A few factors have helped build the area’s robust tech industry. First, a wealth of local talent. The University of Waterloo is one of Canada’s best schools, especially in engineering and science, with what it touts as the world’s largest co-op program, placing over 16,000 students with more than 3,500 employers. And UW does not silo that talent the way some schools might, through restrictive intellectual property agreements. OpenText, the content management provider and Canada’s largest software company, for example, was spun out of the university in 1991, allowing several faculty members to found a company. The university values entrepreneurship. Mike Lazaridis, for one, received early encouragement to found RIM from a UW economics professor. He dropped out to start Research in Motion.

"I think for many years the Canadian dream was to win the lottery."

That entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t always come naturally to Canadians, says Iain Klugman, maybe half-jokingly. “The American dream is to make it big, to build a big company, to become a rock star,” he says. “I think for many years the Canadian dream was to win the lottery.” Klugman’s the CEO of Communitech, a local startup incubator that RIM has helped fund. (In fact, on the same mid-June day that RIM held its annual general meeting before a crowd of disgruntled shareholders, Communitech announced it would be committing $30 million in venture capital to the area’s tech startups.) He says that Waterloo and the surrounding area has the right combination of ingredients to enable tech entrepreneurs: strong academic brands, including UW and several other schools; a culture that accepts deviance (risking your future by going into business for yourself rather than someone else), and a network of capital comfortable with risk. He’s long been working to build on that foundation, and where the area had maybe 50 tech companies 15 years ago, today there are 1000 by his count. He says on average one local startup is founded every day.

The tri-cities area — Waterloo along with Kitchener and Cambridge — doesn’t just spawn local startups. It’s been able to attract companies that started elsewhere, too. Phil Noelting relocated job-application management company, Qwalify, in 2010. “It was tough to leave a place like Boston, which is seen as a hub for innovation, education and money (old money, many VC firms...),” he emails, “but when I saw what Waterloo and the Accelerator Centre [another startup advisor funded partially with government funds] offered, I was floored.” He points to the local talent pool, low cost of living, and generous government programs as very persuasive enticements. “It's built on an infectious culture that welcomes you in,” he writes, “supercharges you with guidance, resources and a perpetual go-get'em attitude, and then runs along beside you for any support you may need as you continue growing.”

All of which suggests that Waterloo’s fate is not inextricably tied to RIM’s. “Kitchener-Waterloo has significantly matured over the last 5-10 years. It’s not a one-horse town anymore,” says Scott Elliott. He spent two years working for RIM starting in the fall of 2001, just as the company began to reap rewards of an extensive marketing push into the United States. At the time, the local IT community was small, as he remembers it; instead, the big industry was insurance. OpenText was around, as were a few local players, but it was RIM's growth that helped the local industry become what it is today. Indeed, the company bought up nearly all the buildings on Philip Street, near the UW campus, where university spin-offs used to dwell. But the startups have multiplied and found another street. All part of the cycle, Eckert would say.

But if Jason Eckert sees RIM as an evolutionary loser in the Darwinian jungle of consumer technology, Elliott, the former employee, seems to have a more personal investment in its survival. He says he’s not alone: “I think it’s fair to say that lot of the community has high hopes for RIM. A lot of the community, not only in their own self-interest, want RIM to continue to do well...There’s a bit of pride — I come from Kitchener-Waterloo, and yes, RIM has made it known on the world’s radar.” RIM is like a family member that’s done well, he says, and people want to support the local company.