Advancing Innovation & Product Development

Oro Station Innovation Park, an automotive innovation hub that provides a rugged terrain track, with other high-performance automotive environments under construction, offers SMEs a place to conduct functional testing and validation of their products, technologies or services in highly specific and controlled environments.

Georgian College’s Centre of Industrial Simulation and Prototyping (CrISP), Ontario’s first Industry 5.0 sandbox and a designated NSERC Technology Access Centre  empowers SMEs and manufacturers with access to digital twin technologies, industrial simulation, and advanced prototyping capabilities. In addition, through Georgian’s Henry Bernick Entrepreneurship Centre SMEs can access intellectual property protection, business model refinement, and commercialization strategies ensuring that participants not only benefit from technical de-risking but also from sustainable commercialization outcomes.

Lakehead University’s Orillia campus, together with the Barrie STEM Hub, provides purpose-built learning spaces focused on engineering and computer science in a hands-on, high-tech environment, as well as access to specialized faculty and students to advance industry research and automotive technology developments. Many of the STEM Hub faculty members have synergistic expertise to supporting automotive and smart mobility technology developments including advanced wireless technologies, sensor technologies, robotics, machine learning, communication networking, and the internet of things. Additionally, researchers at the Thunder Bay campus can support industry to advance this sector particularly through innovative battery research. SMEs may also access the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law IP Program, and Lakehead’s Ingenuity programming.

The RTDS brings together ecosystem partners including the Sandbox Centre to facilitate critical programming and resources to founders and scaling businesses with a focus on commercialization readiness, mentorship, and strategic partnerships. These activities, along with industry-specific challenges, are supported by Honda of Canada Mfg. who provides industry leadership, empowering SMEs to integrate into the evolving H/EV supply chain through direct mentorship, and project advisory support.

The County of Simcoe, and the Cities of Barrie and Orillia are committed to exploring access to municipal infrastructure and assets to support RTDS participants, actively working with SMEs through approval processes with relevant departments. By leveraging municipally owned infrastructure –such as roadways, transit buses, autonomous snow removal equipment, roundabouts, heavy machinery, and rail systems– SMEs gain access to highly controlled and specialized environments for functional testing and product validations.