Claudia Krywiak
Canada’s population has grown by nearly 10 million people in just 25 years, and our streets have not kept pace. More traffic, more pedestrians, more cyclists and more risk. After decades of decline, road fatalities in Canada are climbing again. More than 2000 people died in 2023, and early numbers from 2024 suggest that the trend is continuing. Toronto launched its Vision Zero strategy in 2016, a plan to eliminate traffic related deaths through better design, enforcement and education.

But despite record investments in safety, 30 people have already died on Toronto’s roads this year, including six cyclists. So what’s going wrong and how can innovation help make our streets safer?

Welcome to Where Next Happens, a podcast sharing stories of Ontario’s innovators and entrepreneurs. I’m Doctor Claudia Krywiak, president and CEO of the Ontario Centre of Innovation.

At the center of this work is Kurtis McBride, CEO and co-founder of Miovision. Since 2005, Kurtis has helped transform Miovision from a student project into a global leader in smart traffic technology. Now active in more than 60 countries. @ith a deep belief in data driven urban planning, he’s helping cities tackle congestion, improve safety and plan for the future.

Kurtis, welcome. It’s great to have you join us today and share a little bit of your story and the Miovision story. So why don’t we start at the beginning? Let’s start with the spark and the origin. You started Miovision as a grad student at the University of Waterloo. What made you first realize that there was room to improve the way our streets work and the way our traffic flows, and how did that insight lead you to Miovision?

Kurtis McBride 
Thanks for the opportunity to come and talk to everybody today. Yeah, the early days of Miovision- my last job I was- I went to University of Waterloo. My last job was a co-op student doing some work for a traffic engineering firm in Toronto, and had the opportunity to go out on the weekends and do manual traffic counts, and then get to see how the data was being used when we would get back to the office the next week to make important decisions about traffic. Kind of knowing that, you know, after an eight hour traffic count in the baking hot sun in July, the data might not have been the most accurate, but it’s being used to make really important decisions that affect how cities operate.

And so yeah, went back to finish up my undergrad. I did a fourth year workshop on using cameras and video to try to count cars and then turned that into a masters. And then I ultimately started Miovision kind of coming out of the Masters to try to commercialize the idea.

Claudia Krywiak
So what was the original problem that you were trying to solve?

Kurtis McBride

When cities are trying to optimize traffic flow, they do a traffic count, so it’s called a turning movement count. But basically how many cars went through turned left, turned right at an intersection. And then they use that data to figure out, you know, what should the signal timings be. Red, yellow, green by approach. So if you’ve ever, you know, been at an intersection and you’re like wondering why the light is red when there’s nobody around and there’s a queue of cars behind you, often means that there’s a need to update the signal timing. Do a traffic count and have the timing reflect the new count.

So yeah, that was kind of the initial genesis was supporting cities and doing those types of traffic optimization studies.

Claudia Krywiak
And can you kind of talk about Miovision’s technology and where it is today with respect to trying to solve that original problem?

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, so 20 years later we’ve solved that problem, but kind of taking it much further than that. So we have a device that we call the smartphone of the intersection, but it’s basically a compute device, a sensor and a compute device that goes into the intersection. We generate effectively like a digital twin level of information about what’s happening in the intersection. So all the car, truck, bus, cyclists, pedestrian. Where are they going? Signal phasing, you know, red, yellow, green. And then a bunch of metadata about what’s happening at the intersection. And we solve a range of issues that go on in intersections, everything from things like optimization that I talked about, emergency vehicle preemption. So how do we get a fire truck through the network quickly and safely such that it’s, you know, could respond to some incident that’s occurred? We help buses stay on schedule.

We do all sorts of different things at the intersection. So we’ve really become the sort of one stop shop for cities to help them understand and optimize traffic flow through intersection networks, keep people safe and keep them moving.

Claudia Krywiak

So you said 20 years later, can you kind of talk a little bit about that journey? 20 years ago, Miovision was founded when you were still a student. What does Miovision look like today? Like how many employees do you have? How have you fundraised? Talk a little bit about that 20 year journey.

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, we’re 460 people, roughly.

Claudia Krywiak

Wow.

Kurtis McBride

We have offices in Germany, a number of them in the US now. We have staff in Singapore, in Dubai, in Mexico. So, yeah, we’ve become a global company. We have a global footprint, global talent pool, global set of customers. I think last count, we have something like 5000 customers around the world. We’ve become the market leader in what we call intelligent mobility, but sort of a modern 21st century, you know, data platform, take on a 20th century infrastructure problem.

