginable, from finance, marketing, HR, risk-management, technologist, etc to spur ideas. All anyone needs to participate in Cooperathon is a “desire to explore opportunities, try new things and make a difference in your community.” Coming up on October 20th is the semi-finals and November 1st is the finals for those projects and start-ups competing at #Cooperathon18.
Originally published at medium.com on October 2, 2018.
