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Cathy Bogaart

Stanford Social Innovation Review : Articles : Ten Nonprofit Funding Models (March 16, ... - 0 views

  • nonprofit leaders are much more sophisticated about creating programs than they are about funding their organizations, and philanthropists often struggle to understand the impact (and limitations) of their donations
  • articulate quickly and clearly how they will succeed in the marketplace
  • the different types of funding that fuel nonprofits have never been clearly defined.3 More than a poverty of language, this represents—and results in—a poverty of understanding and clear thinking.
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  • 10 nonprofit models that are commonly used by the largest nonprofits in the United States.
  • Our intent is not to prescribe a single approach for a given nonprofit to pursue. Instead, we hope to help nonprofit leaders articulate more clearly the models that they believe could support the growth of their organizations, and use that insight to examine the potential and constraints associated with those models.
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    10 nonprofit models that are commonly used by the largest nonprofits in the United States. (See "Funding Models" on page 37.) Doesn't prescribe a single approach for a given nonprofit to pursue. Instead, helps nonprofit leaders articulate more clearly the models that they believe could support the growth of their organizations, and use that insight to examine the potential and constraints associated with those models.
Assunta Krehl

Pharmafocus.com - 0 views

  • Canada has always had to fight hard to attract talent and investment
  • MaRS Vital to Toronto's life sciences vision is MaRS (derived from Medical and Related Sciences) a non-profit organisation and business centre located in the heart of the city. Its core function is as a biotech incubator and business park, known as MaRS Discovery District. The venture was first established in 2000 to help foster and accelerate the growth of successful Canadian businesses and, after some uncertain times, it is now gathering momentum. A separate technology transfer office, MaRS Innovation, has also been established that, it is hoped, can be a world beater in its own right (see Turning good ideas into world beaters below). The location of the MaRS building in central Toronto is important, as it is just a stone's throw away from an existing cluster of universities and academic hospitals. MaRS has many links with other research-based organisations, including collaborations with three local universities, 10 academic teaching hospitals and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. MaRS occupies the Old Toronto general hospital, where insulin was first discovered by Best and Banting in 1921 and then developed for use in human trials. The 21st Century organisation can build on this heritage in patient-focused discovery and development. Formerly the head of venture capital firm Primaxis, Ilse Treurnicht is chief executive of MaRS Discovery District. She acknowledges the crisis in venture capital funding, and says Canada's sector has always had less access funds through this route than other countries. This is one of the drivers behind the search for a new approach. Treurnicht says the old models of building biotech and life sciences businesses have to be discarded, as they have failed to build companies with critical mass. She says MaRS' new 'Convergence Innovation' strategy of bringing science, capital and business together will pay off.
  • "We call our strategy 'Convergence Innovation' and what we are trying to do is move away from the old linear model of academics struggling in their spare time to build companies or entrepreneurs doing this in a very incremental way."It takes time and it has many risk points along the way. So using this Convergence centre model to create a much more dynamic organisation which can help accelerate good ideas towards the commercialisation." But she says Canada's geography and demographics are always going to be a challenge. "This is a very large country with a small population. If you think in terms of clusters and hub regions, Canada's business hubs are separated geographically, and there is not much in between in terms of people."That means we can't try to be a little United States, because we just won't show up on the radar. We have to take a different approach. We have to think about collaboration as our potential competitive advantage - that means using networks and associations to solve problems and build businesses."So as new opportunities emerge, we can take them to market faster and hopefully with a higher success rate." The centre currently accommodates numerous start up companies, as well as those providing legal and financial services to them. AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline also have offices on site. In all, MaRS provides mentoring for over 200 different companies across Ontario, and runs courses on entrepreneurship and preparing products for market.
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  • Transition Therapeutics is one of the companies based at MaRS, and is an example of a biopharmaceutical company that is taking a new approach to the science and business of drug development.
