Seen & Heard: CCI Chair Jim Balsillie speaks at BetaKit’s Most Ambitious Town Hall during Toronto Tech Week 2026

Today in Toronto, CCI Chair Jim Balsillie joined BetaKit's Most Ambitious Town Hall for a wide-ranging discussion on the economic and geopolitical shifts reshaping the global innovation economy. His presentation focused on the growing importance of intangible assets, including intellectual property, data, AI, and technical standards, and the implications for Canada’s long-term competitiveness and sovereignty.

Balsillie argued that much of the global economy is now driven by ownership and control of intangible assets rather than traditional industrial production. He pointed to the growing role of AI, digital infrastructure, and standards-setting as strategic tools increasingly tied to economic power and national security. The discussion also explored how countries like the United States are using coordinated industrial, trade, and technology policies to strengthen domestic advantage and shape the rules governing emerging technologies.

The presentation also focused on the widening productivity and growth gap between Canada and other advanced economies, and the need for a more strategic approach to commercialization, domestic ownership, and value creation. Balsillie emphasized that Canada has significant economic potential if it better aligns innovation policy, procurement, intellectual property strategy, and investment around long-term national interests.

Access the full presentation slides from CCI Chair Jim Balsillie’s remarks here.

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About the Council of Canadian Innovators

The Council of Canadian Innovators is a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. Established in 2015, CCI represents and works with over 170 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and top senior executives behind some of Canada’s most successful ‘scale-up’ companies. All our members are job and wealth creators, investors, philanthropists, and experts in their fields of health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, AI and digital transformation. Companies in our portfolio are market leaders in their verticals, commercialize their technologies in over 190 countries, and generate between $10M-$750M in annual recurring revenue. We advocate on their behalf for government strategies that increase their access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers, as well as expanded freedom to operate for their global pursuits of scale.