Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Disruptors
BusinessEntrepreneurshipTechnology

Disruptors

RBC Thought Leadership, John Stackhouse

Disruptors, now in its 11th season, has become your front-row seat to Canada’s innovation story—200+ episodes exploring the people, ideas, and technologies reshaping Canada’s future.

Each episode, hosted by John Stackhouse, SVP, Office of the CEO at Royal Bank of Canada—and former Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail—cuts through the hype and focuses on what you need to know.

This season, we’re leaning into urgency: the global economy is shifting, geopolitics are noisy, and Canada needs to respond. You’ll hear from founders, investors, scientists, operators, and policy leaders at the forefront. Listen for a clearer understanding of the tech and innovation shaping Canada and the world—and practical insights to help you make sense of what’s coming next.

Play
Open in
  • 26 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 26 min
  • English

Episodes 26

NewestOldestLongest
All6Unplayed6In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • S10 · E5
    March 10 · 31 min

    Tech Wins Gold: How Canada Can Rebuild Its Olympic Pipeline

    Canada’s Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics delivered unforgettable moments — and also a hard signal: podium success is increasingly won upstream, through systems, sport science, and technology. In a world where competitors treat sport science as infrastructure, Canada is trying to win with a thinner pipeline and a funding model that can push costs onto athletes. That’s not just unfair — it’s strategically risky. In our latest Disruptors episode, host John Stackhouse sits down with David Shoe

  • S10 · E4
    February 24 · 22 min

    Harvest Now, Decrypt Later: The Quantum Era's Encryption Challenge

    Quantum computing is accelerating — and putting today’s encryption on a clock. John Stackhouse goes inside Xanadu’s Toronto lab with Christian Weedbrook to meet Aurora, a networked quantum computer built to push scale in the right direction and speaks with Photonic’s Dr. Stephanie Simmons about “harvest now, decrypt later,” fault-tolerant quantum, and why every organization needs a post-quantum cryptography (PQC) transition plan. It’s not all doom and gloom. Simmons also lays out what quantum c

  • S10 · E3
    February 11 · 28 min

    The $15m Cliff: Keeping Canadian Agri-Food Startups Scaling at Home

    Canada is exporting too much of its agri-food upside—IP, talent, and value-add—because growth-stage financing doesn’t fit the sector. From Ottawa, John Stackhouse speaks with RBC’s Lisa Ashton to unpack Seeding Scale—RBC’s new report on Canada’s agri-food growth-capital gap. Joined by Vive Crop CEO Darren Anderson and Emmertech Managing Partner Kyle Scott, they break down why agri-food is “different money,” why companies hit a wall around the $15M mark, and the first moves to keep more Canadian

  • S10 · E2
    January 27 · 23 min

    Risk as Signal: A Canadian Playbook

    Fresh from Davos, John Stackhouse shares field notes on how the world’s economy is reorganizing — and what that means for Canadians. He is joined by Gerald Butts, Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor at Eurasia Group, to unpack the new RBC–Eurasia Canada risk outlook: what matter most, how to separate signal from noise, and the practical playbook for where to invest, what to protect, and how to diversify.

  • S10 · E1
    January 13 · 23 min

    Climate-Led Investing: What’s Next

    If you’re trying to separate climate ambition from execution, this conversation is for you! John Stackhouse is joined by Clara Barby, Senior Partner at Just Climate, to pressure-test what’s scaling—and what’s getting stuck by diving into RBC’s new Climate Action 2026 report.

  • S9 · E11
    Dec 30, 2025 · 24 min

    Alberta’s Next Energy Mix

    With industrial power demand rising, can small modular reactors help anchor a cleaner, always‑on system that will support the incoming AI Data Centre boom? In this bonus episode of Disruptors, recorded live in Edmonton, host John Stackhouse speaks with Premier Danielle Smith about a practical path: SMRs alongside abated natural gas, hydro, and stronger interties—with Indigenous equity built in from day one. They dig into reliability needs, near‑term “bring‑your‑own‑power” models, how to financ

Showing 21–26 of 26 episodes