History, Mission and Vision

The Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking is engaging students, faculty, staff, and the community with entrepreneurial thinking and innovation — placing it at the forefront of teaching and innovation discovery.

Since 2017, the team at the Hunter Hub has supported the community at UCalgary and the greater Alberta innovation community to think more like entrepreneurs—as founders, as leaders, and as changemakers within their own circles.

Learn more about how we’re encouraging entrepreneurial thinking in this podcast with Keri Damen, the Executive Director of the Hunter Hub, or by checking our Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking Annual Report 2020-2021, wherein we highlight our accomplishments over the past year.

Created with a transformational gift from the Hunter Family Foundation in 2017, the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking is UCalgary’s community innovation hub that transforms lives and economies through fostering entrepreneurial thinking in students, faculty, and the community.

Our vision is to cultivate the growth of the entrepreneurial spirit at UCalgary and beyond, using entrepreneurial thinking as a toolkit to transform the lives of Canadians and effect positive change in the Canadian economy. We want to see entrepreneurial thinking used by leaders and in organizations across the country, enacting ingenuity at every level—allowing early-stage ventures to grow and established organizations to adapt and innovate to thrive in an ever-changing world. By instilling entrepreneurial thinking in students, researchers and the community – we help our community advance in their careers while also helping to bolster the Canadian workforce by creating future-ready leaders and doers.

The Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking is proud to support the University of Calgary’s vision to be the most entrepreneurial university in Canada.

Our mission is to cultivate and support game-changing innovators and changemakers, helping to accelerate their ideas from conception to impact. Students, researchers and faculty from across the university are encouraged to take part in our events and programs, to develop an interdisciplinary community of innovators, thinking entrepreneurially no matter where their careers take them.

The Hunter Hub is UCalgary’s community innovation hub that fosters entrepreneurial thinking in students, faculty, and the community via our three pillars:

i.      We cultivate and support changemakers: embedding entrepreneurial thinking into diverse curricular, extra-curricular, and experiential learning opportunities in all faculties.

ii.     We connect and build community: connecting UCalgary innovators to one another, and our thought leadership and talent to the external community.

iii.    We amplify stories and impact: promoting innovators and innovation initiatives across campus and beyond to attract entrepreneurial talent to U Calgary.

Listen to Derrick Hunter on the Now Innovating Podcast. Derrick shares his insight into the partnerships between academia and the broader community, discussing opportunities for entrepreneurship and measurements for success in the innovation economy.