Customers

TEN has evaluated more than 100 organizations. Our customers include all manner of innovation intermediaries, from incubators and accelerators focused on supporting entrepreneurs and businesses; to institutes that enable advancements in research and health sciences; and organizations looking to strengthen communities through economic development. We work with each customer to deeply understand their organization, which enables us to identify an assessment strategy appropriate to their organization and specific to their evaluation goals.

CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS

National Research Council

We chose TEN because of their previous experience in working with research and technology organizations (RTOs) internationally and their deep understanding of an RTO’s role in the innovation ecosystem. TEN immediately grasped our vision and offered so much more than just a client survey. TEN’s judicious advice on the type of impact assessment to conduct and the customized proposal that they provided us perfectly met our needs. TEN’s impact assessment evaluation and recommendations have informed our strategic planning, and most importantly, the findings enable us to work more effectively with our clients.

Interactions with the TEN team were extremely positive; their staff is responsive and friendly. The wrap-up seminar given to our staff to explain the purpose and outcomes of the assessment was clear, concise, and much appreciated within our organization. We are very satisfied with the results and would not hesitate to recommend TEN to other organizations.

Dr. Julie Ducharme,

General Manager (former)

National Research Council’s (NRC) Human Health Therapeutics

Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation

We have developed a valuable relationship with The Evidence Network (TEN), and their dedication to our performance evaluation system is clear.

From working closely with CABHI to develop our original framework, to administering annual evaluations, TEN has not only provided us the tools to communicate our value to our stakeholders, but empowers us to make informed decisions to drive and measure performance.

Ryan A. Webster,

Director, Finance & Operations, CABHI

Director, Finance at Rotman Research Institute

Compute Ontario

It was important for Compute Ontario to have a clear understanding of its value proposition and to be able to clearly assess it’s impact. To do so, we needed to understand which activities were resulting in the greatest impact for researchers and our partners in the advanced computing ecosystem. Working with TEN, we were able to gather substantial evidence and insight that helped sharpen our strategic and operational focus. What we enjoyed working on most with TEN was the ability to clearly convey quantitative and qualitative evidence of our impact. TEN’s Executive was intimately involved throughout our engagement and did not pawn us off on lower level staff. We had undivided attention from Brian and Ashley and the caliber of product exceeded expectations.

We feel that organizations similar to ourselves who play a predominant role in influencing and coordinating work would benefit most from the expertise of TEN as it is precisely those organizations that have a need to convey how their influence translates to impact. Compute Ontario has publicly posted TEN’s impact assessment on our website and is using the work as a primary input to both our current strategic renewal as well as our funding renewal application to government. It is has been a highly worthwhile investment in engaging with TEN. Using this impact assessment as our baseline, we fully anticipate conducting a follow-up with them in a couple of years.

Nizar Ladak

President & CEO

Compute Ontario

Genome Atlantic

Embarking on a fundraising campaign to support the business development efforts of our organization, we needed a third party to validate our impact on researchers and companies in Atlantic Canada. We needed a strategy to not only capture our impact, but also package it so that our stakeholders would easily understand our value. TEN’s experience and reputation working with other Genome Centres and innovation enabling organizations was perfect for this project – our relationship with TEN continues to deliver on our goal.

Steven Armstrong

President & CEO

Genome Atlantic

Innovacorp

When we first contracted The Evidence Network we were in a very interesting situation. Nova Scotia’s start-up community was taking off and there were a lot of new programs and infrastructure being introduced to the community. We wanted an independent assessment of the role we play in the ecosystem. We wanted to better understand our impact and to be able to share the evidence with our stakeholders. TEN’s expertise and reputation working with incubators and accelerators across North America was a perfect fit.

Jennifer Robichaud

VP, Client Experience & Operations (former)

Innovacorp

Natural Products Canada

Working with TEN was a tremendously valuable and enjoyable experience. Their work revealed significant gaps in our ecosystem, which helped us refine key elements of our strategic plan and service offering to better meet stakeholder needs. They also showed us how our impacts compared (favourably!) with global innovation organizations, despite our relatively short history. Their level of analysis is some of the most in-depth that our Board has ever seen, and provides great assurance that our strategy is truly based on quantifiable evidence.

Sue Coueslan

VP Communications and Stakeholder Relations

Natural Products Canada

Ontario Brain Institute

Working with TEN was great! There was a lot of continuity within the TEN organization, and they were incredibly responsive, meeting with us virtually and on-site to ensure our needs were met in both evaluations. Ultimately, working with TEN was fantastic; we didn’t have any issues with their process and getting to the final evaluation report was seamless.

Kirk Nylan

VP Integrated Discovery & Analytics

Ontario Brain Institute

Tekes

TEN’s approach to impact assessment is a significant advance on past approaches employed here at Tekes and elsewhere.

Dr. Raine Hermans

Director, Strategic Intelligence (former)

Tekes

Communitech

TEN plays a pivotal role in identifying Communitech’s impact on companies. Their comprehensive analysis keeps us a step ahead in terms of improving services to clients, and increasing our impact on the Waterloo region tech ecosystem.

Iain Klugman

President and CEO

Communitech

NSERC

The Evidence Network’s assessment of the impact of innovation intermediaries on firms is the best work I’ve seen done in this area. They are succeeding in doing what others have only talked about.

Dr. Tom Brzustowski

Chair, Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo (former); President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (former)