Have you ever wondered what qualities make up a true innovator? How do they approach problems and create new solutions? Is it nature or nurture?On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC Podcast, host John Stackhouse goes inside the minds of three Canadian innovators, all recipients of this year’s Governor General Innovation Awards: Gary Agnew, Co-founder and CEO, Ideon Technologies; Paulette Senior, CEO and President, Canadian Women’s Foundation; and Dr. Mark Stradiotto, Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. Innovation requires pushing the envelope until the end goal is reached. Our guests share how to foster an innovative culture and safe environment to achieve new ways of doing business. As we found out, innovation is within all of us, but the environment needs to be created to support it.  Links:For more information about the Governor General Innovation awards, click here.For information on what’s happening at Canadian Innovation Week, check out their website. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather events and record e-commerce demand have shone a spotlight on the world’s supply chains. The journey of how we receive “stuff” is quite complicated—and fragile. Luckily, the power of technologies such as automation, renewable energy and data are helping to both streamline and “green” Canada’s supply chains.Goods valued at more than $275 billion pass through the Port of Vancouver every year, making it the fourth largest logistics hub in North America and a key anchor for the supply chains Canadians tend to take for granted.On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC Podcast, host John Stackhouse is joined by special guest co-host Naomi Powell, Managing Editor of Economics & Thought Leadership at RBC, to speak with Peter Xotta, Vice-President, Operations and Supply Chains at Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. Links:For more information about the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, click here. To learn more about Assent, a global supply chain software solutions provider, check out their website. 

On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC podcast, host John Stackhouse is joined by a special guest co-host: Lindsay Patrick, Head of Strategic Initiatives & ESG at RBC Capital Markets, where she leads the Sustainable Finance Group.As the world marks Earth Day on April 22, John and Lindsay explore various questions on climate and call on a cross-section of Canadian experts to help answer them.Listen in to find out what exactly is a nuclear Small Modular Reactor (SMR), and whether electric vehicles ramp up will “blow up the grid?” We promise you will learn something new. To read RBC’s report on electricity, “The Price of Power: How to cut Canada’s Net Zero electricity bill,” click here.

Soil. We have a lot of it here in Canada, with the 12th largest agricultural land holding in the world. Our vast land presents a large opportunity to help combat climate change with sequestering carbon, as well as helping farmers’ bottom lines. Traditionally, agriculture has been all about yield: the more bushels, the better. But there’s a growing push to pay farmers for what they produce and what they preserve.Canada’s soil can help grow food for an increasingly hungry world, but is also a powerful tool in the fight against climate change, because it has an incredible ability to store carbon. But it’s going to take technology and investment from Canada’s farming community to realize this full potential. On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC Podcast, host John Stackhouse explores how soil carbon can help generate The Next Green Revolution. Guests include Mohamad Yaghi, RBC’s Climate & Agriculture Policy Lead, Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn, Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan and Marty Seymour, CEO & COO of Regina-based CarbonRX..Check out RBC Thought Leadership’s The Next Green Revolution Project hub here. For more information about the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources, click here. Click here to learn more about CarbonRX.

Cyber threats have been around as long as the Internet, but attacks have ramped up in the last few years, with the pandemic dramatically shifting more of our work—and our lives—online. Organizations also moved more of their operations to the cloud, creating a new potential liability. Recent high-profile security breaches have crippled some of Canada’s largest companies such as Empire Foods, Indigo, and Maple Leaf Foods, with costly impacts to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Organized crime and some nation states are getting better and better at breaching existing security. It’s up to Canada to leverage our talent, technology, and knowledge to turn those cybersecurity challenges into opportunities. On this episode of Disruptors, an RBC Podcast, host John Stackhouse takes a deep dive into what is being done to fight cybercrime. Guests include Adam Evans, RBC’s Senior Vice-President & Chief Information Security Officer Michelle Zatlyn, the founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare, and David Shipley, founder & CEO of Beauceron Security. What are the biggest risks to your data and what’s being done to keep it safe? Listen in to find out.  For more information about Cloudflare, check out their website. Click here to read about Beauceron Security. More information about RBC’s cybersecurity initiative can be found here.