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Skymeter Corporation – a high-tech upstart that has perfected "financial-grade" GPS telematics – is being hailed as an innovator that has captured the attention of global giants such as IBM, Cisco and Siemens.

Hassan admits while North America may not be ready for road and congestion tolls, governments elsewhere are beating a path to his modest office at the MaRS business incubator at College St and University Ave.

While Skymeter is a relative flyweight (the company is estimated to be worth $10 million), it hopes to be the technology provider to large multinationals such as IBM and Siemens in the project tenders.

"This investment underscores the government's recognition that Ontario must continue to invest in its strong life sciences cluster. Now more than ever, innovative research and development is a key driver, reshaping the knowledge economy and creating prosperity for all Ontarians." Dr. John Evans, Chair, MaRS Discovery District

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.

We have an infrastructure of researchers, universities and independent research institutes such as the new Perimeter Institute in Waterloo and MaRS in Toronto that are dedicated to "pure" or basic research, and applied research that translates into world-class goods and services.

infrastructures that support entrepreneurial activity by providing access to capital

Canada, with its stable equity market and a sound economic policy framework, was able to withstand some of the global credit market issues and moved to first place in the Milken Institute’s 2008 Capital Access Index.

Fight for the Planet, made by Colin Carter, a 16-year-old student at Northern Secondary School on Mount Pleasant Rd., will premiere tonight at the MaRS Auditorium in downtown Toronto.