At SAAS NORTH 2025, our Executive Managing Director Leo Lax led a thought-provoking panel that struck a chord with the audience. Corporate Innovation in Action: Real Partnerships, Real Lessons explored how Canada can better translate innovation into impact through stronger partnerships between startups and enterprise leaders.

Joining Leo were Kevin Ford, President and CEO of Calian Group; James Povitz, Principal Venture Capital NAventures, National Bank of Canada’s corporate venture capital arm; and Jil Macdonald, COO of Walnut Insurance.

The message was clear: innovation in Canada isn’t just about ideas — it’s about execution, alignment, and partnership.

Canada’s Innovation Imperative

Leo opened the session by framing the challenge. Canada consistently ranks among global leaders in research and development, yet lags in commercializing innovation. Only six percent of Canadian public companies with over $1B in revenue engage in direct venture investment, compared to nearly 40 percent in the US.

“The question isn’t how to adopt innovation,” Leo said. “It’s how to institutionalize it — to make it part of our corporate DNA.”

For L-SPARK, this is exactly where corporate venturing plays a vital role. Through the L-SPARK Select program, corporations collaborate with high-growth startups to co-develop, test, and scale solutions that meet real market needs. Over the past decade, L-SPARK has partnered with leading enterprises — including BlackBerry, TELUS, Calian, and Mitel — on accelerator programs spanning Connected Vehicles, IoT, Digital Health, and Unified Communications, each designed to bridge startup innovation with corporate scale. These collaborations have helped startups validate technology, accelerate commercialization, and drive meaningful innovation within Canada’s enterprise ecosystem.

Inside the Corporate Journey: Lessons from Calian

For Calian’s Kevin Ford, corporate venturing represents the “third leg of the growth stool” — alongside organic R&D and acquisitions.

“Calian is a 40-year-old company,” Kevin explained. “We’ve always done our own innovation. But we realized that to stay competitive, we needed to embrace external partners in our innovation cycle.”

That shift, he said, hasn’t been easy. Cultural alignment, clear objectives, and shareholder expectations all play a role. But Calian is now formalizing its Ventures Program, targeting partnerships in defense, space, and autonomous systems — areas where smaller, agile startups can add value to Calian’s global platforms.

Kevin’s advice to other corporates: “Be ready to embrace it, but also ready to say, ‘that’s not working — let’s pivot.’ Corporate venturing is a journey, not a switch.”

Building Organizational Commitment

On the investor side, James Povitz emphasized that corporate venturing only works when it’s rooted in long-term commitment and top-down alignment.

“It has to start from the top,” he said. “Leadership needs to explicitly say, ‘We want to do this,’ and then ensure that message travels across the organization.”

That alignment isn’t just rhetorical — it’s operational. National Bank includes business unit leaders in its investment committee discussions, ensuring that every deal has clear, measurable goals and real business buy-in.

“Corporate venturing isn’t about quick wins,” James explained. “It’s about sustained partnerships that bring both strategic and financial value. The venture team’s role is to translate startup innovation into corporate context — to show where it moves the needle.”

The key, he said, is transparency and communication: report the value, show the metrics, and keep leadership connected to outcomes.

The Startup Perspective: Building Win-Win Relationships

For Jil Macdonald partnering with corporate venture funds has been both a growth opportunity and a learning experience.

“Each of our corporate investors operates differently,” Jil said. “The capital was valuable, but what really mattered was the commercial relationship behind it.”

Walnut’s early funding from NAventures grew out of a customer relationship. “National Bank wasn’t just an investor — they were our target customer,” she said. “That alignment made all the difference.”

To prove value, Walnut ran a 90-day pilot, de-risking the partnership for National Bank’s internal teams. “We did it at cost just to show how it could work,” Jil explained. That pilot turned into a long-term commercial relationship — a textbook example of startup-corporate collaboration done right.

Her advice to other founders:

• Do your homework on the corporate’s goals.
• Understand how their venture team integrates with the business.
• Be ready to prove value quickly — in weeks or months, not years.

The Time Factor: Speed, Relevance, and Execution

When an audience member from Target asked about the biggest barriers to corporate-startup collaboration in Canada, Leo Lax didn’t hesitate.

“Speed is critical,” he said. “If a program runs for six to nine months without visible results, the world changes — champions move on, budgets shift, startups pivot. You need tangible outcomes quickly.”

The second challenge? Cycle time. Startups move fast. Corporations don’t. Successful partnerships find ways to bridge that difference — often through structured accelerators like L-SPARK Select, which provide a defined timeframe, focused outcomes, and mutual accountability.

Corporate Venturing: A Framework for Canadian Growth

The panel closed with practical takeaways for both sides of the table:

• For corporates: Integrate venturing into your core strategy. Be clear on what you want to achieve — growth, diversification, or new customer engagement — and align your culture to support it.
• For startups: Treat corporate venture relationships like strategic partnerships. Understand how the corporate defines success, and design your engagement around shared outcomes.
• For both: Move fast, communicate often, and measure results.

As Leo summarized, “The goal isn’t just to invest in innovation — it’s to make innovation work inside the enterprise.”

Through programs like L-SPARK Select, Canadian corporations are already taking that step — co-creating with startups, testing ideas quickly, and scaling solutions that matter.

By bridging the gap between startup agility and corporate scale, Canada has the opportunity not only to innovate but to commercialize that innovation at home — driving growth, competitiveness, and resilience across industries.

Learn more about L-SPARK Select and how your organization can collaborate with Canada’s most promising startups to accelerate innovation and unlock new growth opportunities: l-spark.com/corporations.