Financial District : Innovation + Job News

The power of social media has made it ever easier for students to connect with one another (Facebook, remember, was launched as a Harvard University social tool). The internet is a powerful driver of social interaction. But when it comes to serving students' academic needs, according to Ryan McDougall, the range of services and how they interact has been pretty poor.

McDougall is the Communications Director of uBuddy.org, a brand-new academic-oriented social networking site created by and for University of Toronto students. After launching in mid-February for beta testing, McDougall says the site has already attracted 1,200 users. "It is designed to be an efficient and powerful tool for--among other things--note sharing, meeting classmates and starting course discussions," McDougall says.

The site was the brainchild of U of T grad Charles Qu, who recognized a hole in the market when he himself was a university student, and developed the platform and startup company with help from MaRS.

McDougall says that during the pilot phase, the service is available exclusively to U of T students. But he says there are plans for expansion to other universities in the fall of this year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ryan McDougall, Communications Director, uBuddy.org

When the Ritz-Carlton empire opened its first Toronto hotel and condominium a few weeks ago, it didn't just become the latest addition to the city's growing luxury hotel/condominium hybrid scene.

The $500 million, 53-storey tower in the financial district also became a significant employer in Toronto. In addition to the hundreds of construction jobs created in the four-plus years the building was being erected, human resources director Danielle Saint-Louis says the enterprise also created 450 new jobs for hotel employees, ranging from service staff to management. 350 of those jobs have already been filled, and recruitment is ongoing. Saint-Louis notes that the jobs were in high demand, as almost 16,000 applicants have submitted their resumes for positions so far. Saint-Louis says that the number of applicants and the company's fine-tuned recruitment process has resulted in an elite brigade of startup employees. "Even the trainer was amazed by the calibre of our ladies and gentlemen."

In addition to its direct hiring, the hotel also made a point of supporting the local arts and culture scene with the purchase of 450 pieces of original art by "up-and-coming" Canadian artists, paintings and sculptures that Saint-Louis says are now "all over the hotel." "It's really quite amazing," she says. "It's not what you see in most hotels, which have the same old reproductions everywhere. It's quite unique and beautiful. But then it's the Ritz-Carlton, so you would expect something unique." She notes that each piece of art contains a plaque promoting the Canadian artist who created it.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Danielle Saint-Louis, Director of Human Resources, Ritz-Carlton Toronto

When Ontario Minister of Innovation Glen Murray announced a new data initiative at MaRS last month, he was long on hype with the announcement (he said he expected it to be "one of the most important things I'll ever be involved in in my life") and short on details (though he said the initiative would be fully-funded, he also explained it would be "rolled out" over the next several months).

But he did name check a specific inspiration: Toronto's 1DegreeBio, which has already launched a world-leading data sharing initiative for the biological sciences sector. The company was founded in July 2009 and launched online in June 2010 as the world's first online independent resource listing all academic and commercially available antibodies.

"I used to work in a large research lab in Toronto," says founder Alex Hodgson, "and what I noticed is that researchers were buying multiple versions of antibdies because they were never sure which ones were crap. There was no central resource, no quality control�you can't do great research with crap antibodies."

After finishing her MBA, she created 1DegreeBio with an open source spirit and social media techniques inspired by online retailers such as TripAdvisor and Amazon.com. 1DegreeBio offers a method of sharing information to eliminate costly overlapping in the research community, it connects various companies and scientists with the results of their peers and through user reviews. Less than a year after launching, the site now offers "just under 500,000 antibody products," and has grown from two employees working from Hodgson's home office to six employees in a new office.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Alex Hodgson, Managing Director, 1DegreeBio

GestureTek got its start in 1987, when Vincent John Vincent and his University of Waterloo classmate Francis MacDougall came up with a technology that would allow people to move their bodies to interact with a video display -- a system similar to the Wii, but requiring no controllers or wires.

Since then, the company has grown into a global giant in the gesture-recognition field, with applications ranging from interactive advertising displays, to theme-park rides to retail gimicks to healthcare uses.

