research and innovation : Innovation + Job News

The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) has announced that its fourth annual conference will be held at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto beginning Dec. 1, 2001. The event brings together entrepreneurs, startup companies and investors to share information and ideas through presentations and networking opportunities.

The conference also features the unveiling of this year's CIX TOP 20, a high-profile selection of the 20 most innovative companies in Canada. Registration for both the conference and consideration in the top 20 is open now. "CIX has established itself as the must-attend conference," says CIX co-chair Rick Nathan in a statment. "This year we have added even more facilitated meeting exchanges to ensure these players have a chance to make real contacts that will ultimately lead to partnerships, investments and growth."

Registration is available online. A list of keynote speakers and presentations will be announced in the coming weeks. However a sneak peak list of attendees includes Jordan Banks of Facebook Canada, John Albright of the BlackBerry Partners Fund and Claudia Fan Munce of IBM Venture Capital.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Katye Seip, Achilles Media, presenters of the CIX

Earlier this year, the Toronto-based photo-sharing platform 500px was a two-person, home-based, self-financed operation. It had been that way since 2003, when it launched on the former blogging giant Livejournal, and remained that way as it slowly grew in popularity after it migrated to its current site on the web in 2009. The site allows users to share photos and to create galleries and portfolios. But when the number of the site's users suddenly grew by 60 per cent this spring to 85,000, 500px jumped into another league.

An announcement of $525,000 in venture capital financing in early June and a move to office space at Ryerson's Digital Media Zone drew notice, and soon 500px rose to the top of the TechVibes list of Toronto's hottest startups (seventh on the Canada-wide list). As reported recently in the Globe and Mail, the company's growth had been on the verge of sinking it. With the new funding, it instead seems to be rising fast.

This summer, the startup has grown from the original two founders to a staff off eight, and they are currently hiring two more developers now, as they look for new office space.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Evgeny Tchebotarev and Oleg Gutsol, fournders, 500px; The Globe and Mail, TechVibes, TechCrunch

The local-food distribution company 100km Foods Inc was launched in 2008 by Paul Sawtell and his partner Grace Mandarano from their Indian Grove home near High Park, in connection with the growing popularity of the locavore movement and in accordance with "Local Food Plus" guidelines. The pair built a network of farmers near the GTA and supplies restaurants and caterers. This year, Sawtell says, he expects sales to top $1 million.

Last week a bit of help growing the company even more arrived in the form of a $171,000 grant from the provincial government's Greenbelt Fund. "When we buy Ontario, everyone wins. It strengthens the local economy and supports our farmers," said Carol Mitchell, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, in announcing the grants. "Through this program, we are increasing the amount of local food in the kitchens of our hospitals, schools, daycares and other public institutions, providing our patients and families with fresh, local Ontario food."

100km Foods was just one of six Toronto organizations to receive funding through the project. The others were Dana Hospitality, George Brown College, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Scarborough Hospital and St. Michael's Hospital.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Melissa Zanette, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs; The Globe and Mail

Nulogy, headquartered near Queen and Bathurst in downtown Toronto, has received up to $954,687 in financing from the federal government through its economic development agency, FedDev Ontario. The company will use the money to finance global expansion, according to CEO Jason Tham, as it launches its consumer products packaging software PackShop. This summer's federal announcement came just months after Nulogy received $3 million in private financing from a group led by Klass Capital.

Nulogy was launched in 2002 by a group of Waterloo University graduates to provide software to the consumer packaged goods industry. It has since well established itself through its PackManager software. As Economic Development Minister Gary Goodyear said in his speech at the Nulogy headquarters, "Our contribution to this company will help them research, develop and bring their new PackShop software to market. This innovative software will allow retailers, marketers and manufactures to customize the packaging design of any product. Since 2006, the company has significantly increased revenues and demonstrated the potential for continued rapid growth."

