Local company brings carbon reduction innovator to town

The latest event in the ORIC "Innovation Plaza" series last Wednesday, Feb 24 played host to one of the world’s foremost scientific minds, Kent Knaebel, PhD.

Dr. Knaebel visited the Okanagan as a guest of local companies, WearAir Oxygen Inc. and WearAir Industrial Inc. (http://www.wearair.com/ ), and kindly agreed to share his insights and perspectives with members of the ORIC community on the topic: “Carbon Capture Techniques via Adsorption”.

WearAir generously sponsored this "Innovation Plaza" event in order to provide the opportunity for our local community to share in the very latest thinking on this key global issue.
Photo courtesy Kelowna Capital News

ORIC Kelowna receives $150,000 from SIDIT

Peter Haubrich, President, Mayor Sharon Sheperd and 

Martin Yuill Director

Photo from Kelowna Capital News

ORIC Kelowna Innovation Centre received a cheque for $150,000 to expand the downtown Kelowna facility to 15,000 sq.ft. This extra space was needed because of the explosive growth of our tenants Vericorder Technology and Vineyard Networks. This freed up some offices so we can accept new startups to join our incubator/accelerator.

The grant came from the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust or SIDIT an organization seeded $50 million from the Provincial Government to support economic development in the Southern Interior of BC.

Please read the news article in the Kelowna Capital News

Small steps, a door sign and furniture for Penticton

We are making small progress with our Penticton Innovation Centre.

A sign was put on the door, so visitors will be able to find us. Hopefully by the end of next week we will see some furniture being delivered. We are also in discussion about sponsorship and anchor tenants. An announcement will be made soon.

Getting ORIC Penticton Innovation Centre online

Last month (January 2010) we opened the doors of our 3rd high-tech business incubator in the Okanagan Valley. We found a very good location in downtown Penticton. The building does not need a lot of renovations to make it suitable for a start-up business incubator. It comes with 9 offices which accomodate 2-3 persons, a large boardroom, kitchen, a nice reception area and space for the innovation plaza.

We are signing up new clients for our programs : pre-incubation, incubation and affiliated clients. A start-up should be in the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) or Clean Energy Technology area. We will perform due diligence to see if the start-up qualifies. More about the programs can be found at ORIC. Together with ORIC White Lake Innovation Centre and ORIC Kelowna Innovation Centre we offer now 20,000 sq.ft. incubation space in BC's Okanagan Valley.