  • Now Toronto's MaRS Innovation (MI) has been launched to try to guide and accelerate these promising ideas out of the wilderness and onto the market. MI is a not-for-profit technology transfer company that will channel all the best ideas to come out of Toronto's renowned academic centres. In the Toronto and Ontario area there were between 14-16 different technology transfer offices in the different institutions, and MaRS Innovation resolved to bring these interests together into a single entity after industry partners told them it was an inefficient way to do business. Bringing together the different institutions under one umbrella organisation has been an arduous task for MaRS, but the reward could be considerable for all parties. MI now oversees probably the largest intellectual property pipeline of its kind, representing about $1 billion in annual research spending. This means MI will be a unified route for all of Toronto's academics and their institutions when they want to develop and commercialise a bright idea. Most importantly, investors from industry who are looking to collaborate will now be able to deal with just organisation and one IP process. MI will cover patentable ideas across a broad range of areas, and not just life sciences - the discovery pipeline in physical sciences, information and communication technology, and green technology ('cleantech') will all be funnelled through MI. MI now represents three universities, 10 academic teaching hospitals and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. MaRS Innovation, with support from MaRS and BioDiscovery Toronto, will advance commercialisation through industry partnerships, licensing and company creation.
  • ts chief executive is Dr Rafi Hofstein. Hofstein has been headhunted from Israel where he was chief executive of Hadasit, the technology transfer company of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem and chair of the publicly-traded company Hadasit BioHolding. He brings this considerable experience in technology transfer to what he thinks is a groundbreaking enterprise."MaRS Innovation is a unique global initiative, and I must commend the institutional leaders in Toronto for pulling this innovation powerhouse together to strengthen commercialisation output." He adds: "I believe this is going to modernise the whole notion of tech transfer." He says the scale and diversity of MaRS Innovation's remit puts it into a league of its own. Other research clusters elsewhere in the world have attempted similar projects before, but have been thwarted by the difficulty in bringing parties together. MaRS Innovation will also help launch and grow new spin-off companies and incubate them for 2-3 years to ensure a strong commercial footing. Hofstein says MI will also fund proof of concept trials which will persuade major pharma companies to invest in their development.
  • MI has just announced its first two commercialisation deals with academic partners in the city. The first is with the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital to develop stem cell from umbilical cords to treat cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neurological disorders. "With the Toronto area identified as a world-leading cluster in stem cell research, we are extremely excited to have identified this technology as our first commercialisation opportunity," said Dr Hofstein.
  • "Our partnership with MaRS Innovation on developing methods for using stem cells for diseases such as diabetes will allow us to work towards advancing care for these critical conditions."
  • The second collaboration is between MI and The University of Toronto (U of T) and involves a novel sustained release formulation of nitric oxide (NO) for applications in wound healing, including diabetic ulcers. "There are 300 million diabetics worldwide, of which some 15% develop troublesome foot ulcers. This wound healing technology is extremely exciting, making it an early commercialisation opportunity that MaRS Innovation has identified as being a potential win for some 45 million diabetics globally," said Dr Hofstein.
  • "This is one of many new commercialisation ventures that will be initiated by MaRS Innovation, our partner in commercialisation of research with 13 other academic institutions across the Greater Toronto Area," said Paul Young, U of T's vice-president, Research. "We at U of T are delighted that this innovation from Dr Lee will be taken to the marketplace to the benefit of society and the economy of Ontario and Canada." By aggregating the leading edge science of its institutional members and being a one-stop commercialisation centre for industry, entrepreneurs and investors, MI could really help put Toronto and Canada on the map."MaRS Innovation is deeply committed to facilitating strategic research collaborations with industry partners, strengthening the innovation capacity of Canadian industry through adoption of new technologies, and launching a new generation of robust, high-growth Canadian companies that will become global market leaders," added Dr Hofstein. "We look forward to working closely with all of our institutional members and to continue to jointly announce exciting commercial opportunities."
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    Canada has always had to fight hard to attract talent and investment. As stated in Pharmafocus.com, "MaRS Discovery District helps to foster and accelerate the growth of successful Canadian businesses." MaRS Innovation has also been launched to accelerate ideas onto the market.
Assunta Krehl

Pivot or persevere? When it's right to change, or stay, the course - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

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    Ethical Ocean is a MaRS Client who specializes in selling socially responsible products only made a strategic pivot in their model. Nathan Monk, a senior associate with MaRS Discovery District in Toronto and an adviser in the Web and mobile technology startup community, says it's important to constantly review and test business models or hypotheses.
Sarah Hickman

Winning at Collaboration Commerce: The Next Competitive Advantage: Amazon.ca:... - 0 views

