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MobileMonday is a global, open community that brings together decision makers, developers, researchers, and venture capital through monthly events, international events and chapter social networks. Since 2006, MobileMonday Toronto has worked very hard to build a successful chapter and community by leveraging the global brand and its recent partnership with MaRS to further enhance mobile thought leadership locally and across Canada. The Brand Leadership Award was presented to Jari Tammisto in the annual World Brand Congress in Mumbai, India. The award is the most important personal recognition granted in the congress, the congress organizers state. Dec 7, 2009

Consider the two faces of the global innovation movement. Company A, having grown through acquisition, produces multiple brands for multiple markets and operates a worldwide network of research and product development centers. Each of its R&D sites was initially responsible for its own brands and local market, but with globalization these distinctions have lost their importance. Company B, on the other hand, was built largely through internal growth and has two global brands. It operates one primary R&D center supported by a handful of special-purpose sites around the world. This comparatively sparse network has helped Company B win wide admiration for the efficiency of its engineering. Because expanding the number of nodes in a network exponentially increases its complexity, it is not surprising that Company A's R&D structure is more expensive to operate. Company A has considered closing some sites, but has resisted doing so because it fears losing capabilities and insights, and roiling local markets. Meanwhile, incremental budget cuts have chipped away at engineer and supplier morale. Having built its network to maximize the value associated with market access, it is now forced to manage the network for cost. Most global innovation networks look like Company A's - and suffer the same problems. Company B's R&D structure is clearly more productive, but it is not necessarily ideal either. Its network might be too compact, limiting access to knowledge that could maximize performance. Thus, to identify principles and practices for creating a truly well-designed innovation network, Booz Allen Hamilton and INSEAD, the international business school, surveyed R&D leaders in 186 companies from 17 industry sectors in 19 nations in 2005. The survey results, and our own experience, suggest one central truth: Organizations benefit when they configure their innovation networks for cost and manage them for value.

An interesting Toronto-based social-purpose business. PUBLIC is a for-profit, social-purpose business focused exclusively on advancing the public good. We are an innovation company, generating positive social impact through the creation of scalable programs, products and campaigns that: * raise money for charitable purposes * increase civic and community engagement * advance social causes and issues * create new social norms We bring an integrated, impact- driven approach to mobilizing and advancing the public good by aligning brand awareness, policy influence and fundraising. For us, "advancing the public good" is about motivating people (and organizations) to behave in ways that benefit society while recognizing and appealing to their self-interest.

Nic Sulsky is the co-founder of InGamer, the 3-screen social gaming platform turns a passive sports-watching audience into an active one. InGamer provides sports, live event broadcasters, and brands a platform that greatly diminishes audience fragmentation, eyeballs being distracted and early disengagement. It stimulates a stickiness that will allow partners to more effectively monetize that audience wherever & however they are engaged. It's the logical next step in live sport and live event production licensing, broadcasting, and marketing.

Axle Davids, CEO of MaRS client and tenant, Distility, speaks on The BusinessCast, an iTunes podcast for entrepreneurs.

Advertisers are criticized as people who look for the creative and edgy, not the obvious. They will not be happy.Marketing people are criticized for getting hopelessly entangled in corporate egos and complicated projects. They will not be happy.Research people are criticized for generating more confusion than clarity. They will not be happy. Some big companies are criticized for their ill-fated marketing programs or lack of proper strategy. They will not be happy.Wall Street is criticized for putting too much emphasis on growth that is unnecessary and can be destructive to a brand. They will just ignore this criticism and continue trying to make as much money as they can. But this is a book not written to make people happy but to explain to marketers what their real problem is. Only then will they begin to look for the obvious solutions that will separate their products from their competitors -- in a way that is equally obvious to customers. All this comes with no jargon, no numbers, no complexity, and a great deal of common sense.

Brett Virmalo of Foward Thinking writes a great must-read about what the "new marketing" really is: your customers and your employees and really great products. Stop marketing. Start being genuinely good. It's the "new" secret sauce.

AdAge - In a not-atypical scenario, a publisher may only receive $1 of a $5 cost-per-thousand media buy once all the middlemen have taken their tithes. Where does the rest go? According to an estimate from Tolman Geffs, co-president of investment bank Jordan Edmiston, it gets divided like this: The agency ($.75), ad network ($2), data provider ($0.75), ad exchange ($0.25) and the ad server ($0.25).

Venture Accelerator Partners recap and summarize the Entrepreneurship 101 lecture on Marketing with guest lecturer, Mark Evans.

"A new convergence of startups and Internet companies has come together to provide other early-stage companies with the tools required to get up and running quickly, and most importantly, cheaply. It's sort of like a Humble Indie Bundle, except instead of gaming, GetStartupTools.com offers software from Wave, Box, MailChimp, Zendesk, Uberflip and General Assembly that most brand new internet companies would need or at least appreciate."

Rachel Mendleson states "A growing number of Canadian companies are now becoming certified as "B Corps," a new designation that seeks to distinguish firms that are committed to improving more than their bottom line." Allyson Hewitt, director of social entrepreneurship, MaRS Discovery District states that "MaRS is at the forefront of the Canadian B Corp movement."

Toronto-based PushLife (MaRS client) recently launched a beta version of their brand new music-centric social network: Listen.in

John Evans spearheads the MaRS project which will help to accelerate commercialization for scientific research. The official launch of the MaRS plan will happen on May 12, 2003.

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