Lowe's Canada is Proud to Partner with C2 Montreal to Spark Innovation

Boucherville (Québec), May 11, 2017 - Lowe's Canada is proud to rank amongst the major sponsors of this 6th edition of C2 Montréal, a unique event reuniting 5,000 decision makers across continents and industries in a collaborative environment specifically designed to provoke collisions and spark new ideas. Lowe's Canada's active participation in the program of C2 Montréal includes a speakership (How Moonshots Build Ecosystems – and Vice Versa) featuring Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe's Innovation Labs, a Masterclass (Mobilizing the Next Moonshot Through Story) and a Workshop (Hacking Success Using Applied Neuroscience). These events will take place at the Arsenal art gallery in Montréal on May 24 and 25, 2017.

"The Canadian market represents a unique playground for the Lowe's Innovation Labs to test, measure and learn given Lowe's Canada's diverse portfolio of brands and store formats," commented Sylvain Prud'homme, president and CEO of Lowe's Canada. "Our company is driven by innovation at every level which is why we felt compelled to take part in C2 Montréal to share our learnings in the retail industry and learn from others."

Just last year, Lowe's was recognized by the White House as a "Champion of Change for Making", and while Holorooms, self-reliant robots and space-based 3D printing may not be what one normally associates with a home improvement store, they are becoming synonymous with the retail giant's commercial aspirations. Kyle Nel leads a team responsible for driving the company's innovation vision, strategy and growth, and his longstanding fascination with human behaviour has led him to create a methodology that's propelling the company into the future. Under his leadership, Lowe's Innovation Labs has introduced projects including the Lowe's Holoroom augmented and virtual reality design experience, the LoweBot autonomous retail service robot, and 3D scanning and printing services at retail. Kyle also finds and cultivates uncommon partnerships through initiatives such as their Collider startup incubator and accelerator in Bangalore, India, or their collaboration with Made in Space, which sent the first commercial 3D printer to the International Space Station.

"At Lowe's Innovation Labs, we've found success driving meaningful change by leveraging principles from behavioral science and neuroscience. We're eager to bring our approach to new audiences that can apply it to have impact in their own realm and C2 offers us a great opportunity to do so," added Kyle Nel.

Dr. Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, one of the leading scholars and practitioners in applied neuroscience, and the founder and CEO of Neurons, Inc., will collaborate with Lowe's to host the Masterclass and Workshop. Neurons is a consultancy that applies neuroscience tools and insights to address business challenges; it is a spin-off from the Copenhagen Business School and the Copenhagen University Hospital, and the result of an incubation process with Lowe's.

Agenda of specific events featuring Lowe's Canada during C2 Montréal at Arsenal art gallery in Montréal, Canada

More About Lowe's Innovation Labs

Lowe's Innovation Labs (LIL) uses story as a strategic tool to map out the future, then builds technology to bring those stories to life in the real world. By leveraging stores as living labs, LIL rapidly tests the prototypes they build, continually learning while technology evolves. Holoroom, a VR home improvement design and visualization tool, was the first proof-of-concept LIL developed, available in Canada in 2014. Several years of testing customer response to this technology uncovered the power of AR/VR as a tool for teaching and learning, resulting in the creation of Holoroom How To introduced in Canada in March of 2017.

Other recent LIL projects include LoweBot, a retail service robot that walks the aisles of Lowe's stores to help customers find what they're looking for and provides employees with real-time inventory monitoring, and a partnership with Made in Space to launch the first commercial 3D printer to space. For more information, visit Lowesinnovationlabs.com.

About Lowe's Canada

Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW) is a FORTUNE® 50 home improvement company serving more than 17 million customers a week in the United States, Canada and Mexico. With fiscal year 2016 sales of $65.0 billion, Lowe’s and its related businesses operate or service 2,365 home improvement and hardware stores and employ over 290,000 people. Based in Boucherville, Quebec, Lowe's Canadian business, together with its wholly owned subsidiary, RONA inc., operate or service over 600 corporate and independent affiliate dealer stores in a number of complementary formats under different banners. These include Lowe's, RONA, Réno-Dépôt, Marcil, Dick's Lumber and Ace. In Canada, the companies have more than 25,000 employees, in addition to nearly 5,000 employees in the stores of RONA's independent affiliate dealers. For more information, visit Lowes.ca.

About C2 Montréal

C2 brings together commerce and creativity to explore trends, opportunities, disruptions and major shifts on the horizon. Each year, in a collaborative environment specifically designed to provoke collisions and spark new ideas, C2 Montréal inspires 5,000 executives across continents and industries to challenge their biases, shift their perspective and explore completely new ways of doing business. Imagined by Sid Lee in collaboration with founding partner Cirque du Soleil, these three days of talks, workshops, extreme brainstorming sessions, meet ups, performances and festivities have been described as "challenging conventions" by The Economist, and "a business conference unlike any other" by Harvard Business Review.