Cornwall Innovation Centre: An idea whose worth hasn’t materialized | Cornwall Standard Freeholder

It is a good idea.

However the first two-plus years of existence of the Cornwall Innovation Centre leaves a lot of questions as to how many times priorities can change, money can be spent and has us struggling to find any meaningful outcomes.

Its single largest success was the Ontario Emerging Jobs Institute, that saw hundreds spend 10 weeks learning tech-related skills at the Nav Centre, with the hopes of applying these new skills in the agri-business or, really, any worthy field.

Along the way, there’ve been too many other initiatives and projects for which today there are little if any measurable results.

We are no closer – in fact, perhaps even further away – from landing any kind of new university campus in Cornwall.

The Lead to Win incubator program fell apart, after over-promising and hugely under-delivering.

A promised annual series of guest speakers sharing the bleeding-edge business an tech ideas in their brains petered out after a single offering.

A $2-million fundraising campaign to fuel the centre’s activities died, unofficially not long after it was officially launched.

It’s arguably on its second full reboot of its management and governance as it settles into its third year of operations.

Yet, the CIC has been given around $150,000 or more of public money from local taxpayers to accomplish almost nothing. There are eight years left in the City of Cornwall’s $50,000-a-year grant to the CIC, which given its current activities and expenses, basically makes it a city department.

It’s been home to a lot of buzzwords— which for a variety of reasons including some big uncontrollable ones, turned into hot air.

And looking to the future?

There’s a new executive director, Coun. Eric Bergeron, who wants to take the CIC in a different direction.

Can this save a ship barely out of dry dock? Are one set of buzzwords simply being swapped for another? Innovation for creativity? Incubating for makerspace?

Will it just offer services already available in Cornwall through the Small Business Entreprise Centre? Or the 3D printer at the library?

SDG council has the right idea with the CIC’s recent request for annual support. Show us something more than buzzwords; show us real accomplishments.

Cornwall city council should also put the CIC on notice, unless measurable outcomes can be achieved. Any return-on-investment analysis to-date would struggle to find any big ones.

It is a good idea, but we should be ready to pull the plug on our investment if it’s not providing the expected returns.