Tham said that the expansion of the company will grow in alignment with its "Living and investing locally, while competing globally" philosophy, saying "Nulogy will use this financing to expand as we secure new customers and enter new markets around the world." The expansion is expected, according to FedDev Ontario, to create 40 full-time jobs.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Nulogy; Gary Toft, Director of Communications, Office of the Honourable Gary Goodyear

Markham-based injection-moulded plastics manufacturer Novo Plastics, whose manufacturing facility employs 70 people in the GTA, has received $1 million in support for an innovative car parts line. The money, provided in the form of a loan facility, is provided by the Ontario Ministry of Innovation through its Innovation Demonstration Fund.

The company was founded in 2006 to design and manufacture parts for heating and air conditioning systems and for automobiles. It's products for cars aim to be more environmentally friendly than alternatives. Novo Plastics President and CEO Baljit Sierra said in a statement that the loan from the government will help fund the continued testing and commercialization of a muffler system that is lightweight and offers lower carbon emissions than traditional metal mufflers. "Novo Plastics in honoured to have this vote of confidence from the government of Ontario," Baljit said, calling it an "investment in advanced, green technology."

In its five years of operation, Novo Plastics has grown to fill an 80,000-square-foot headquarters in Markham that runs three production shifts, as well as establishing sales and manufacturing facilities in the US, Germany, India and South Korea.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Baljit Sierra, President and CEO, Novo Plastics

Toronto startup DataAppeal launched a new application in June that allows users to easily create well-designed 3-D and 4-D maps of geo-location data. The new product, which had its genesis in founder Nadia Amoroso's PhD thesis about two years ago, has already drawn notice from the people at Google Earth (who called the product "neat stuff" and a "solid tool" and has been put to use by the Globe and Mail (scroll down to see data maps). Amoroso says that DataAppeal is getting good traffic now, during a free Beta phase. After further refinements, the plan is to make DataAppeal work on a freemium model where a basic version is available at no charge and more sophisticated elements are available for a price.

DataAppeal CEO Amoroso says the project was built by professionals to ensure the data maps are both visually appealing but useful, "The models have been created through a collaboration of GIS specialists and artists to ensure that data is displayed in a more visually appealing manner to create a stronger response to information."

In its infancy, the company is now hiring people with expertise in software development, and 3-D rendering and modelling. Amoroso says the plan is currently to add two members to her team, "Particularly those with experience with KML or KMZ languages, or with php and CakePHP. A visual or graphics background is very helpful too."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Nadia Amoroso, CEO, DataAppeal

Toronto entrepreneur Grant Ritchie set out to solve a problem of the web: local-business information. To solve it, he founded Locationary, a multiple user-created database of local place information that allows businesses to more effectively reach customers and consumers to more easily find more accurate, up-to-date information. It's motivating point is that, unlike many crowdsourced information projects, users can actually get paid for contributing good information.

That concept took a leap forward towards widespread commercialization recently when Locationary attracted $2.5 million in financing from local capital funds Investment Accelerator Fund and Trellis Capital, as well as from its existing investors, Extreme Venture Partners and Plazacorp Ventures, Angels and Management. Ritchie called the investment a "great vote of confidence" in his project and said the money "will enable us to hire more engineers, evolve our local data service offerings and to launch our new local data management system for federating local business place information."

Already, the company is hiring new engineers for its Toronto office. "We are in the process of hiring about five people immediately," Ritchie says. "And I could see us scaling up a bit more than that over the next 18 months."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Grant Ritchie, CEO, Locationary

Rapidly growing local solar energy company SunEdison, a subsidiary of the international conglomerate MEMC Electronic Materials, has announced a deal to increase production of solar panels at the Flextronics facility in York Region. The increased production sees Flextronics physically expand their plant and hire 400 new staff to meet demand.

Jason Gray, SunEdison's Canadian manager, says that with this announcement, his company has been involved in creating between 800 and 950 green energy jobs in the solar industry in the GTA within the past two years. That includes a growth at the company's head office from two to 50 staff over that time, as well as the creation of 100 new jobs building racking equipment at the Samco facility in Scarborough.

"A lot of our investment here has been spurred by the [locally manufacturing requirements] Ontario government's Feed-in-Tarrif program," Gray says, "But Ontario has a long history of manufacturing, so it makes a lot of sense that the region is able to leverage that existing strength."