Now, a grant from FedDev Ontario, the federal government's economic development agency, will see GestureTek partner with OCAD University to conduct research into an application that could be used to treat children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The project will use a "smart carpet and chairs" to enhance a musical therapy program that allows ASD-diagnosed children to interact with their peers. In early testing, the project has reportedly shown encouraging results.

The grant will help fund exploration of marketability and healthcare and manufacturing partnerships.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Vincent John Vincent, GestureTek; Sarah Mullholland, OCAD University

Current university and college students and recent grads from across the GTA are being challenged to find innovative ways for people to interact with the city of Toronto in mobile applications. The Battle of the Apps, sponsored by both the City of Toronto and Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone, asks students to form teams to design applications that enhance the city or showcase it to users. The winners of the contest will get more than $5,000 in prizes.

The contest is being run by mobile development company D1 Mobile. Company President Daniel Ezer says he was tired of constantly hearing about how rich with talent Silicone Valley is. "Toronto is an amazing and diverse city. Battle of the Apps is our way of bringing out students' innovative minds and encouraging them to develop something which benefits our city," he says.

Registration for the contest is open until this weekend. Finalists will be announced on March 21, and the winners will be chosen and announced April 7. More details are available at www.battleoftheapps.com.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Daniel Ezer, President, D1 Mobile

VitalHub, a company started by the IT department at Mount Sinai hospital, has developed a technology that allows doctors and nurses in a hospital to easily track patient information using iPads and iPhones, a solution to longstanding and often-noted paperwork problems. As a company, they've had a busy couple of months.

In December 2010, VitalHub launched at Mount Sinai hospital, allowing clinicians to access patient's charts on mobile devices from anywhere in the hospital. This replaces a patchwork of different types of computer terminals and software programs that stored different types of information and often required multiple passwords. While the hospital plans for ever-wider deployment of the technology, they also established VitaHub to allow its commercialization and use at hospitals elsewhere.

Last month, the plan attracted a $300,000 investment from MaRS that VitalHub CEO Neil Closner says will enable the company to continue its deployment at Mount Sinai, further develop the product and market it to other hospitals. And befitting that expansion plan, the company is also in the process of hiring three full-time and two part-time staff to enable that expansion.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Neil Closner, CEO, VitalHub

At an event in downtown Toronto last week, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation Glen Murray suggested that investing in knowledge should be the provincial government's re-election issue -- a position he compared favourably to the Conservative party's plan to offer cheaper beer prices. He said there's a reason such an investment is important.

"The economy is changing at a pace unheard of in human history. This is bigger than the industrial revolution, which took 200 years. This is bigger than the agricultural revolution which took 2,000 years. These revolutions are happening in months. It took less than two years for Facebook to get 58 million participants, it took television 20 years to get that many people. The pace of change is monthly for what used to take place in decades. The pace of change in society has become a social challenge in itself."

In what he said he thought was one of the "most important things I'll ever be involved in in my life," Murray announced the launch of a "multi-year, fully funded project" to share data. While details were not made available, Murray said the "core strategic research centre" would be set up at MaRS and rolled out over the next four months. The plan, he said, is to "try to create a collaborative open-source platform where companies, government and not-for-profits will provide data" and knowledge that would be available to other researchers of all stripes across the province. "My goal is, in the next decade, to drive this collaborative centre to make us the first true wiki-mobile-digital economy."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation

At the recent CIX conference, Green Mantra Recycling Technologies was honoured as Canada's Hottest Innovative Company in the CleanTech sector. That's high praise, but to those who have long followed the recycling industry, it will appear completely justified.

Green Mantra has developed a proprietary technology that can recycle products such as plastic bags and bottles -- they've long been thorns in the side of recyclers because plastics are made of different compounds that cannot be recycled together -- and turns them into waxes and greases. The products are commercial quality and can be sold for uses such as industrial lubricants, car and floor waxes and candles. The process produces no greenhouse gases.

Founded by Indian-born Pushkar Kumar, the company is currently headquartered at MaRS. "I bring a unique international perspective to GreenMantra -- having grown in Indian business environment, I have an acumen to successfully run operations in cost effective manner," Kumar writes in his profile. A graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business, he says that, "Canada is my new home and I want to work towards improving the place."

