Knowledge Industry

Fredericton is home to the largest concentration of IT firms in the province. With almost 70 per cent of New Brunswick’s knowledge industry located in the provincial capital, more than 100 firms in Fredericton employ over 1,500 people with an annual payroll exceeding $120 million.

Knowledge firms range from offices for major multinational corporations to entrepreneurial start-ups and spin-off companies. This is the result from an explosion of R&D activity in the area in the last decade.

Here, major corporations like CGI (Canada’s largest independent software developer) and Skillsoft (New Hampshire-based international with offices in Fredericton) work and collaborate with local entrepreneurs, universities, and research institutes. With the recently established National Research Council Institute for Information Technology. Many smaller homegrown firms—Q1 Labs Canada Inc, CyberSecure, Bulletproof — have gained national and international recognition for their leadership in areas like security systems and e-learning.

A vast array of research is conducted as well at the University of New Brunswick for some of North America’s largest and best-known corporations. In fact, 80 per cent of the university research conducted in the province and almost half of all research conducted in the province takes place in Fredericton. Already poised to begin construction on the fourth building, the Greater Fredericton Knowledge Park is a natural extension of the innovative research done at UNB and at the NRC Institute.