Stress‑Testing a Local Idea to Scale National Impact

Summer Initiative – Queen’s Innovation Centre (Spread Innovation)

Role: Dan Hendry

Year: 2020

Innovation often happens when an idea is put under pressure and tested in the real world. In 2020, during the height of the COVID‑19 pandemic, I participated in the Queen’s Summer Innovation Initiative at the Queen’s Innovation Centre a four‑month, intensive entrepreneurship program focused on turning promising ideas into viable ventures. The idea I brought into the program was one I had been developing for years: how to scale free youth transit beyond Kingston and across Canada.

As a participant and learner, I worked as part of a small, multidisciplinary team to develop the business case for replicating the Kingston high school transit model at a national level. The guiding question for our work was both simple and ambitious: how do you take a proven local program and adapt it so it can succeed in communities with different governance structures, transit systems, and capacities?

The program moved us through the full entrepreneurial process, including problem definition, market analysis, value proposition development, financial modelling, and pitch design. Within the team, my role drew heavily on my experience with youth transit, systems thinking, and community‑based innovation. I helped ground the work in practical examples from Kingston while also exploring what it would take to shift from a single‑city success to a scalable movement.

Because the program took place during COVID, the experience was delivered almost entirely online. Despite this, the work was highly collaborative and fast‑paced, requiring clear communication, shared accountability, and constant iteration. Working through the process deepened my understanding of how social innovation ideas can be framed in ways that resonate with funders, decision‑makers, and partners beyond the public sector.

At the conclusion of the program, our team presented our business case to a panel of judges and placed fourth overall, earning a small amount of seed funding to help move the project forward. More importantly, the experience sharpened the strategy behind scaling youth transit programs and reinforced the importance of pairing purpose‑driven ideas with rigorous business thinking.

Participating in the Queen’s Summer Innovation Initiative reminded me of the value of stepping back into a learner role. Even well‑established ideas benefit from challenge, structure, and external perspective. This experience strengthened my ability to translate social impact work into entrepreneurial language a skill that continues to shape how I approach innovation, partnerships, and systems change.

Related Links & Media: https://www.queensu.ca/innovationcentre/qfii