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    CEO's top concern globally is innovation and growth. "Real time Collaboration Enterprise" is the new business innovation model for market domination. Billions of dollars will be spent in this field, and by 2007 the majority of Global 1000 enterprises will be deploying real-time collaboration business processes to be a core of their business portfolios. Based on their extensive experience with cutting-edge technology, the authors discuss how to successfully implement collaboration commerce solutions, reporting lessons learned from leading companies such as P&G, Astra Zeneca, SAP, and Microsoft.
Sarah Hickman

Amazon.com: The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (978157... - 0 views

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    From Publishers Weekly\nChristensen (The Innovator's Dilemma) analyzes the strategies that allow corporations to successfully grow new businesses and outpace the other players in the marketplace. Christensen's earlier book examined how focusing on profits can destroy even well-run corporations, while this book focuses on companies expanding by being "disruptors" who are able to outpace their entrenched competition. The authors (Christensen is a professor at Harvard Business School and Raynor, a director at Deloitte Research) examine the nine business decisions integral to growth, including product development, organizational structure, financing and key customer base. They cite such companies as IBM, AT&T, Sony, Microsoft and others to illustrate their points. Generally, the writing is clear and specific. For example, in discussing whether a company has the resources necessary for growth, the authors say, "In order to be confident that managers have developed the skills required to succeed at a new assignment, one should examine the sorts of problems they have wrestled with in the past. It is not as important that managers have succeeded with the problem as it is for them to have wrestled with it and developed the skills and intuition for how to meet the challenge successfully the next time around"; they then provide a real-life example of a software company. Similar important strategies give readers insights that they can use in their own workplaces. People looking for quick fixes may find the charts, diagrams and extensive footnotes daunting, but readers familiar with more technical business management tomes will find this one both stimulating and beneficial.
Cathy Bogaart

A Business Model For TV Everywhere - 0 views

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    Great article on business models for digital media by Adam Cahan on paidContent (a site that discusses the value/econom of content).
Sarah Hickman

Amazon.com: Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Find and Execute Your Company's Next Big Grow... - 0 views

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    From Booklist: Joachimsthaler offers another book that promotes use of reinvented basic marketing principles to assist highly innovative companies. The author describes his DIG model (Demand-First Innovation & Growth), which consists of three interlinked parts: explore the demand for their products and services through an in-depth understanding of how people behave and live their lives and how they consume; apply an innovative routine of structured thinking to identify opportunities that customers cannot articulate; and formulate a strategy for effectively pursuing new opportunities. We learn that although most companies conduct some type of market research, they may fail to look for real opportunities and quantify them or fail to develop viable action plans that lead to results. This model illustrates how to become an unbiased observer of people's consumption and usage behaviors and offers a new approach to identifying and executing a company's growth strategy. Joachimsthaler, a consultant, reports that "successful opportunities for innovation and growth are right here, in front of us, and we often can't see them or don't act on them." Mary Whaley Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Miri Katz

How The Private Sector Can Drive Social Innovation - CIO Central - CIO Network - Forbes - 0 views

  • How The Private Sector Can Drive Social Innovation
  • Out of the 100 largest economies in the world, about half are multinational corporations. Given their impact on global communities, it is becoming increasingly essential that these large corporations execute responsibility to society, rather than rely on governments and non-profits to address difficult social issues alone.
  • oday, the world’s largest companies are in a unique position to play a much greater role in driving social change than ever before.
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  • Aside from pure monetary donations, however, is a new model that is transforming corporate philanthropy.
  • Increasingly, corporations are turning to a shared value model, in which companies work in alignment with society rather than against it, producing mutual benefits to both the community and the corporation
  • It evolves the traditional model of financial and material goods donations, to one in which corporations leverage a range of corporate assets including employee skills, business acumen and partner networks, to drive social change.
  • Here’s the shift: Instead of viewing it as our responsibility to drive business and social value, view it also a valuable opportunity to rethink existing practices.
  • The business case for social innovation
  • there are a variety of benefits for an organization, from brand building, to staff retention, and even improved client stickiness. Shareholders and the investment community are also increasingly considering corporate responsibility when making investment decisions.
  • collaborations can drive innovation through necessity. Non-profits work in extreme environments, faced with limited infrastructure, connectivity and staff. Operating in these situations exposes corporate staff to new sets of customer challenges, which can often deliver innovations in product design or services into the business.
  • by working with a non-profit organization, a corporation can demonstrate its expertise to a new audience, expanding its business network.
  • Increasingly, investors weigh environmental, social and governance  data when making investment decisions. While such data has been a benchmark for European-based companies for some time, we are now seeing a more global adoption and interest in this, which should be another forcing function for more corporations to act as good corporate citizens.
  • Applying social innovation in practic
  • A good starting point is to assess the company’s available skills, expertise, partnerships against the touch-points the company currently has within a given community. From there, establish specific goals to achieve and a strategic plan to meet those goals.
  • Companies that have an expertise in technology, for example, can collaborate with non-profits or social entrepreneurs to provide the infrastructure backbone that turn their ideas into reality. With the social enterprise mPedigree Network, HP leveraged its technology expertise in cloud-based services to design and build an anti-drug counterfeiting service in Africa. Counterfeit medicine is a significant problem in developing countries, causing more than 700,000 deaths each year. The new service helps save lives by enabling patients to validate the integrity of their medicine by sending a free text message.
  • Gabi Zedlmayer is Vice President of Hewlett-Packard’s Office of Global Social Innovation.
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    Out of the 100 largest economies in the world, about half are multinational corporations. Given their impact on global communities, it is increasingly essential that these large corporations execute responsibility to society, rather than rely on governments and non-profits to address difficult social issues alone
Cathy Bogaart

