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MaRS, a Toronto-based, not-for-profit incubation center, is leading a delegation of five cleantech ventures at this week’s Cleantech Forum XXIII in Boston. The companies – all clients of MaRS advisory services – will showcase their products for the cleantech CEOs, investors, scientists and policy makers attending the east coast forum. “While cleantech is a relatively new sector for MaRS advisory services, it is fast catching up with our other core strengths in information technologies and life sciences,” said Tom Rand, a cleantech entrepreneur, author and investor who leads MaRS’ cleantech practice. “MaRS is establishing itself as a major deal-flow engine in the cleantech sector, with an emphasis on early-stage companies.”

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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.

• Best Practices in Venture Creation (Room 1)Veronika Litinski, Practice Lead, Healthcare and Life Sciences, MaRSAn overview of what makes your business valuable to investors and how to develop a viable business strategy.

MaRS aggregates the discovery pipelines of its member institutions, which include three universities, 10 academic teaching hospitals, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

MaRS is another good example. Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, the MaRS facility is less than a mile from five major teaching hospitals, the Ontario legislature, and the University of Toronto. More than two dozen research institutes and Toronto’s financial district are also nearby.

Consequently, MaRS is a vertical incubator, with a wide variety of companies and stages of development. That mix helps companies better understand the conditions that foster growth. MaRS is home to more than 65 organizations, including The Hospital for Sick Children, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Merck Frosst Canada, the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Celtic House Venture Partners, AIM Therapeutics, and AstraZeneca Canada.

The funding will include $100 million to establish the Operating Line of Credit Guarantee and $350 million over three years to help drive venture capital investment in promising Canadian technology businesses.

The groundswell of geothermal interest among builders, developers and individual homeowners all over the GTA is mainly because it's what "green" venture capitalist Tom Rand calls "low hanging fruit" on the energy tree – easy to pluck and very cheap in the long run.

It has special appeal in large-scale operations, something Rand covers in a book he is working on. "I didn't think it was possible to go 100 per cent renewable but the studies support it.''

He claims that "if you drill 10 kilometres down to the really high temperatures, you can make enough energy to supply the whole U.S. with between three and 30,000 times more energy than it needs."