Claudia Krywiak

And talk a little bit about that journey, like, what are the lessons learned, what was really important, because that’s quite impressive to go from an idea where you see a problem as a student, you have firsthand experience, you develop a technology based solution, and then you scale the company to a global leadership position.

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, I mean, lots of lessons along the way. You know, everything from the importance of culture as you scale, technology lessons and fundraising lessons, but maybe one that I’ll share that I think is relevant, you know, given the moment we find ourselves in with the sort of global uncertainty around trade: the countries that we sell into where we sell the most and have the most commercial success are ones that use demand generation to drive market activity. So if, you know, if I take a place like the United States, you know, they have a strategy of, you know, often comes from the federal government or from state governments, you know, strategy around how they’re going to improve safety at the roadside, and then they’ll design procurement programs to ensure that those outcomes are happening.

So they put sort of funding against the strategic imperatives that they have and they grow the market for innovation around those strategic imperatives. And there’s other markets, and I would say Canada is one of them, where we tend to fund inputs as opposed to outcome. So we’ll fund, you know, R&D and building a new manufacturing plant and this kind of thing as opposed to funding, you know, the market outcomes that we want and growing the markets around the things that we want to see. So I’d say that’s probably my biggest takeaway is just seeing–I’ve had the opportunity to sell Miovision now in about 70 countries. I’ve had the opportunity to sell all over the world and very different procurement models that lead to very different outcomes in the, you know, in people’s lives, like in terms of how a driver experiences driving around. If you’ve ever driven in Florida, they have- virtually every intersection network in Florida is coordinated. So, you know, you never hit that–you hit the greens as you drive down the corridor if you drive the speed limit.

That wasn’t an accident. That was that was a procurement, an intentional sort of strategic procurement lens that the Florida Department of Transportation put on how they deploy money. You can see it. You can feel it when you drive around in a place like Florida.

Claudia Krywiak

 So we’ve kind of jumped a little bit to some of the challenges that cities can be really slow in adopting new infrastructure, but some of those challenges can actually come about as a result of the approach that cities or jurisdictions take to procurement. And if they’re procuring for inputs, outputs or actual outcomes. When you were initially developing and then scaling your technology. Who are the early customers, the first adopters? Were they here or were they elsewhere? And what made them become your first customers?

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, I mean, our very first customer, you know, and then the story–and I think this is a common story for a lot of Canadian entrepreneurs–we had called all through Ontario trying to get a customer and really struggled and then we someone advised that we try the Northeastern United States.

And it was, you know, very quickly after that, we got our first customer in Baltimore, Maryland. And yeah, I think that’s a common phenomenon. You know, we have lots of Canadian customers, don’t get me wrong. But those first customers like the ones that really needed to sort of believe in us and take a chance and spend some money on a risk proposition, basically, a lot of those first customers were US based.

Claudia Krywiak

And was the differentiating factor just their tolerance for risk or their appetite for risk or innovation?

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, I think that’s a big differentiator. Like one of the ways that I’ve always characterized the difference between Canadians and Americans is when Americans see an opportunity to optimize some part of their operation or business or their, in the public sector case, you know, every day that they don’t they see it as like they’re losing money, losing an opportunity. Whereas in Canada, I find we tend to look at it through the lens of like, how much does it cost? So even if there’s a savings, you know, direct savings or in the case of what we do, you know, often a savings for a citizen, you know, reducing fuel consumption and reducing the risk of, you know, collisions and things like that which have an externality cost advantage, we tend to look at what it costs to do it as opposed to what we’re losing by not doing it. And I think that’s sort of a nuanced difference in our cultures, a different willingness to take on risk.

Claudia Krywiak

Do you think that that’s a cultural difference that we can overcome, that there are things that can be done or supports that can be put in place that would make us have more of an appetite for innovation and more of a tolerance for risk?

Kurtis McBride

You know, I hope so. I don’t think we have a choice. I think the, you know, you look at the productivity index metrics, you know, we fall behind our counterparts every year. And I think in a world where, you know, AI and specifically like agentic systems now that are really starting to come in and create top function changes in productivity, I think it’s really imperative that we get to that place culturally. I’ve been excited to see, you know, the federal government, one of the strategic pillars that was published was around strategic procurement.

