It all has to do with communication and will. In a smaller town it's a little easier I think than it is in a larger town because there's a loyalty. When A goes to B and asks for help for such and such, you're more likely to receive a positive response in a community of under a million than you would in a community of over a million.
I came to Winnipeg in 1992 with two employees. Now I have about 200. We pulled all these resources together, not by seducing and cajoling, but merely by asking for help, be it from the university, the hospitals, private physicians, or engineering companies. For example, when we began we needed to refurbish our building. We had to form a committee to raise $7 million to do that. On that committee we had the head of Investors Group, the head of the Health Sciences Centre, and the head of St. Boniface Hospital. All of these very credible people came together to help us raise this money to furbish the building and put it together. That's one aspect--small city loyalty.
The other one is to remove the silos between the disciplines. Physics doesn't know how to talk to medicine; biochemistry doesn't know how to talk to architects, etc. Everybody has to change their language, to talk in simple terms and show what we can do together relative to what we do separately. That means a lot of running around. I spent my first year doing nothing much more than talking to various people.
It can happen, but I think it's easier here than it would be in a large place, where there's more competitiveness between areas than there is in a town of under a million, where you really want to help your city or your town.