The company's business model sees municipal recycling stores (through which less than 5% of plastics currently wind up recycled) as a resource for materials to supply a manufacturing business that sells wax on the market to manufacturers of consumer and industrial products.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pushkar Kumar, Founder and CEO, Green Mantra Recycling Technologies

Toronto's Innovative Composites International was born in 2007 when some former Magna engineers struck out to find applications for a new type of thermoplastic material they had developed. The composite compound they developed, suitable for building things (shipping containers, houses) is lightweight, fireproof, hurricane-proof. As company spokesperson Clive Hobson says, the composite can be used to build "virtually anything" and is "virtually indestructible."

Now up to 22 staff members at the Front Street office and the Michigan manufacturing facility, the company brought its product out to market last year. Since then, it's started to see tremendous growth -- their materials have been used to construct a 125-foot pedestrian bridge in Chicago, and they just signed another contract for storage containers last month. All the while they've continued to innovate with their product line, as evidenced by their late-January announcement of three new patent applications.

But Hobson says the potential for growth an order of magnitude larger is on the horizon: the company is on the list of six finalists for contracts to rebuild the shattered country of Haiti in cooperation with the Clinton Foundation. While Hobson says there are a lot of "ifs and buts" remaining in the tendering process there, but the firm is optimistic that they and their partners may soon be constructing 5,000 or more homes using ICI's materials. "I'm trying not to use hyperbole, but that would be represent a 'home run' in terms of growth in revenue." Hobson says ICI would need to construct a new manufacturing facility to accommodate such an order -- and hire approximately 100 more staff (representing a sixfold increase in employees). A decision on the Haiti rebuilding contract is expected within the next 60-90 days.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Clive Hobson, Innovative Composites  International Inc.

Just over six months ago, in June 2010, Toronto's InGamer Sports launched its fantasy sports application that allows real-time gaming during professional sporting events. At the time CEO Nic Sulsky predicted that the pilot event during the NHL hockey Stanley Cup final was the start of a revolution in sports gaming that would take fantasy players from being "general managers and make them head coaches."

Last week, market analysts IDC added credence to his confidence when it named InGamer one of the 10 Canadian Digital Media Companies to Watch in 2011. The recognition capped a period of intense growth in the final months of 2010 that saw the company launch a weekly partnership with CBC's Hockey Night in Canada and a separate deal with Rogers. The platform now offers gaming for hockey, football and basketball games. Most importantly, Sulsky says, InGamer has signed a global distribution deal with international sports marketing giant IMG that he says will "open up the international market to InGamer in ways we only dreamed possible when we began working on the platform."

In the immediate future, the Canadian sports spectatorship innovators plan to extend their range of sports alongside their extended distribution, to allow gaming during soccer and rugby in 2011, as well as baseball, golf and motor racing.

"It's been pretty exciting," Sulsky says. " with IMG as a partner we will begin growing very quickly internationally."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Nic Sulsky, InGamer Sports

Companies who want to have some influence on the federal government's research and development policy should act fast to submit a survey circulated by the Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA), as the deadline for submissions is January 28. The findings will help the TRRA form a submission to an expert panel reviewing government R&D programs.

According to Pat Draper, President and CEO of the TRRA, "In October 2010, the federal government established an independent expert panel to review the government's programs in support of research and development. The panel has requested input from interested parties and the Toronto Region Research Alliance plans to respond. As part of our process, we are seeking feedback from companies in the Toronto Region about their engagement in R&D activities, their awareness and use of federal government programs to support R&D, and barriers to greater innovation."

Currently, the federal government claims to spend over $7 billion per year in support of R&D through companies and educational institutions. Minister of State for Science and technology Gary Goodyear said, in announcing the panel, that the process would help focus the effectiveness of the spending to create jobs and grow businesses.

The TRRA will make its submission to the panel in February. The questionnaire, which takes approximately 10 minutes to complete, is available here.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pat Draper, TRRA

 

In multicultural Toronto, there's a growing awareness that an ethnically and culturally diverse workforce is a key asset to doing business in the global economy, but as the frequently cited high number of skilled immigrants whose talents are underutilized demonstrates, not every business yet understands how to fully exploit the human resource riches found in Toronto's pool of skilled immigrants.