It’s critical. Like, and that’s not to say–I think often when I talk about strategic procurement, people assume I mean, like, buy stuff from Miovision. That’s not really what I mean. What I mean is we have these national strategic imperatives, right? We’re trying to improve productivity. We’re trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve safety for citizens, and drive economic productivity for the country. How can we marry up the investments we need to make to achieve those objectives? How can we marry that up with companies that are already global leaders in their respective domains and grow the markets around those companies to both achieve the country’s objectives, but also to strengthen the domestic innovation economy? You know, like I said, the US does that extremely well. Germany does that well, Korea does that well. And I think there’s models that we could adopt to benefit from it, but I think it’s, I think it’s more critical than ever that we, that we do it. You know, trade is re-localizing, you know, it globalized for a while and it’s re-localizing.

And then like I said, with things like agentic systems, like the pace of innovation, the criticality of being early to adopt innovation is only going to accelerate in the next decade.

Claudia Krywiak

Let’s talk a little bit about AI and the adoption of AI. You touched on generally that it is important at all levels for us to adopt AI, especially with the development of agentic AI and AI agents. Tell us a little bit about how Miovision is leveraging AI. Because if you think about the arc of the technology, what the world looked like ten years ago when that technology was developed, and also the type of impact that Miovision’s technology has achieved in terms of making a measurable difference in the way not only traffic and streets work, but the improvements that are realized by pedestrians as well, what opportunities does AI present and how is Miovision adopting and adapting to the reality of AI?

Kurtis McBride

Yeah, so I’ll give you two examples. One, ITS World Congress in Atlanta was last week.

It was the sort of–the world’s conference for intelligent transportation systems and Miovision launched, certainly our first, but the industry’s first agentic traffic engineering system. So we launched a product we call Mateo, an automated traffic engineering operator. But what Mateo allows one of our customers to do is if you take–I’ll take the region of Waterloo–we have 100% coverage in the region of Waterloo, where we have our sensors in the region, and we’ve been there for years. So we have tons of historical data about how the region has performed. And we have current data about how the region is performing. Mateo allows the customer, instead of solving a problem–let’s say there’s a citizen complaint that comes in. Traditionally, you would click your way through a workflow to solve a problem, and the workflows would be designed to solve very specific problems. And what Mateo allows you to do is have a conversational interface. So you have a conversational workflow.

So you can copy and paste the complaint email that you got into Mateo’s interface and say “Help me. Help me diagnose and fix this problem.” And then Mateo has access to all of the data in your network, as well as a whole bunch of tools, like tools that give it analytical capability to understand what’s happening in the data. And it can conversationally help you to troubleshoot that. But then it also has tools that allow you to make a change. So you can update the timing plan, for example, at the side of the road. And so you can basically, in one conversation, you can diagnose and solve a citizen complaint. We think this is extremely powerful not only because it is a force multiplier–you know, it helps a customer solve a problem ten times faster than they could before–but it also makes the tools a lot more approachable. You don’t have to be a, you know, really advanced traffic engineer to work with the tools because you have Mateo. Mateo is an advanced traffic engineer with access to all of your data. So now you can make it more approachable for more people to work on solving these problems, which just makes it easier for cities to hire and to solve things.

But then Miovision is also using our own agentic systems. So we’ve adopted agentics in our software development processes. We’re seeing, you know, significant, I hate to say the word, but like unprecedented productivity and improvements in software development with these agentic systems, because you have essentially a super intelligent digital co-op student living inside your computer, helping you write code. And so, you know, if you can imagine, Miovision is using agentic systems to build agentic systems, you know, and that that should give us some sense of what’s happening in th–starting to emerge in the global economy. I think it was Elon Musk that made reference to AI being a hypersonic tsunami that was about to hit the global economy. And I think my–I’ve been around a lot of technology hype cycles before that–this one is not a hype cycle. This is, this is real and it’s it’s happening at an accelerated rate. Very excited for companies like Miovision, because I think we’re going to stand to benefit from it.

And, you know, very excited for all of the customers that we have that have believed in us for years, that are going to be able to benefit from the tooling that we’re launching for them. but, you know, cautionary tale for any companies and even public agencies that aren’t, you know, really leaning into the adoption of agentics, because I think there’s a real risk that they get left behind.

