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What is this creative economy? It is an economic system that relies most on ideas to serve as its major capital, instead of services or physical capital. Take Google for example. In an economy based on ideas, the potentialfor breakaway successes like Google is far greater.

According to Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure,Community and Everyday Life, members of the creative class are very different from those who are employed in the manufacturing, service or agriculture industries. They contribute to our economy primarily by producing the new forms and ideas exploited by our various industries and decision-makers.   What Florida terms the “super creative core” of this new class includes “scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designersand architects, as well as the ‘thought leadership’ of modern society: non-fiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts and other opinion-makers.”

What sets a creative city apart from a non-creative city? Florida proposes that it is the “three Ts of economic development”: technology, talent and tolerance.

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.

How do we create the climate for innovation that will lead to new industries and jobs based on new goods and services we can sell the rest of the world?

We are not just calling for more creative class jobs, but for increasing the creativity content of all jobs - service as well as manufacturing and agriculture too

3Ts of economic development. Technology is the first T

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.

The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) is pleased to announce today's appointment of Gordon M. Nixon, president and chief executive officer of RBC, as Chair, and Zabeen Hirji, chief human resources officer of RBC, as Co-Chair of TRIEC.

As top executives at one of the largest financial institutions in North America, Gord Nixon and Zabeen Hirji are key ambassadors to articulate how Canadian companies can benefit from the international experience and networks, language skills and cultural knowledge that skilled immigrants bring with them to Canada."

Nixon has for years been a champion for promoting diversity in Canadian communities and of leveraging skilled immigrant talent as a driver of Canadian innovation and prosperity. Nixon is chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and chairman of MaRS Discovery District. In 2007, Nixon was invested into the Order of Ontario and was named Canada's Outstanding CEO of the Year.

MaRS Discovery District is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael H. McCain, President and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., to its Board of Directors.

Mr. McCain is looking forward to joining the MaRS Board of Directors as wel

Mr. McCain

the Chief of Research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, collaboration is the key to the future.

That's why Dr. Janet Rossant is so enthusiastic about the work being done in the MaRS Discovery District - a unique zone in the city where innovations in science and technology are commercialized through partnerships between researchers and private enterprise.

"The MaRS Centre and biomedical community have seen tremendous growth over the past few years," says Dr. Janet Rossant. "And it continues to grow." "This growth is attracting the world's best scientists to come work here, which is very exciting."