Gray says that right now most of the increased production capacity at these plants where SunEdison has created increased opportunities will serve the company's local projects, but that in the long term, such production experience and capability will create excellent potential for a green energy export industry.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jason Gray, VP and Canadian Country Manager, SunEdison

Lawrence Dale, the President and CEO of Toronto's Realtysellers, has drawn headlines for his attempts to innovate in the real estate brokerage industry over the past few years. His company offers discount services to home buyers that see 25-75% of the agent's commission refunded to the client. But more sensationally, he sued the Toronto Real Estate Board and the Canadian Real Estate Association for hindering his innovative services and won concessions, including the right to list private sales in the Multiple Listings Service database, the central listing of homes for sale accessed by Canadians at Realtor.ca.

Earlier this month, Realtysellers announced a partnership with PropertyGuys.com, a national company based in New Brunswick that has become the largest company assisting people to sell their homes without hiring a real estate agent. "By partnering together, PropertyGuys.com and Realtysellers will be uniquely positioned to deliver the broadest range of professional services at a more reasonable cost. This is a real game changer for how the industry will operate from now on and a huge win for consumers," Dale said.

The arrangement will see Propertysellers offer all PropertyGuys clients listings on Realtor.ca, and will see the Toronto company's customized discount brokerage services extended to buyers across the country.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Lawrence M. Dale, President and CEO, Realtysellers

Earlier this year, Clive Hobson of Innovative Composites International told Yonge Street that the local manufacturer of innovative building materials expected to soon land a contract that would be a "home run in terms of growth and revenue." A $68 million deal to supply housing in Haiti and Ghana announced last week appears to fit the bill.

Innovative Composites will supply 2 million square feet of its patented EcoScape housing under the deal, and will construct and operate a new manufacturing facility in North Carolina to serve the contract.

"This is a game changer for ICI. One we have been working on for the last two years," said Innovative Composites President and CEO Terry Ball in a release. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I believe we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of market penetration and will be able to accelerate project roll out once the SC facility is up and running,"

The company was founded in Toronto in 2007 by former Magna International employees who have developed new thermoplastic building materials used to construct bridges, shipping containers and housing, among other things. Company spokesperson Hobson says it is hurricane-proof, fire-proof and virtually indestructable, and can be used to make almost anything.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Clive Hobson, Director of Communications, Innovative Composites International

The video gaming industry in Toronto is taking off. In the same month that Facebook gaming application Zynga bought the local studio FiveMobile and announced they'd be setting up their first Canadian office here, one of the city's large educational institutions decided to give the industry a boost.

Last week George Brown College outlined plans to set up a gaming industry incubator at their facility at 333 King West in downtown Toronto. "With the growth rate in the gaming sector in Ontario predicted to reach 31 per cent over the next three years, according to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, George Brown College is an a perfect position to provide a leadership role in nurturing the talent in this industry," said Anne Sado, President of George Brown College, in her announcement.

The new incubator will have space for up to 10 companies at a time in 100-150-square-foot office spaces. The school plans to mingle startups with its students in order to see if the arrangement benefit both.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Brock Penner for George Brown College

The Ajax, Ontario plant of Messier-Dowty Inc will be adding five new jobs immediately to its existing staff of 500 to work on an innovative new green innovation initiative. The company's Toronto-area plant specializes in the design and manufacture of aircraft landing gear, and is working on developing a more environmentally friendly way to apply and remove chemical coatings on the gear. If it proves successful, the technique could have applications in aircraft manufacturing plants around the world.

The project has drawn a $1.9 million investment from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation's Innovation Demonstration Fund. In announcing the funding, provincial minister Glen Murray said that the company helps "demonstrate how research and innovation help keep Ontario's economy strong while protecting our environment," a claim to global fame his ministry hopes to cement through direct funding. For his part, Bryan Teed, president of Messier-Dowty added to the statement by giving some credit for the company's success to the talent coming out of local universities--name checking Ryerson and University of Toronto--and praising the local industry. "Our location...is the centre of the North American aerospace industry, and that enables us to service our clients quickly and efficiently."