Claudia Krywiak

So what does that mean for a student right now who’s listening to us, who’s listening to this discussion, who was maybe like you 20 years ago, who’s sitting at the University of Waterloo or at U of T or at Laurentian University? Maybe they’re even studying engineering or even computer science, and they really want to start their own startup? Because, you know, it sounds like a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, all of these tools and the capabilities that AI enables can accelerate drastically the time from idea to MVP. On the other hand, things are moving so quickly and it almost seems like anytime OpenAI doesn’t update to ChatGPT overnight, a whole swath of early stage startup companies can be wiped out.

What would you say to that student who’s, you know, sitting in their dorm right now thinking about how do they navigate entrepreneurship or doing a startup in this rapidly accelerating world of AI?

Kurtis McBride

It’s a really big question. And I mean, it’s evolving so fast that I’ll take a stab at speculating, but it’s evolving so fast. Like, I think, you know, who knows on some level. But, I think, you know, understanding the customer need, the customer problem. Things like if I, if you look at Amazon as an example, like Amazon’s genius was that they understood that customers want high quality, low cost products delivered to their house as fast as possible. How that happens is going to evolve over time. Right? Even within our last couple of decades watching Amazon come online, that’s changed. And certainly the next couple of decades is going to change dramatically, right? But the underlying customer need hasn’t changed. Even if it’s a, you know, fully autonomous robot delivering, you know, the package to my house, they’re still fundamentally solving the same underlying need.

So I think like deeply understanding the customer problem that you’re trying to solve is, that’s not going to change. Agentics isn’t going to make that less important. But I think the exciting thing about agentics is that, if you think about the nature of a software company, it’s basically a machine that turns highly unstructured information. So like, customer conversations, competitive intelligence and market sizing, it takes this highly unstructured information and it turns it into highly structured information, which is sort of source code. Right? We’ve developed, over a couple of decades, we’ve developed methods, methodologies and roles, you know, teams and roles that take highly unstructured information  and turn it into structured information. What’s happening with agentics is there’s an opportunity to compress the number of steps and the number of people that are involved in getting from an unstructured starting point to a highly structured output. And I think that for startups that are building from scratch, this is like a massive opportunity for them because, unlike Miovision, where we got to figure out how do we navigate a transition, if you’re a startup starting today, you can just start with the genetics. And I think this gives you like a huge advantage in some ways. You may not have, you know, the customers and the channels that a big established company has, but you have agility and the ability to keep your cost structures under control, assuming you can really deeply understand your customers. So in any major shift in the economy, there’s going to be winners and losers. But I think there’s a–I think there’s an opportunity for startups to move really quickly. You know, another way to take your question, like I have a ten year old and 11 year old, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what advice do I give them as their dad, so you know, what they need to be good at just–to navigate the future. And you know, from my perspective, curiosity, growth mindset, like open mindedness, like these have always been important. But what I’m seeing with these agentic systems is like, it’s even more important.

Claudia Krywiak

More important, yeah.

Kurtis McBride

Yeah. Because the ratio of thinking to doing as an employee, you know, if on average, you know, you think 10% of the time and you do 90% of the time, you know, my head of software once recently said, you know, “the only thing left is the thinking”. Having the ability to critically think and, you know, understand the customer need and be open to be resilient because things are going to change so fast.

Those skills are arguably more important than, you know, some of the technical skills that we’ve really focused on, teaching people over the last couple of decades.

Claudia Krywiak

And I think that really we are going to have to very quickly revisit how we train and teach people. This past weekend, I dropped my son off at university, so first year residence move in. And just seeing the thousands of young people and seeing their kind of curiosity and their excitement, but also understanding that we are in an unprecedented time where, as you said, very quickly, we are in the midst of a technology that is accelerating so rapidly that probably in the next two years we will see more technological change than we have seen in the last ten years. And you mentioned curiosity, growth mindset and resilience. And I think those things are going to be really, really important.

So, kind of, what keeps you motivated in this work? What advice would you give to other founders who are thinking of tackling like big civic challenges?

