With ACT Innovation Hub’s support, the NATO Association of Canada founded the Transatlantic Innovation Centre (TIC) to strengthen NATO member and partner nations through open innovation.
As the commercial sector overtakes government labs and legacy defence suppliers in innovation pace, defence establishments are increasingly looking to source solutions from non-traditional suppliers including startups, SMEs, Big Tech and academia.
In addition to harnessing their extended national defence innovation base, countries are also looking for innovative solutions beyond their borders hence the push by the NATO ACT Innovation Hub to create an international innovation ecosystem comprising Alliance member and partner nations.
In partnership with the different public and private stakeholders constituting the national innovation base, the TIC looks to further integrate Canada into a NATO-wide innovation ecosystem.
It aims to do so by connecting the different national innovation ecosystems through recurring hackathons where teams from various Alliance members and partners compete to propose solutions to address current and future security challenges.
In support of this innovation matchmaking, the TIC recognizes the need to create a B2B forum that fosters cooperation between legacy and new defence firms so that both actors can leverage their respective advantages. As part of its mission of connecting the various innovation ecosystems, the TIC also aims to shorten the feedback loop between this extended innovation base and the defence policy community by creating a B2G platform where NATO member and partner nations’ government agencies discuss with suppliers the future of warfare and define operational requirements around which hackathons will be designed.