Why a social mission can be good for business - The Globe and Mail - 1 views

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    Allyson Hewitt, the lead of our social innovation practice at MaRS, talks live at the G&M about why businesses should consider having a social mission.
Tim T

Wanted: A New Biz Model for Electric Power - BusinessWeek - 0 views

  • a radical departure from the traditional utility business model: making more money by selling more power
  • a smart grid that allows any entrepreneur to be a power generator or a vendor of energy-efficient systems, threaten utilities' monopolies
  • You are not making a lot of money anymore building big power plants," says Wellinghoff. "You have to figure out what business you are in
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  • Here's how a utility can make more by selling less. Instead of spending $2 billion on a new 1,000-megawatt power plant, say, the utility decides to spend $2 billion or less insulating homes, paying customers to install more efficient equipment, and making the grid smarter. Taking those steps would slash power consumption by more than 1,000 Mw, eliminating the need to build the power plant and cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the same time
  • $2 billion investment
  • Even though the price of electricity will be higher, customers who comply will be using much less power (and those who don't will effectively subsidize those who do)
  • The new model isn't a sure thing
Sarah Hickman

Social Entrepreneurship Consortium, Inc. - 0 views

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    This Toronto based incorporation brings entrepreneurs, public and private companies, investors, non-profit organizations, academia, professionals, and government to promote the social value of innovation. SEC has an Advisory Board, a large global networking of business partners, a news feed, and a personal business model, to be found at http://www.seconsortium.com. Social individuals with business and management skills are welcomed to join the team.
Tim T

TC50: Yext Offers Local Businesses A Smart Inbox For Phone Calls - 0 views

  • Local businesses can use the Yext Calls software to process incoming phone calls and organize them based on semantic analysis of what was said during the conversation, providing them with an easy way of searching or browsing through them at any point
  • Based on keywords that occurred in the call, the software can detect that e.g. price estimates were requested for a car repair or which part of what type of vehicle the caller was having problems with exactly
  • The program can even automatically detect if any appointments
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  • Expert panel Q&A
  • how do you convince business owners of your value proposition?
  • it’s an end-to-end solution for them to advertise smarter on the Web
  • is there adverse selection? are the merchants who are most likely to want phone calls least likely to get the web to get them?
  • We found most merchants overall prefer to receive phone calls
  • What’s the biggest of the 12 categories you support now?
  • Health and fitness
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    Local small businesses want phone calls, not click-throughs?
Sarah Hickman

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change t... - 0 views

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    The authors of this book present true and unique (mainstream) business models that have changed the world. In three parts, they present "Building Innovative Enterprises," "Creating the Markets of the Future," and "Leading Sustainable and Scalable Change." Case studies from for-profit and nonprofit social organizations are also discussed, including Whole Foods, One Laptop Per Child, Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8.
Cathy Bogaart

Canada needs new paradigm for research and innovation - TheStar.com | Opinion - 0 views

