Andrew Woollard is the President of J-Squared Technologies Inc., bringing over four years of experience in the Defence & Security industry. With a background in artificial intelligence, he previously held a leadership role at OmniaAI—Deloitte Canada’s AI practice—where he specialized in driving AI adoption and product development. Since joining J-Squared three years ago, Woollard has focused on leveraging technology to enhance innovation in the defence sector, working alongside the company’s founder and CEO, Jeff Gibson. He is committed to the responsible implementation of AI and emerging technologies to improve national security. At J-Squared, he leads the execution of the company’s strategic vision, supported by a team of industry veterans.
1. How did you start out in this industry and how has it brought you to where you are today?
I’d consider myself somewhat of a newcomer to this industry. My four years pales in comparison to the many talented individuals who have spent their entire careers dedicated to the Defence & Security sector.
J-Squared’s founder and CEO, Jeff Gibson, had the foresight to see the important role that AI would play in the upcoming decades. Driving AI adoption within businesses and building and AI-based products was a skillset I had built a great deal of experience in as part of my last role as a leader within OmniaAI – Deloitte Canada’s Artificial Intelligence practice – the first of its kind across the organization globally. Jeff and I share a belief in the power of technology, responsibly developed and implemented, to have a powerful impact on the defence industry – and in turn the safety of lives and nations.
I like to think I bring a fresh, outside perspective to the industry with new ideas to foster innovation at a time we need it most. I feel fortunate to have a role that allows me to influence the direction of technological innovation in an industry of utmost importance to the safety and security of our nation. It’s not a responsibility I take lightly, and it is what drives me to constantly be better and do the most I can.
2. What is your role at your organization today?
As the President of J-Squared, the most important role I play is to execute the strategic direction set for the company. Our business is so multi-faceted, and I cannot be everywhere at once, so I’m fortunate we have such a talented team in place with decades of experience across the military sector and other verticals that handle day-to-day operations.
3. What was your most challenging moment?
I joined J-Squared during the COVID pandemic, when work was all performed virtually. It was the first time I had started a new position without in-person interactions. This both steepened the learning curve to ramp up and made getting to know team members personally more difficult.
My style of leadership is to “lead by example.” In past roles, much of my work was on the road, travelling with my team. A lot of time was spent together, both during work hours, but also commuting and dining together. This made building bonds natural and easy.
The 180-degree change in the work environment was challenging to navigate. I’m fortunate J-Squared was and is filled with amazing people, who were very helpful along the way. Returning to the office, as we came out of the pandemic, definitely helped create opportunities to build and strengthen those relationships.
It was a reminder of the importance of building social connections with colleagues. As a company, we continue this practice today through organized events multiple times a year where we all get together, virtually or in-person.
4. What was your A-HA moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader, tell us that story.
Don’t be afraid of failure, embrace it.
My A-HA moment of realization came to me years ago. I had recently been promoted into a managerial role, where I was the main interface into customers and also the program execution lead. We had a massive opportunity with a customer who was struggling with inventory issues. We wanted to tie our success on the program to our customer’s. If we succeeded in helping them meet their goals, we would be rewarded in-kind. However, if they were not successful in hitting their targets, our success was also greatly impacted.
At the time, it was a first-of-its-kind program structuring. We consulted many senior leaders within our company looking for advice, and the consensus was that this would be too risky, with too many factors out of our control. It became clear that if we wanted to do the program our way, we’d own the risk and have to jump in with both feet. It was one of the first times I was confronted with the decision of “break the mold” or “follow the playbook” — owning the outcome either way.
To make a long story short, I took on the risk of delivering a success-based program and it ended up being a great success – though not without great effort, getting a few bumps and bruises, and managing many twists-and-turns along the way.
Since then, I’ve never been afraid to take a risk and try something new – regardless of the outcome, you will learn a lot along the way. It’s advice I’d give to anyone at any point in their career, it’s never too early, or too late to take on something challenging.
5. What is the one thing that has you most fired up today?
Having the opportunity to tell the J-Squared story and contributing to the next growth chapter. I’m certainly biased, but I believe J-Squared has an amazing story to tell. We are proudly homegrown Canadian and for 35 years we have been serving the defence/military sector and other harsh-environment markets with high quality embedded computing products and related services across the end-to-end product lifecycle: design, build/fabrication, test, maintenance and support. Much of this growth has been organic though we have also made strategic investments to better serve our customer base. At the heart of it all sits an amazing team with deep technical knowledge.
If I’m able to get that message out across the industry and we are able to expand our reach to serve and support more of the Defence & Security industry, I’d consider that a great achievement.
