Scotiabank invests $1.75 million in Rotman school's Disruptive Technologies Venture

Scotiabank is investing $1.75 million to create the Scotiabank Disruptive Technologies Venture at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, to help develop Canada’s next generation of management talent so that Canadian companies can compete in the global digital economy.
The Scotiabank gift will support, for a period of five years, the Rotman School’s Creative Destruction Lab, a seed-stage program aimed at scalable, science-based technology ventures, and support the creation of a design thinking internship and several other intiatives, including research and independent study in machine learning, artificial intelligence and behavioural economics, and sponsorship of the school’s artificial intelligence conference.
“Successful businesses in the digital economy are creating new products and services, and reimagining how existing ones are delivered. This requires a new generation of talent that has the knowledge to understand the possibilities of a digital world and the skills to seize them,” says Tiff Macklem, Dean, Rotman School of Management. “This investment by Scotiabank will help us scale up our very successful experiential learning programs in technology-based entrepreneurship and design thinking.”
Over 125 ventures have been accepted into the Creative Destruction Lab, of which 45 have graduated, creating a total equity value of C$300 million.
The Creative Destruction Lab’s nine-month program has two streams, one for science-based technology ventures and the other for ventures focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The Lab provides participating ventures with mentorship, access to investors, advice on how to build technology roadmaps from the Lab’s resident Chief Scientists, in addition to strategy and business development insight from Rotman faculty and other MBA students.
“Consumers expect the same frictionless experience whether they’re paying for a coffee, booking a hotel room, ordering a taxi or signing up for a credit card,” says Scotiabank President and CEO Brian Porter. “As we work to deliver the best experience to our customers, we recognize the tremendous value of working closely with post-secondary institutions and their students. Partnerships like the Scotiabank Disruptive Technologies Venture at the Rotman School of Management support the development of leading talent and digital research. It also provides students hands-on experience to prepare them for job opportunities in the digital world. Scotiabank’s partnership with Rotman is an important piece of our digital strategy, and we are optimistic that it will produce great results.”
The design thinking summer internship program will be supported in association with Rotman DesignWorks, the school’s business design studio, which applies principles and practices of design to create real-world value while emphasizing the importance of the human to innovation.
The Creative Destruction Lab’s second annual Machine Learning and Market for Intelligence conference, for which Scotiabank will be the presenting sponsor, takes place on October 27.
Independent study projects undertaken by Rotman students participating in the Creative Destruction Lab, Rotman DesignWorks and the Behavioural Economics in Action Research group will receive support.