  • commercialize our vast services potential
  • in university social sciences, humanities, art and design
  • Strengthen our areas of traditional comparative advantage: agriculture, forestry, mining, mineral processing, energy production
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  • Canada excels at producing a wide range of instrumentation – everything from satellite components to medical devices
  • "business engagement strategies" and not simply narrow "commercialization strategies."
  • Canada is an international software powerhouse, producing everything from gaming to financial modelling software.
  • applying the flow-through share model common in the energy sector to research-based companies
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    Ron Freeman, CEO of Research at InfoSource Inc, says that our current funding model isn't working to commercialize our science. That new policy measures are needed to improve Canada's long-term competitive position.
Sarah Hickman

Open Innovation: Amazon.ca: Henry W Chesbrough: Books - 0 views

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    In today's information-rich environment, companies can no longer afford to rely entirely on their own ideas to advance their business, nor can they restrict their innovations to a single path to market. As a result, says Harvard Business School professor Henry W. Chesbrough, the traditional model for innovation--which has been largely internally focused, closed off from outside ideas and technologies--is becoming obsolete. Emerging in its place is a new paradigm, open innovation, which strategically leverages internal and external sources of ideas and takes them to market through multiple paths. Arguing that companies in all industries must transform the way they commercialize knowledge, Chesbrough convincingly shows how open innovation can unlock the latent economic value in a company''s ideas and technologies.
Assunta Krehl

Teens tackle startup boot camp - Yonge Street Media - August 8, 2012 - 0 views

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    MaRS's launched a Future Leaders Series this summer which offered 20 students between the ages of 13 and 15 the chance to experience the life of a "MaRS-ian entrepreneur."  The participants were provided an opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges that their business model was feasible and to demonstrate how they planned to use the $1,000 of prize money up for grabs.
Assunta Krehl

Cross Media Toronto Conference Launches With Major Media Industry Support - Metalloprok... - 1 views

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    Cross Media NYC will take place July 21, 2010 and is partnering with the Mars Centre and the Canadian Film Centre's (CFC) Media Lab. This event will feature media industry executives discussing perspectives on how transmedia content will be produced, distributed and consumed in a cross media environment, specifically looking at ways to incorporate cross media into business models.
Assunta Krehl

World-transforming partnerships - The Star - 0 views

  • Ross Wallace, director of strategic partnerships at the MarS Centre, which brings together scientists, entrepreneurs and investors, has seen a lot of P3s at their best.
  • Wallace was as baffled as everybody else. But he believed a business model could be created that would connect medical discoveries coming out of universities and government labs with the money available from private foundations.A year ago, he won one of six fellowships offered by the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation to young people eager to tackle global problems. His research led in an unexpected – and welcome – direction. It turned out that he didn't have to invent a new business model. One already existed."I found some really exciting collaboration going on," he said. "A new breed of partnerships had emerged that completely transformed the development and delivery of pharmaceuticals for neglected diseases."
  • So Wallace redefined his task. He would look for ways to bolster these fledgling P3s.They have a very short history. The first grew out of a program launched by the World Bank in 1999 to pull together money and talent for research on tropical diseases. But it remained buried within the global bureaucracy.
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  • These innovative P3s have produced a "paradigm shift" in the behaviour of pharmaceutical executives, Wallace says. Companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis and Novartis have instituted a no-profit, no-loss formula for work on neglected diseases.
  • The laggards are governments, including Canada's. Not only do they offer little financial backing to these pioneering P3s, they don't seem to want to get involved. "I kept looking for CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency) but I didn't see as much as I was hoping to," Wallace says.His fellowship is now over, but Wallace remains a man on a mission.He'll tell anyone who will listen that public-private partnerships can change the world. They've already begun.
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    Public-private partnerships can change the world.
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    Public-private partnerships can change the world. Nov 7, 2007
Assunta Krehl

Focus on Customers Even When Seeking VC Dollars - To Revenue - 0 views

  • Charles Plant of MaRS Discovery District, the innovation hub in Toronto. Charles communicates a rather negative view of venture capital, but it has the merit of presenting some of the important things to consider before seeking VC money.
  • I especially like the call to focus on customers first. This is not always possible, but designing for a defined market certainly is, and anyone involved with tech commercialization will tell you it’s often the exception rather than the rule.
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    Blog mentions of a presentation where Charles Plant spoke about Venure Capital and how you need to have a compelling business case to maximize and obtain favourable conditions from VCs. March 3, 2009
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    Blog mentions of a presentation where Charles Plant spoke about Venure Capital and how you need to have a compelling business case to maximize and obtain favourable conditions from VCs.
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