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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.

MobileMonday Toronto and MaRS are delighted to announce a partnership to develop and host a range of dynamic events for the city’s mobile industry professionals. MobileMonday at MaRS will offer thought leadership and critical industry perspectives – most recently from a senior manager at Research in Motion – while connecting top-tier professionals and boosting the profile of one of the fastest-growing sectors of communications technology.

“MaRS is a fantastic environment for sharing ideas and industry knowledge, two key building blocks of the MobileMonday community,” said Jim Brown and Alexander S. Bosika, co-founders of the MobileMonday Toronto chapter. “MaRS and its network of business advisors and capital providers are also of great benefit to many of our members who are developing business plans and seeking capital.”

For MaRS, the partnership is a natural fit with great potential to benefit the hundreds of start-up clients from across Ontario who are working hard to turn their innovative concepts into viable, thriving businesses, and come to MaRS for advice and connections to potential customers and investors. 

nd development of new ideas. It provides not only office and lab space but also free mentoring assistance to new businesses in science, technology and social innovation. While there are probably no chickens hatching at MaRS, it wouldn't be at all surprising to find a company working on, say, a vaccine for bird flu. Approximately 20 incubator companies are currently housed at MaRS, including Clera Inc. - which is developing treatments for schizophrenia and depression; AXS Biomedical Animations Studio - a company that creates 3D medical animation for biomedical research and other applications; and Kanata Chemical Technologies (KCT), which has had great success developing catalysts for the chemical industry (catalysts speed up chemical reactions without being changed or consumed in those reactions

All of the above definitions could apply to the wider innovation community connected with the MaRS Centre. Located in the heart of Toronto's Discovery District - a 2.5 sq. kilometre downtown research district, MaRS is a non-profit environment for the birt

KCT founder and president Kamal Abdur-Rashid came to Canada in 1997 with a degree from the University of the West Indies

Net Change is a week-long event, June 8-12, 2009, designed to explore how social technology can bolster social change. Presented by the Social Innovation Generation team at MaRS (SiG@MaRS), Net Change Week will tap into the potential that exists when new methods of communicating, organizing and mobilizing are brought to bear on chronic social issues.

Eli Malinski sounds off on Net Change: "Social technology is revolutionizing social change.

Net Change is the banner under which all sorts of partners are hosting events, discussions and workshops that align with the core mission of exploring the intersection of social change and new media.

Between June 8-12, 2009, MaRS held our first ever Net Change, a week dedicated to exploring this intersection between social technology and social change.

Fourteen different Net Change events, including an art show, experimented with ways of creating and sharing information and knowledge on this question. Bridging the “digital divide” between web professionals and people creating social change, participants were from all different sectors and leadership levels. T

Net Change also addressed critical concepts such as how to measure the impact of social technology, and what we really mean by social change, while including storytelling to hit theoretical concepts home.

Toronto, where a small firm is using 21st-century software to create maps with similar goals - the containment of disease - by showing infection patterns that can be understood at a glance.

Toronto, where a small firm is using 21st-century software to create maps with similar goals - the containment of disease - by showing infection patterns that can be understood at a glance.

INFONAUT INC

Three technology research centres in Ontario Monday said they have agreed to work together to help the province compete more effectively against countries like India and China.

Communitech is working with the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, an economic development corporation located in the nation's capital, and the MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based not-for-profit geared towards the commercialization of scientific and technological intellectual property.

The three organizations have agreed their partnership will function under the name the MaRS Network. MaRS is by far the youngest of the three organizations – Communitech is almost a decade old and OCRI is about 25 – but has become a business force since it opened last year.