Cisco presses Fast Forward on Canadian innovation with new awards

Eric Thibault, director of industry solutions and country digitization acceleration for Cisco Canada

Cisco Canada is looking to help kickstart the solution to Canadian companies’ biggest business and technology challenges through the Fast Future Innovation Awards, a contest currently running that promises a total of $600,000 in new technology investment to push forward Canadian innovation.

In this edition of the podcast, we’re joined by Wayne Cuervo, director of innovation for Cisco Canada and Eric Thibault, director of industry solutions and country digitization acceleration for Cisco Canada to discuss the awards and the roles Cisco partners play in them.

Wayne Cuervo, director of innovation, Cisco Canada

We discuss:

what the awards are, and why Cisco is holding this contest to face business and technology challenges;
who can enter and what kind of problems the contest is hoping to see;
how it works and what the judges will be looking for when assessing the entrants;
the prizes involved, in the form of investments in technology to start tackling customers’ biggest challenges;
deadlines for contest entries, and when the winners will be announced;
the role partners have to play in adding their own innovations, services and skills to award winners;
how the contest was designed with Cisco’s partners in mind, and how partners fit into their customers’ entries;
how Cisco looks at and thinks about country-level digital acceleration.

All this and much more in this edition of the ChannelBuzz.ca Podcast.