Innovation Anthology #165: President and CEO
In 2008, even a six year old can navigate around Facebook and YouTube.
But until just fifteen years ago, the only people who had access to the internet were scientists and the military.
It was only in November of 1992, its American creators opened the internet to commercial use.
An early adopter was the Alberta Research Council.
Walt Neilsen seized the opportunity. As ARC’s former Manager of Information, he convinced the Council to provide internet service to the public and to Alberta’s business community.
WALT NIELSEN: And what I saw when the internet was coming forward and expanding was an opportunity to take networks out of the realm of being individual networks, private networks inside organizations to being a public network which would then open lots of doors in terms of communications. Then sometime in the mid 1990’s there was an explosion of software which allowed individuals to use the internet very easily.
Over the last 15 years, Walt Neilsen has witnessed the internet blossom into a truly important and vital means of personal communication.
Thanks today to the Alberta Research Council.
Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
David Bailey, PhD,
Genome Alberta, Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
Sponsor
Alberta Research Council
Established as the first provincial research organization in Canada, the Alberta Research Council is 85 years old. The Alberta Research Council (ARC) develops and commercializes technologies to give customers a competitive advantage. A leader in innovation, ARC provides solutions globally to the energy, life sciences, agriculture, environment, forestry and manufacturing sectors.
ARC performs about five per cent of the roughly $1.5 billion in R&D done in Alberta each year, and generates revenues of approximately $84 million per year. ARC operates from five sites across the province in Edmonton, Calgary, Vegreville and Devon and employs more than 600 highly-skilled people.
In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, the Alberta Research Council was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.
Program Date: 2008-09-02