Network
Ecosystem amplifiers who actualize.
We understand how Canada's innovation ecosystems work, where they leak value, and where the opportunities are. We pioneered the model that amplifies them. The district is the vehicle.
SyncI&DLabs, Synchronous Incubation and Development Labs, has run an owner-operator venture-studio model since 2013, before that form factor had a name. We were the novel inventors and pioneers of this methodology: not passive investors, not a service shop, but operators who build and turn around ventures from the inside and amplify the ecosystem around them.
We have spent a decade inside the Canadian innovation gap. We know why founders leave, why IP is lost, and why districts fail when they treat land as the product. Our claim is different: opportunity analysis is credible because the people are inside the ecosystems they analyse. Francis Wang is the connective node; the network gives the reach.
The thesis, from Waterloo to Canada
We saw a small place of vast potential.
Now we see a country.
In 2013, Waterloo looked like a town of outsized potential, and the question was how much of it you could help build by participating at the right time, with the right people. The answer, across the following decade, runs to an estimated 25 to 40 billion dollars. The same question now applies at national scale: Canada is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity over the coming decades, if it can keep the value it creates.
Regional and national figures are directional estimates under a coordinated sovereignty scenario, not verified forecasts. The verified problem statement is on The Canadian Gap.
Founder
Francis Wang
Founder of SyncI&DLabs and the connective node of the network. Owner-operator and venture-studio pioneer, doctoral researcher in CITAble and Hybrid Intelligence, and the originator of the actualizer method.
Waterloo embeddedness runs through the work: Think Tank Labs at the Research and Technology Park, mentorship under Larry Smith, and an alumni network that still grounds opportunity reading in the region. Doctoral research spans the University of Waterloo, the University of Calgary, and Golden Gate University, with venture outcomes at the $70M and $650M scale behind the claim.
University associations
Reach across ten universities.
The network spans ten universities as alma maters, doctoral homes, and collaboration partners. The breadth of that reach is the point: a network across the ecosystems the district draws on.
Advisory board
Advisors positioned by ecosystem embeddedness.
Authority is human and networked. Each advisor is listed for where they sit inside an ecosystem, not for decorative prestige.
Advisor
Larry Smith
University of Waterloo economist and long-horizon mentor to founders across the Waterloo region. Anchors SyncID's economic reading of Canada's innovation gaps and its Waterloo engagement.
Advisor
Barry Wylant
Design researcher at the University of Calgary. An authority on ecosystem mapping, systems thinking, and visual strategy, and a close discussant on the Tripartite Ecosystem model as it developed. Advises the design-research and visualization work beneath the district's assessment methodology.
Advisor
Greg Hart
Co-founder and Design Facilitator at InceptionU. A specialist in transformation design and innovation education whose work on experiential, systems-level learning informs how the district develops founders and teams.
Advisor
Diarmuid Nash
Partner at Moriyama Teshima Architects and one of Canada's most recognised architects. Brings civic and cultural landmark experience and multi-generational, sustainable design thinking to a physical innovation district.
University collaborations
Collaborators, by practice.
Beyond the advisory board, we engage a research-and-practice community across many institutions, each on a specific angle of practice.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Erin Trochim
Forest-fire models and Arctic innovation
University of British Columbia
Kimberly Yazzie
Indigenous data sovereignty
University of Toronto
Matti Siemiatycki
City planning for societal benefit
San Francisco Bay University
Shalini Gopalkrishnan
Emerging technologies
Golden Gate University
Joaquin Gonzalez III
AI and its impact on society
Toronto Metropolitan University
Sam Benvie
Regenerative landscape design
Communities and institutes we engage
Embedded across foresight, design, and practice communities.
Association marks are nominative. They name the communities we engage; they are not endorsements.
