Business Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Group of individuals in a warehouse standing together looking at a tablet

Did you know?

Contrary to the popular science fiction images of robots, real robots are typically industrial manipulators: computer-controlled arms and hands.

This career track focuses on identifying opportunities and helping grow them into viable businesses, opportunities, or new products—from feasibility studies through to market launch, and the management of new companies. Many involved in this field start their own businesses or help organizations innovate from within, into new lines of business. Occupations in this field would also manage intellectual property, or develop whole new markets, where none existed before. Any economy depends on bright entrepreneurs and business start-ups and allows Canada to compete on the world stage.

I studied English Literature. I got a degree in Arts. If you had asked me 10 years ago, you know, could you imagine that you would be running a robotics company, my straight up answer would be “No”.

[Text on Screen] A&K ROBOTICS
[Text on Screen] Jessica Yip, COO & Co-Founder A&K Robotics

We focus on self-driving technologies.
Our company has invented a system that can attach onto anything with wheels and make that thing self-driving.

In terms of what we physically make, a lot of it is in the A.I.
So, if you think of a self-driving car on the roadway, you’ve got vision sensors, you’ve got LIDARs, you’ve got SONARs.
All of these things need to be packaged nicely and neatly in a very smart way to help the robot see and understand its world.

And as a startup, you are constantly iterating and iterating and trying to make your system better and better every day.

It is incredibly surprising how fast technology can outpace itself within a year, within six months.
You know, everything is constantly getting better, faster, cheaper, smarter.

I don’t have a technical background.
Everything was quite new when I got into it because I didn’t know about engineering. I didn’t study it.

I did not grow up with exposure to technology.
And the more I learned about robots, and what they could do and the potential they had, I thought, “this is exactly what I want to be spending my time working on.”

The advice I give to young people is: think big!
This is an industry that is ripe for change. It is absolutely ready for fresh ideas, new ideas.
It needs an injection of energy to really get to that next level quickly.

[LOGO] Careersofthefuture.ca

It is incredibly surprising how fast technology can out pace itself, within a year, within 6 months. Everything is constantly getting better, faster, cheaper, smarter.”

— Jessica Yip

Jobs & Roles

Check out the most popular and common roles in this area of study below:

Strategist

Inventor

Founder

Scale Up Specialist

Futurist

Designer

Solutions Architect

Product Lead

Business Analyst

Thinking about studying for a role in this field?

Explore Programs

Share this Career