David Chilton is a financial guru, author of the phenomenally successful Wealthy Barber book and head of a publishing venture. But he has never dreamed of leaving Kitchener-Waterloo, which has been home for all his 44 years. "People who live here really like it," he says. "They don't move." Waterloo Region is home to a cluster of seminar leaders, consultants and speakers who appreciate the combination of small-city feel with proximity to major population centres. Mr. Chilton runs his international business within a stone's throw of farmers' markets and rural life around St. Jacobs and Elmira. Others point to the region's symphony orchestra and growing theatre scene. The Perimeter Institute for Applied Physics has an outreach program with speakers and concerts. But there are gaps — no five-star hotel, for example, and a small airport, although Toronto's Pearson International Airport is less than an hour away. Wilfrid Laurier University business dean Scott Carson says the region has developed almost overnight "from a collection of small Ontario towns to a collection of large Ontario towns." The next step is a social and arts infrastructure that will retain senior executives and head offices, even after the companies have outgrown their rustic roots.
7. Built an outsider mentality
Historian John English says the economic prosperity of Kitchener-Waterloo was built by people operating outside the mainstream of Canadian business and society. Prof. English, who heads Waterloo's Centre for International Governance Innovation, says the early business families — shoe makers, furniture makers and food producers — were German-Canadians and often evangelical Christians whose education and beliefs took them outside Ontario establishment thinking, often moulded at the University of Toronto. In the same way, University of Waterloo was founded by unconventional academics who saw engineering, not arts, as the core discipline. That maverick thinking has carried over into the era of RIM, ATS, DALSA, and Open Text. The region is far enough away from Toronto that it sees itself not as an outpost but an economic hub of its own. But Kitchener-Waterloo knows it is tied, for better or worse, to the global economy — as home to manufacturers such as Toyota, ATS, Com Dev and the auto parts companies, linked by highways to large U.S. cities, and connected through its major university and tech wizards to Silicon Valley and the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
8. Get on with it.
When companies are under pressure, there is a Waterloo tradition of just adapting and surviving. The business culture is action-oriented, which means not just talking about change — and not waiting for massive handouts. One example is Canadian General-Tower, a family-owned company in Cambridge that has evolved over the past century from making wagon wheels to the manufacture of plastic auto parts and pool liners. The secret, CGT president Jan Chaplin says, is to attract, develop and hold on to good people who can take a company forward, in whatever form it takes.
9.: Generate venture capital
Proximity to Toronto has historically given Waterloo good access to capital sources, but it is far enough away to avoid being unduly influenced by Bay Street's short-term thinking. In recent years, the region has tried to develop its own financing pool — it has developed a locally based $100-million venture capital fund called Tech Capital Partners. Now, it is also beginning to develop its own corps of serial entrepreneurs — company builders who reinvest their wins as they move from startup to startup.
