The Imaginative Edge: Reclaiming Canada's Leadership in the Age of AI

"Everything you can imagine is real." - Pablo Picasso

Imagination has always been our most fundamental technology. It's the force that turns thought into substance. Before the axe met timber, there was the vision of a cabin nestled deep in the Boreal Forest. Before the paddle rippled the mirror surface of Lake Louise, there was the idea of gliding across water.

Today, our imagination has found a new partner in creation: generative AI. And at Bold New Edge, we believe Canada is uniquely positioned to lead this new era.

Forged in the Great White North

In Canada, imagination has been not only a tool of inspired creation, but of survival and identity. Our startlingly vast landscapes have always demanded big visions. This imaginative thread runs through our history:

• It’s in the elegant design of the birchbark canoe, hewn from a dialogue with nature to solve the problem of transportation.

• It's in the geometry of the igloo, a home sculpted from deep snow to create warmth and shelter.

• It’s in the connected, nation-building dream of the Canadian Pacific Railway—the act of imagining a steel ribbon tying a continent together.

• It's in the Brantford, Ontario workshop where Alexander Graham Bell imagined a 'talking telegraph', giving the world the telephone.

• It’s in the Toronto lab where a team imagined a world without diabetes, leading to the discovery of insulin.

• It’s in the radical vision for Medicare, a social contract built on the idea that a society could care for all its citizens.

We didn't just imagine new ways to live; we imagined new ways to see. We invented IMAX to immerse audiences in new larger-than-life realities.

And it was Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan who imagined the "global village" long before the internet, famously observing: "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

The Current Leadership Gap: An Inherit Lack of Vision

Our legacy of invention is a proud one. But it is not a guarantee of Canada's Leadership in the Age of AI.

Today, we face a critical and uncomfortable truth. While our universities produce world-class AI research, our businesses are dangerously falling behind in application.

• As of mid-2025, only 12.2% of Canadian businesses were using AI—a rate that places us 20th among OECD countries.

  
  

This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what AI is, viewing it not as a core business tool, but as a complex, niche technology beyond their scope.

By failing to integrate transformative tools that dramatically improve everything from forecasting to decision-making, we are not just falling behind; we are actively foregoing a monumental opportunity.

In the age of AI, imagination is no longer just a creative spark—it is a company's critical asset. And while Canadian firms hesitate, the world's most decisive leaders are already proving it.

AI Era of Imagination

This isn’t a theoretical future; it's happening now.

We see it when a film director imagines hearing a lost voice with perfect clarity.

• Using a custom AI, Peter Jackson’s team isolated John Lennon’s vocals from a decades-old demo tape, allowing the world to hear with clarity "Now And Then."

The AI didn't write the song; it fulfilled a human imaginative wish.

We see it when manufacturers imagine a factory that can be perfected before a single brick is laid.

• BMW’s iFACTORY program uses AI to create a “digital twin” of its entire production line. In this virtual space, they can simulate new workflows and train robots—all before impacting the physical world.

And we see it when a logistics giant imagines a supply chain that can heal itself.

• Amazon uses AI to predict shipping disruptions and automatically reroutes packages in real-time.

In each case, AI was the tool, but human imagination was the catalyst. It was the spark that illuminated the question: "What if we could?"

From "What If?" to "Here's How"

Canada's Leadership in the Age of AI

For Canadian companies, the critical question is no longer if AI will change their business, but how to implement and lead that change.

How do you transform imagination from a fleeting idea into an engine for growth?

This is the challenge at the core of our mission at Bold New Edge. Our guiding philosophy is to fuse the creative what if with the technical how to, giving leaders the literacy to translate their boldest visions into operational reality.

This initiative is why we collaborated with Adrián González Sánchez—world-renowned Senior Cloud, Data & AI Specialist at Microsoft, industry lead at the Spanish Observatory of Ethical AI (OdiseIA), and a Concordia University educator—to co-create the AI for Decision-Makers program.

This isn't a technical course about coding; it's a strategic playbook for leaders, designed to be the "how" you've been looking for—a practical path to move from abstraction to action.

Our program:

• Fits Your Schedule: This is an 8-week, fully online program designed for the executive workload. It requires a manageable commitment of ~3.5 hours per week.

  
  

• Delivers Fluency: You will learn to direct AI, not code it. We equip you with the executive-level literacy to ask the catalytic questions and confidently oversee implementation.

  
  

• It's a Hands-On Workshop: This is not theory. In Weeks 1-4, you build a customized AI Adoption Roadmap for your company. In Weeks 5-8, with 10 hours of personalized, 1-on-1 mentorship from Canada’s top AI researchers, you build a working AI prototype for your operations.

And if you apply now, up to 100 percent of the training costs are eligible for reimbursement.

The future doesn't belong to those who can simply access information. It belongs to leaders who can direct it with vision.

Our heritage has prepared us for this moment. It is time for Canadian leaders to close the AI adoption gap and lead again.

At Bold New Edge, we are helping to build that future, one decision-maker at a time.

Are you ready to discover the AI for Decision-Makers program and learn how to harness your organization's imaginative potential?

Explore the AI for Decision-Makers 8-week blueprint and see how it fits your mandate.

---

Sources

1. Statistics Canada: Analysis on artificial intelligence use by businesses in Canada, second quarter of 2025. The Daily, June 16, 2025.

2. Statistics Canada: Analysis on expected use of artificial intelligence by businesses in Canada, third quarter of 2025. The Daily, Sept 11, 2025.

3. C.D. Howe Institute: Leyton-Brown, Kevin, et al. AI Is Not Rocket Science: Ideas for Achieving Liftoff in Canadian AI Adoption. (Source for OECD ranking).

4. Deloitte Canada: The Generative AI in Canada Report: A "Made in Canada" Framework. March 25, 2025.

5. Beatles / Universal Music: The Beatles' "Now And Then" – The Last Beatles Song. (Regarding Peter Jackson's MAL audio technology).

6. BMW Group: BMW iFACTORY: The master plan for the production of the future.

7. Amazon Science: How Amazon is using AI to speed up deliveries.