Kurtis McBride

You know, it has to be–I mean, 20 years doing this, there’s lots of ups and downs, lots of good weeks and lots of bad weeks. I have to be purpose driven. So, like, you know, I’m very passionate. And I’d like to think that the majority of people that work in Miovision are very passionate about improving the lives of the citizens that drive around or walk around or scooter around in our, in the networks that we play a part in. A number of the folks that work here have, you know, personal experiences, you know, related to transit or pedestrian safety. You know, and were drawn to Miovision because those personal experiences are, you know, they get to come here every day, go to work and actually work on a thing that they feel deeply about. I think for me, like, that’s the thing that’s–that’s the North Star that’s kept me focused for 20 years through all the ups and downs, is just knowing that we’re having a real impact on people’s lives. And I was at a conference a couple of years ago, and I ran into a citizen who lived in a city where we had a large deployment, and he talked about, you know, his, the drive to work that we improved. And it was weird. It was the first time I’d ever, like, met somebody who actually had a personal anecdote to share about the work that we do here, but it really kind of brought it to life for me that, you know, we’re affecting millions of people and their drives in a positive way, whether they know we exist or not. That really helps to keep me going through the hard times.

Claudia Krywiak

I think that’s key for any founder. That sense of fulfillment and reward, when you see the impact that your work has had on the everyday lives of people.

So what’s next? Looking ahead, what do you think are the biggest opportunities in mobility, innovation and what’s next for Miovision?

Kurtis McBride

When I think about the way that our customers interact with our products, I think in the next, you know, to your point, the next two years, I think we’re going to see more change than we’ve seen maybe in the last 20 years at Miovision, in terms of like our ability to improve the life of the citizen that our customers are responsible for.

So I’m really excited about it. You know, every overnight success story is 20 years in the making and, you know, Miovision has–for a long time, we were the, you know, the weird Canadian guys that kept saying the internet wasn’t going away and that our industry needed to takenotes. And now we have, you know, governments like the U.S. Department of Transportation coming to us and asking for advice on how to navigate a digital infrastructure future. So I think we’ve laid the foundation for the last 20 years, and now it’s time to really accelerate what we what we do. We did six acquisitions. So, you know, integrating cultures and technologies. I mean, that was challenging for sure. We’re working our way through that. Mostly there, but you know, still have some work to do. So I would say, you know, we have more foundation to lay, but this wild and wonderful future is emerging in front of us and, we’re positioned to emerge as the global leader.

Claudia Krywiak

If you had special power to see into the future, what do you think the world is going to look like five, ten years from now?

Kurtis McBride

I think countries that can operationalize their strategic imperatives through partnership with their innovators are going to emerge with high standards of living and strong security positions, and countries that struggle to do that are going to be, you know, are going to struggle. They’re going to be left behind. And I think, you know, I think Canada’s at a very important point in its history and, you know, almost 200 year history, you know, where we have the whole the whole world is in front of us. We have–whether it’s resources in the ground or a strong manufacturing base or a world class, like arguably one of the best innovation sectors anywhere in the world, we have all of these sort of raw materials to emerge as a, as a global powerhouse and as a leader, you know, to inspire the world.

But we need to capture the moment and I think, you know,  the next five years, like, you know, Miovision will do well, whether it’s selling into the US and Europe or selling into Canada. But part of why I do this is because I really care about this country and I really want my kids to grow up in a country that’s, you know, at least as good, if not better than the one that I got to grow up in. And I think there’s this moment where we can capture it. And I was really excited to see the announcement that the federal government made when they–with Cohere, where there’s sort of a strategic procurement with Cohere to help drive agentics into the federal government. Love to see 500 more of those types of announcements in the next couple of years.

Claudia Krywiak

Absolutely. That was most certainly a very exciting announcement and also very forward looking. Thank you so much, Kurtis, for all of your insights. This has been a great discussion.

We are in a unique moment in time with respect to technology advancement, with respect to AI, and there is an opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs and for Canada to seize that moment. Really enjoyed this discussion with you. Thank you so much.

Kurtis McBride

Likewise.

Claudia Krywiak
That’s it for this episode of Where Next Happens. To learn more about Kurtis’s work and Miovision, visit Miovision.com. Where Next Happens is produced by the Ontario Centre of Innovation. This episode was produced by Jasmine Rach and edited by Gaëtan Harris. Amanda Cupido is the executive producer and I’m your host, Dr. Claudia Krywiak.

Ready to take your idea to the next level? The Ontario Centre of Innovation helps innovators access the funding, mentorship and resources they need to drive the future forward. Visit oc-innovation.ca to learn more.

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