Entrepreneurs are driven by one thing—to solve everyday problems with new approaches, technologies, and ideas. While many entrepreneurs focus on business problems, a growing number want to use their talents to tackle social and environmental issues. The City of Kitchener is helping to bring socially-minded founders, mentors, and partners together at its new SDG Idea Factory in Downtown Kitchener.
The SDG Idea Factory is a first-of-its-kind incubator built around the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are a set of 17 global objectives aimed at addressing the world's most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges and serve as a blueprint for a more sustainable and equitable future by 2030.
The goals provide a framework for collective action to bring businesses, governments, and individuals together to create a better future. The work to make that better future a reality can be seen in action at the SDG Idea Factory. Inside, you’ll find teams from LiftOff by CCAWR, Waterloo Region Community Foundation, ForUsGirls Foundation, Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest, and the Waterloo Region Small Business Centre working together to address global challenges.
Naudia Banton is the Manager of the Waterloo Region Small Business Centre and the SDG Idea Factory Lead. She brings years of experience working with entrepreneurs and small business owners. Banton said the SDG Idea Factory emerged from conversations on the City of Kitchener’s economic development strategy.
“The city wants to build a network of places to support businesses and innovation—and there is a strong desire to help work towards the UN SDGs. We had a great opportunity to use this space that was sitting empty and bring in organizations that are working towards the goals in some way,” Banton said.
Like any innovation space, the SDG Idea Factory's goal is to bring together like-minded people from different backgrounds. Banton added that while social entrepreneurs share much in common with other entrepreneurs, they have different measurements of success.
“We wanted to create a space where social entrepreneurs could fit in. If you're a social entrepreneur, depending on what angle it is, chances are a tech accelerator isn’t right for you. We’ve also seen so many new social enterprises launching since the pandemic because people want to build businesses that resonate with their beliefs. It’s not all about making money. It’s about giving back,” Banton said.
In addition to being a collaboration space, Banton and her team are working with other groups in the community to have a regular set of events at the SDG Idea Factory.
“The idea is to have the community activated. We’ll program some events, but we need everyone at the table. We recently had the SDG Cities program, a collaborative project run by 10C and Pillar in Guelph and London, in to do an event to teach companies how to do storytelling—specifically on SDGs and what goals they’re working on,” Banton said.
The SDG Idea Factory joins a network of spaces that includes Communitech, the University of Waterloo’s Velocity incubator, and the 44 Gaukel Creative Workspace. In 2024, Velocity will move across the street to the new Innovation Arena, a new 90,000-square-foot facility focusing on health and science startups.
Going back to the city’s economic development strategy, Banton said the SDG Idea Factory is part of the city’s plan to contribute to the growing network of innovation, arts, and small business-focused spaces in Kitchener.
“It was born out of consultations with social entrepreneurs in our community. We asked them what was missing, what the gaps were—and what they wanted was a place for collisions to happen where people working on social good could collaborate. That’s what the SDG Idea Factory brings,” Banton said.