Messier-Dowty's 19,000-square-metre facility in Ajax employs 500 people, and has been in operation for more than half a century. It is now part of the Safran Group Messier-Bugatti-Dowty multinational aerospace empire.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ralph Benmergui, Office of the Minister of Research and Innovation

The Toronto-based company VisualSonics has launched a new medical imaging product that it says could revolutionize the world of cancer diagnosis. The Vevo LAZR is an acoustic photoimaging technology that allows researchers to study tumour growth in real time. VisualSonics claims that this process allows doctors access to real-time information of tumour growth and mutation that they have never had before.

VisualSonics President and CEO Anil Amlani says his company's new technology will allow "acceleration in the study of cancer and its treatment enabling early detection, early diagnosis and rapid personalized treatment." In a statement provided by VisualSonics, David A. Jaffray of the Ontario Cancer Institute at the Princess Margaret Hospital says, "This imaging system has the potential to transform the way we diagnose and treat cancer."

VisualSonics specializes in medical imaging technology that allows real-time, in vivo, systems for research. Based in North York, it is a division of the Seattle-based company SonoSite.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Shailja Tewari, VisualSonics

Earlier this year, we wrote about medical research database startup 1DegreeBio, founded by Alex Hodgson to bring some of the advantages of the open-source, social media and online research worlds to the sphere of antibody research. 1DegreeBio's platform allows researchers to access research and reviews of commercially available antibodies from other researchers around the world instantly. As Hodgson said then, she's dedicated to the proposition that "you can't do great research with crap antibodies."

Last week, as the company celebrated it's first anniversary in business, they received investment money from Digital Science, a research publishing company that is a division of Macmillan Publishers. Digital Science is based in London, UK (with offices in New York and Tokyo) and has been building a portfolio of research software companies. A company spokesperson said in a statement that 1DegreeBio provided a very necessary service to the research community the company aims to serve and therefore made a valuable addition to Digital Science's group of global partners.

Locally, 1DegreeBio Managing Director Hodgson greeted the investment in a statement saying that the money would allow her organization to continue to grow. "This partnership will allow us to expand our platform to make it even easier for the scientific community to connect with top-quality antibodies." She added that the company will soon expand its product offering to include other products.

Since launching a year ago, 1DegreeBio has built a database that lists over 500,000 available antibodies available from over 900 suppliers. Their system of encouraging informed product reviews--a novelty in the medical research field--has generated over 40,000 unique visits to their website.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Kaitlin Thaney, Digital Science; Alex Hodgson, 1DegreeBio

The Proficiency ultra-high efficiency toilet is the most water-efficient toilet in the world, requiring just three litres of water per flush (versus the standard high-efficiency level of 4.8 litres, and previously standard levels of 6 litres or 13 litres per flush). It was invented in the GTA by the firm of Hennessy and Hinchcliffe and is distributed by Mississauga's WaterMatrix.

Recently, this homegrown success in sustainable washrooms was recognized by the provincial government with an Ontario Water Innovation Award. Rock Rotman of WaterMatrix says that this latest in a long string of awards for innovation is significant because it comes from the government. "It's validating, especially when you've got the government onboard, because they're the ones who can really help promote this, he says, pointing to regulations in various jurisdictions that require high efficiency in toilets and rebate programs that reward homeowners who replace lower-efficiency models.

WaterMatrix has distributed the Proficiency since its launch two years ago, Rotman says, and they've seen the market growing as environmental awareness grows and the stigma attached to older models of efficient toilet -- which were known not to work as well -- fades.

Rotman says the benefits of conservation are not just government recognition and environmental good feelings: those who replace even a six-litre model with a three-litre one see savings in water usage of 33-44%. And as the world market for water heats up and conservation efforts force prices higher, the market for this local innovation will only grow, he says.

Writer: Edward Keenan

Source: Rick Rotman, Marketing Communication Coordinator, WaterMatrix