A study of 168 skilled immigrants and 20 Toronto employers released last week by the Progress Career Planning Institute indicated some keys: for internationally educated professionals, the study concludes, becoming "more Canadian" by focussing on language and communication skills is pivotal; for employers, mentoring new hires on the workplace and Canadian culture is important.

A day-long conference to be held this week (January 20) at the Toronto Board of Trade will explore the subject for the benefit of human resource leaders from corporate Canada. Entitled "Building Workplace 3.0" and presented by CIBC and Skills for Change, the conference features a keynote speech by John Tory and speeches and breakout sessions on subjects such as "Competency based hiring" and " Canadian experience vs. Technical experience."

Registration for the event is $195. See the Diverstiy@Work website for more information.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Amanda Galbraith, on behalf of Progress Career Planning Institute; Judy Csillag, Skills for Change

When Yonge Street introduced the local startup Guardly back in October, the company's founders were just getting ready to unveil the concept and begin work on developing the product, a personal security application for mobile phones that will allow the devices to act as "panic buttons" that will notify loved ones through multiple communications networks.

Two months later, the company has hired two staffers, bringing the total number of employees to four (plus one intern), and is nearing completion of a market-ready product. Company president Josh Sookman says his "OnStar for mobile phones" should be ready to launch this month.

"The team is really meshing and we're probably going to get the first product out by the end of January," Sookman says, "but since we're dealing with personal safety, we want to make sure it absolutely works before launch -- we can't afford to release it and debug later."

Sookman says the current team is exactly what the company needs to take it through the launch phase, at which time he'll be looking to secure a round of funding to commercialize and monetize Guardly. "We've had some great conversations with investors," he says, "we speak to investors and they go home and talk to their wife and kids, and the family helps us do our sales job for us." Sookman notes that he's also been negotiating some partnerships with large social service organizations and companies who seem eager to offer the product to their clients.

The company is currently working out of the Yonge Street offices of Extreme Venture Partners, a breeding ground for apps in Toronto that has produced some of the world's most successful application development startups. "It's a really exciting time," says Sookman.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Josh Sookman, President, Guardly.

The Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) recruited Dr. Darin Graham as its president and CEO in July, a hire that ORION Chair Maxime Jean-Louis told Yonge Street brought on a man with "an international record" who would help the organization "leapfrog into the forefront of innovation in Ontario."

Months later, the organization has announced [PDF] that they will deploy a 100G network -- the first in Canada and the first in the world to be deployed for Research and Education purposes. The new network represents a tenfold increase in capacity. "Moving to 100G is a generational leap in capabilities and a significant technological milestone. It helps move Ontario to the head of the pack in terms of having an extraordinary backbone in place to support new and innovative ways of enabling advanced research, innovation and scientific discovery," Graham says.

ORION is an "ultra high-speed research and education network" that links 1.7 million Ontario researchers, scientists, students, teachers and staff to enable research collaborations and discoveries in physics, cancer research, environmental science and technologies, social sciences and the humanities and other disciplines.

ORION says this is the first phase of a much larger major upgrade to its network, which spans 5,800 kilometres of fibre optic cable across the province. The project is expected to be completed in spring 2010.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tamara Stoll, ORION

Recurrent Energy, a solar power developer that specializes in "distributed energy," headquartered in San Francisco, California, has announced that it will open its first international office in Toronto.

The company's distributed energy strategy of setting up smaller scale (2 MW to 20 MW) projects near areas of high electricity demand is, it says, quicker and more environmentally friendly. Its office in Toronto on King Street in the Financial District will serve as headquarters for the company's Canadian and Eastern US activities.

Company VP and Canadian Managing Director Divid Brochu says that the Toronto office's opening signals a "long-term commitment" to projects in Ontario linked to the provinces Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program. Earlier this year, Recurrent Energy was approved for "the most distributed solar power projects" under the FIT program -- projects for which it intends to invest $650 million and create hundreds of jobs. "We have been active in the province for several years and are now investing heavily in the region to bring many solar power plants online by 2013," Brochu says.


Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Sean Gibson on behalf of Recurrent Energy