6. What is the best advice you received?
Focus on finding the solution, not dwelling on the problem. Unforeseen challenges come up all the time – no matter how prepared you are – what’s important is rising up and overcoming them. When an issue arises, it is natural to want to raise it to others – your boss, your colleagues, the team, etc. I find if you first take the time to come up with at least three proposed paths forward and share those at the same time, it quickly gets the team solutioning the problem to get it resolved and not focused on the problem itself.
7. What is a habit that contributes to your success?
Listening to others before making a decision. In today’s world where problems are more complex than ever before, we must rely on our joint expertise to solve them. Collaboration is critical. It is important to consider multiple angles before taking action. By listening and processing the ideas and thoughts of others, I’m able to come up with solutions that I otherwise could not have alone.
8. What is your parting piece of advice?
It is going to take us all working together in lockstep to make major advances in this industry. The problems of today — harnessing AI, interoperability of joint assets across nations, the impact of autonomous assets, just to name a few — are too large and complex for any person or even one company to solve alone. It’s important we build and foster a strong ecosystem of companies within the industry and break down barriers that limit collaboration. This is essential to unlock innovation and accelerate progress towards our common goals.
9. What people or organizations do you believe best embody the innovation mindset? (does not have to relate to the defence & security industry, can be related to your everyday life)
I’m inspired by the current generation of STEM students graduating from universities.
J-Squared believes strongly in investing in those starting out in their career, evidenced by the many internship positions in our R&D divisions each year. During the recruiting process, I get the opportunity to see many resumes and talk with students. Every year, I’m reminded of how impressed I am with how many different ventures students are involved in while still in school. It’s great to see how driven they are to take on side projects, build gitlab repos of personal projects, test out or even build their own hardware, some even go as far as productized ideas and start their own businesses.
It’s important to see that our future workforce and business leaders are embracing innovation at a young age and what that means for our future.
Questions regarding the ORGANIZATION
1. How is your organization changing the game within your industry sector?
I believe J-Squared is in a unique position within Canada to bring innovative products to market to serve the needs of the Defence & Security industry. This belief is based on a few key factors baked into our company’s DNA.
We are financially independent. No dependency on outside funding affords us the autonomy and flexibility required to make strategic decisions swiftly to make investments in future technology.
Our team is aligned on shared values and a mission to showcase R&D and manufacturing excellence as a proud, 100% Canadian owned and operated company.
We have the right breadth and depth of capabilities to support the end-to-end product lifecycle – from ideation/design, fabrication/build, qualification and testing, to deployment and in-service support services. This is only possible due to our amazing cross-functional team of R&D, product, and operational experts.
2. What are some of the biggest impediments to innovation in your industry sector?
The disconnect between implementation cycles and the speed with which technology evolves. Defence programs are large and complex, requiring many years of planning and many more to deploy. It would not be uncommon for the technology initially designed into a program to be dated by the time it is deployed. It requires a lot of ingenuity to meet lifecycle support and futureproofing requirements.
3. How has innovation become engrained in your organization’s culture and how is it being optimized?
Like I said before, our team has a shared vision that drives our culture. That vision starts at the top and comes from a mindset of having drive and passion for what we do. Our founder, Jeff Gibson, started J-Squared 35 years ago and has that same passion today as he did then. He leads by example. He never shies away from a challenge or problem himself, no matter how big or small. This fosters a culture of taking ownership, accountability, and pride in what we do.
We operate nimbly. I’m proud that the financials of a given opportunity are not the sole factor when deciding whether we invest in a new product, service, or even division. We see financial success as an outcome of investing in innovation not vice-versa. J-Squared makes continued investment in technology and talent and has a willingness to take on new challenges without fear of failure. This lack of fear permits everyone on the team to take chances on new and out-of-the-box thinking.
Optimization is driven from our processes. We strive to iterate fast – design, prototype, test, learn from those tests, and re-iterate. This cycle means we are in a constant state of improvement and the more we commit to this, the better we get at it. Our team should never fear making a mistake – it’s human. Taking risks and trying new things is encouraged. Some will work, others won’t. What’s important is we learn from these experiences and that learning informs the path forward.
4. What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years?
It would be hard to ignore artificial intelligence as a technology that will have widespread impact on the industry. From my perspective, the key enabler for mass adoption will be the edge compute technologies empowering AI workloads. The ability to take the technologies we are seeing emerge today (such as LLMs and other generative AI solutions) and run them from edge devices such drones, body/helmet cameras, vehicles, etc. will be a game changer that drives what potential use cases will be deployable in the near future and beyond.
As for trends, interoperability is a key factor that will drive future requirements. With NATO nations increasing spend and investing in technologies of the future, it will be critical for these systems to have technical interoperability to enable what NATO’s Strategic Warfare Development calls “the ability to act together coherently, effectively, and efficiently to achieve Allied objectives.” Without seamless interoperability, it is much tougher to take advantage of the scale of joint assets.
Companies whose business models favour speed and agility will be best suited to thrive in this dynamically changing environment.