The Fall Of CyberNB Doesn’t Mean Cybersecurity Is Doomed In New Brunswick
David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.
Let me state upfront I have no real idea why CyberNB went bust. I know what happened as it has been reported in the news—why things went sour with their funders, and other issues—but I don’t have any special insight.
But I will say a couple of things.
First, I still believe in the concept of setting up “teams” to work on larger, complex sector initiatives. Ideally, these teams would be made up of players from across stakeholder groups—not just the government.
For example, if you wanted to grow a cybersecurity cluster there could be merit to pulling together post-secondary education, research organizations, government, and industry to figure out the best model and put it in place. Without any alignment, you end up with Opportunities New Brunswick out hustling companies to move here.
The University of New Brunswick is doing interesting things. So is NBCC/CCNB. Ignite is doing things; there are incubators and accelerators; there are private-sector players like Beauceron.
I still see value in trying to work together on a strategy and then delivery. But maybe my teamwork (strength in numbers, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts) is considered lame in the current context. We seem to be living in a you-do-your-thing-I’ll-do-mine environment when it comes to sector development.
RELATED: CyberNB Shuts Down, Lays Off Staff After Province Pulls Funding
The other issue is that the demise of CyberNB doesn’t mean the demise of cybersecurity in New Brunswick. As I have said many times before, this is one of the most competitive sectors right now.
Every jurisdiction wants in, so we should be thinking hard about how we differentiate ourselves. But we have some core strengths and assets and I suspect there are still folks working away in the background here to try and move things forward.
I would encourage my counterparts in economic development organizations not to give up on collaboration. We used to say that one of the strengths of being a small province is that you can more easily bring all the players to the table. We need to amplify that idea, not let it wane.
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