What we do

Three lines of work. Most engagements draw on all three.

01 - Cross-border strategy

Companies rarely fail at cross-border expansion because they picked the wrong country. They fail because the market focus was not clear enough to survive the first difficult meeting.

We define the market focus first: which segment, which customer, partner, or institution, what they actually need, and what you can credibly deliver in eighteen months. Then we go find that organization and stay in the room — through the technical evaluation, the proof-of-concept scope, the contract, and the intellectual property terms that cross-border deals get wrong.

Typical work

Market focus and segment definition
Customer, partner, and institution identification
Proof-of-concept design and scoping
Contract and IP structuring across two legal and business cultures
Negotiation support in both languages

02 - Policy and funding case

Some technologies do not scale through private demand alone. Public funding, university capacity, and industrial policy help decide which technologies get built at scale and which stay in the lab.

Most companies in this situation have a useful technology but no clear route into a public program, university partnership, or institutional buyer. A government strategy may name the problem their technology helps solve, but no one has translated that fit into a decision-ready brief, funding plan, or partnership proposal.

That is the work. We map what government has actually committed to, identify the gap, find the precedent — a peer country that already funded a similar answer and what it cost them — and write the case that makes the problem and the proposed answer clear in the same document. Then we build it to the standard of the decision-maker who has to approve it.

In Canada that means federal and provincial funding programs, economic development organizations, and the university research system. In Japan it means the ministries, the industry associations, and the national research institutes. We have worked with the Japanese Embassy and Consulate-General in Canada, with JETRO, and with Invest Ottawa on missions in both directions.

Typical work

Public-sector case development — how a technology fits an existing policy or funding priority
International precedent research: what comparable countries funded, at what scale, with what result
Grant and funding program planning, Canadian federal and provincial
Briefing materials for government, university-sector and board-level decision-makers
Working relationships across the Ontario technology and economic development community

03 - Program design and delivery

A strategy that no one can act on is a document, not a strategy. We write the thing that gets the decision made — the funding plan, the curriculum, the pilot design, the board briefing — and we build it to the standard of the people who have to approve it.

We also build software. Knowgic develops its own tools, which means we understand what we are asking engineering teams to do when we recommend a technical direction.

Typical Work

Funding plan and subsidy application design
Curriculum and training program development
Pilot and demonstration project design
Executive and board-level briefing materials
Custom software and data tools

Who we work with

For Canadian technology companies that need a public-sector path at home

You are not trying to enter a new country. You have a technology that answers something your own government has already said is important — and no route from that fact to a program, a budget line, or an institutional buyer. The technology is not in question. What is missing is the decision-ready case, written in the budget and program language public-sector teams use.

This is the work we are doing right now in physical AI, and it is the engagement type we are best at. It usually starts as a messaging and funding-path problem and turns into a program.

For Canadian companies going to Japan

Japan is a large, slow-moving market where the first meeting decides the next three years. Buyers are conservative, procurement is relationship-led, and the technical evaluation is genuinely rigorous. What works is a local lead who can hold both sides of the conversation and who will still be there in year two.

Our founder did exactly this as an executive of a Waterloo software company, growing its business across Japan's universities, automotive makers, and machinery industry.

For Japanese companies coming to Canada

Canada is not the United States and should not be approached as a smaller version of it. The advantage is specific: world-class AI and robotics research concentrated in a handful of cities, an immigration system that keeps the talent pipeline open, and public funding programs that materially change the economics of an R&D project — if you know how to apply.

Ontario is where we work. We are based in Waterloo, and our network here is real rather than nominal.

Where does your situation sit?

If you are not sure which of these you need, that is a normal place to start. A short call usually settles it.