One unsung accomplishment of the digital revolution has been the crucial dispersal of its economic effects. Many of the new tech jobs and companies can create value from just about anywhere - so the benefits don’t necessarily accrue only to the biggest cities. VanHack’s CEO Ilya Brotzky has run the numbers, and come up with an edifying survey of non-Bay Street digital activity.
Read Ilya Brotzky’s analysis of the growing lustre of smaller Canadian tech centres.
“The big US companies like Amazon and Microsoft that are setting up branch offices in Canada have created a role-reversal. Since they’re sucking up a lot of the local tech talent, small towns that boast a balanced lifestyle and lower real-estate costs are increasingly attractive to tech professionals from Canada or anywhere else in the world.
It’s also easier now, thanks to the Canadian government’s Global Talent Stream, to bring in talent from abroad to fill critical tech roles. That holds true for small towns as much as for big cities. It’s even an advantage for smaller centres, which offer a “great outdoors” experience that senior developers from abroad can prefer, to give their families a better quality of life.
The big story here? Innovation is everywhere.”
Like the Internet itself, the boons of the tech economy don’t have a definitional geographic home. Brotzky’s talking here about a network of networks, one that’s just as likely to benefit Edmonton or Waterloo as Toronto.