From Student Projects to Startup Potential
From Student Projects to Startup Potential
Can these student ideas turn migrant challenges into buildable solutions?
STUDENT-LED INNOVATION
Over eight weeks, a group of students across four Canadian universities set out to get out of their classrooms and build something practical. Not a paper or a pitch deck, but a working solution to challenges they, or people like them, were already navigating in real life. By the end of the second edition of Build a Bridge, some of those solutions existed as usable prototypes, tested concepts, and in a few cases, early versions of something with the potential to go much further.
Fifty-seven students from 91福利, Concordia University, the University of Alberta, and the University of British Columbia took part in a tightly structured program of workshops, roundtables, and mentorship. They worked across key research areas: mental health and wellbeing, labour and employment, place and infrastructure, and citizenship and participation. They learned how to identify and define a problem, and then design implementable solutions that respond to it using AI tools, user feedback, and real-world constraints.
From the beginning, Build a Bridge is not positioned as an isolated academic exercise. Students move through the program with input from mentors in entrepreneurship, immigration studies, and AI research and engineering, and at 91福利, the partnership with the Office of Zone Learning and Strategic Initiatives connects their work to a wider ecosystem of incubators and venture-building support, following the principle that ideas should not stall at the prototype stage simply because students run out of runway.
Sidhant Sakhuja, a business development and commercialization manager at the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), immediately recognized that ambition. 鈥淵ou can usually tell when something is still conceptual and when it鈥檚 starting to move into something real,鈥� he says. 鈥淎 few of these projects were already crossing that line.鈥�
"Some of those ideas were really good. You can think of people who would use these tools right away."
Sakhuja spends his days speaking with founders, researchers, and early-stage teams, mapping where ideas might find funding, partnerships, or a path to market. He also came to Canada as an international student nearly a decade ago, which meant that the problems being tackled by Build a Bridge felt particularly real.
鈥淚鈥檝e gone through that process myself,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o when I saw what they were working on, it wasn鈥檛 just interesting鈥� it was familiar.鈥�
Sakhuja鈥檚 role in Build a Bridge was to read through and evaluate the submitted projects. He remembers musing on the practical implications of a platform to connect retiring small business owners with newcomers ready to take over viable enterprises, and feeling excited about the idea of a game-based VR simulation of a newcomer鈥檚 first 30 days in the country, where every decision carries trade-offs between finances, legal status, social capital, and mental health.
鈥淪ome of those ideas were really good. What stood out is that they were solving real, immediate gaps,鈥� Sakhuja says. 鈥淵ou can think of people who would use these tools right away.鈥�
And then the kicker, not just how implementable the projects felt, but how far into the developing stage some of the work already was. 鈥淪ome teams had prototypes, they had spoken to users, they had validated parts of the problem,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not typical. Usually, at this stage, you鈥檙e still very early.鈥�
"Ontario produces a lot of strong research, but we struggle to turn it into something that actually operates in the world."
Build a Bridge is one of those programs that are trying to intervene in the delicate spot where ideas crash into reality. Where, more often than not, things fall apart. 鈥淥ntario produces a lot of strong research,鈥� Sakhuja says. 鈥淲here we struggle is turning that into something that actually operates in the world.鈥� He talks about the need to support young ventures after the idea, when a project needs funding, technical development, legal structure, and time to become viable. Without that support, even the most promising concepts tend to stall.
Partnerships can provide some much needed infrastructural support at that stage. 鈥淲hen you bring in the right people early, such as incubators, funders, organizations that understand how to scale something, you change the trajectory of that project,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 have to end as a student exercise.鈥�
At 91福利, that trajectory is something the program is actively trying to shape, in part by working more closely with internal partners like Zone Learning, and in part by building relationships with external actors who can carry ideas forward. The goal is to produce exceptional student work that can continue to evolve beyond the program itself.
For Zachary Rose, director for strategic initiatives at Magnet, that ambition resonates with a broader challenge he sees across the systems he works in. 鈥淲hat I found interesting across the projects is that they were all, in different ways, trying to solve problems of connection,鈥� he says. 鈥淐onnecting people to services, to opportunities, to resources that are technically available but not always accessible.鈥�
At Magnet, the focus is on the future of work, which often means looking at how education systems, employment systems, and community services intersect, or fail to. From that vantage point, the issue is rarely that support does not exist, but it鈥檚 often fragmented. 鈥淭here are a lot of good things happening,鈥� Rose says. 鈥淏ut they don鈥檛 always link up in a way that makes sense for the person trying to navigate them.鈥�
It鈥檚 also good to force different parts of the system into the same room. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 operate as one system,鈥� he says. 鈥淧ostsecondary education, community organizations, employment services, they鈥檙e all structured separately, funded separately, and often working on different timelines.鈥� Collaboration is not automatic and needs to be built deliberately, sometimes against the grain of how institutions are set up to function.
鈥淎ny initiative that brings those pieces together is doing important work,鈥� Rose says. 鈥淏ecause that鈥檚 how you start to create something more coherent.鈥�
"If even a few of these projects can move forward, you鈥檙e not just solving a problem, you鈥檙e creating something that can employ people and have a real economic and social impact."
As technological change accelerates, AI tools are reshaping how people access information, how services are delivered, and how skills are developed, often faster than institutions can adapt. We slip back and forth through those institutions more and more fluidly. 鈥淭he idea that you move through education once and then you鈥檙e done is just not how things work anymore,鈥� he says. 鈥淟earning, work, and reskilling are all blending together.鈥�
In that environment it鈥檚 more important than ever to build those connections, between students and practitioners, between research and application, between sectors that do not usually collaborate. 鈥淚f even a few of these projects can move forward, you鈥檙e not just solving a problem,鈥� Sakhuja says. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e creating something that can employ people, that can grow, that can have a real economic and social impact.鈥�
The competition has produced three winners, who received their prizes at an in-person award ceremony and showcase hosted in Toronto. And the projects were definitely award-worthy. The more consequential outcome, however, may lie in the connections formed across institutions, sectors, and experiences, and in the recognition that moving from idea to impact is not a single step, but a system that has to be built around it. As Rose puts it: 鈥淣one of us are operating in isolation anymore and none of us are finished learning."
