Billy Newell, manager of the Navigate Entrepreneurship Centre’s business incubator, speaks during a press conference announcing operational funding for the Centre for Research and Innovation in Corner Brook on Monday. - Gary Kean/Saltwire NetworkNew spot for Mediterranean cuisine opens in Charlottetown | SaltWireCORNER BROOK, N.L. — The new Centre for Research and Innovation in Corner Brook got another financial shot in the arm Monday with more than $1.1 million in government funding.
The centre is also home to the business incubator and makerspace operated by the Navigate Entrepreneurship Centre based at Grenfell. “When growing a business, I know, from personal experience, it’s a journey filled with uncertainties about a lot of different things,” said Newell. “We can never really eliminate these uncertainties. All we can do is try to manage them as best we can. … What I’d like to do is for the incubator to address some of these challenges and to help manage some of these uncertainties as best we can.”
“Atlantic Canada and especially here at home, we’re full of great minds seizing great opportunities,” she said. “I’m always thrilled, but I’m not surprised, to see the number of game-changing ideas coming out of Newfoundland and Labrador and I can’t wait to come back and visit and see what other game-changing ideas are coming.”
“Ideas evolve, circumstances evolve, opportunities evolve, and if you’re not poised to be able to take advantage of those, you lose them,” he said. “That is really what the Centre for Reasearch and Innovation is all about. The centre can, hopefully, help address the ongoing skilled labour shortage, noted Fergus O’Brien, associate vice-president of campus operations at College of the North Atlantic.