I have a point of view, of course. Our company was there at the very beginning of Silicon Valley, and I have good friends whom I deal with every day who are in Almaden and other of our labs there as well. But I compete pretty aggressively with them, as a Canadian, to win more missions here. I won't say that in my corporation side; I'm sure you're taking notes but this is in camera for that. That is the way we have to think of ourselves as Canadians.
I've been a global player. I've been growing things in emerging geographies for half of my career. When I came back to Canada, probably seven years ago, and now that I have this responsibility, we've learned some techniques. One of the things I would say is that we are truly Canadian in our approach. We're quite modest and we know how to say sorry a lot. We actually have some competitive advantages that your son may not...and by the way, in the environment, that's an intelligent choice. Not everyone understands the environment but it is starting to grow, and there are more and more cases of young generation people out of the University of Waterloo or with the other incubators across the country. We don't speak about it enough.
I've noticed even in this city many of our officials quickly go to discussion about great success stories they've seen in Silicon Valley. I think, “Really? Couldn't you come up with some lexicon that talks about the great things that are going on here in Canada, started from here in Canada?” All of us, regardless of our role in the country, need to start thinking like they've been doing for so long in Silicon Valley, which is, “we're the best.” I would say that's the most important lead they have on us, because we have all the other ingredients and more to help us build that here.
I agree that you can't tell a young person where they should go next, but if they knew about all the possibilities here, the international nature of how we work in Canada, and the global nature of how we work, they wouldn't have to go somewhere else to find it. They could find it here, and from this space do things around the world, and lead around the world.
We're going to continue on the theme of doing that, just as my little competition within my little company, by building the ecosystem here on these dimensions that are new. They're not old. By the way, California has no edge on us on the dimensions of some of the things that we've talked about.
If we get it together here faster, we can win. I am totally convinced of that.