In 1922, John William Billes and Alfred Jackson Billes combined their $1,800 in savings to found the Hamilton Tire & Garage Ltd. – which became national retailing giant Canadian Tire. Ted Rogers grew a single FM radio station into a Canadian communications empire. And engineering students Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin founded Research in Motion in 1984 before growing it into a wireless technology pioneer. Canada has a rich history of risk-takers who started small businesses that grew into national icons.
In these and other Canadian business success stories, technology played an important role in their growth. Today, the Internet and digitization are transforming the way Canadian businesses deal with their customers, just as innovations such as the railroad, radio and wireless revolutionized business processes in the past.
