Innovation + Job News

There are many people who come up with what they think is an innovative idea for a new product or service they'd like to see in the marketplace. It takes a lot of realize those entrepreneurial dreams, however: research, product development, marketing, strategic planning and some seed money, for starters. Offering a hand to a few young would-be entrepreneurs: the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, which is sponsoring an Innovators Fund for the third year in a row.

Up to 10 entrepreneurs will be selected to participate and will receive "up to $50,000 in financing and an exclusive mentoring package" says Tessa Mintz, a vice president with the CYBF. The Innovators Fund is run in conjunction with Spin Masters Ltd., a toy company that itself was founded by three young Toronto entrepreneurs.

When we ask her what distinguishes entrepreneurs who end up succeeding in the marketplace, she says: "those people who have done their homework--they haven't created an innovation for the sake of innovation, they know who their customer is and what the market looks like."

That quality will be essential in the selection process for participants in the Innovators Fund: Mintz encourages applicants to "really highlight why you're innovative in your space" and clearly articulate what distinguishes their idea from others already in the market, and what will make it appealing to consumers.

Applications for the Innovators Fund are now open and will be accepted until May 21.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Tessa Mintz, Vice-President, Volunteers and Programs, Canadian Youth Business Foundation

The most interesting of the job openings we've come across this week:

Toronto incubator MaRS is on the hunt for a communications associate for a six-month internship. The work would be both print and online, and applicants must be registered with the CareerEdge program.

Business for the Arts is a national organization that tries to build closer relationships between those two sectors. They are looking for a part-time graphic and web designer to handle design and layout work on their program and event materials. Also in this sector, East End Arts (a new organization in that part of town) is seeking a managing director.

If you're interested in sustainable city-building, the municipal government is hiring a coordinator for Smart Commute to help create and implement programs to highlight alternatives to traveling by car.

In other environmental positions, Greenpeace is hiring a finance director to join their senior management team.

The Ontario Nonprofit Network (as their name indicates) focuses on strengthening the non-profit sector here. They are looking for a policy specialist to spearhead talks with the provincial government about funding reform for the sector. It's a one year contract and the position is senior.

Finally, a few social service positions of note. The YWCA is hiring a community engagement worker to help provide support around mental health concerns. The Canadian Women's Foundation is on the lookout for a new marketing coordinator to oversee the logistics of their print and online campaigns. And the Canadian Cancer Society is looking to fill several posts, including a new coordinator of volunteer engagement.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know. 

In Canada, especially in recent years, many of us tend to assume that we have overcome many of the systemic biases of previous times--for instance, that women have reached the workplace equality that long eluded them. The facts tell a different story, however. For all that we've made progress, we are still a way's away from a level playing field.

Shining a light on this issue, and on some women who've achieved great things as entrepreneurs in Canada: the Women of Influence Awards. The RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards are "dedicated to providing national recognition to Canada’s women entrepreneurs by elevating these women and providing them with a platform to identify their excellence to the nation," says Carolyn Lawrence, president of Women of Influence. This is so important, she explains, because "women entrepreneurs face unique challenges: access to capital to start up and/or grow their businesses is the biggest one, with women-owned businesses starting with only 64 per cent of the capital levels of businesses owned by men. Women often need to draw on their own assets or friends and family to do what their male counterparts have an easier time raising from banks and venture capitalists."

Nominations are now open for this year's awards and are due by May 17. If you want to apply yourself the deadline is July 29. There will also be an information session for prospective applicants on May 2. To be eligible you must be a share owner or senior decision-maker in a profitable business that's been around for at least three years, and businesses of all sizes qualify.

This isn't just a consciousness-raising exercise--women-owned businesses have a significant economic impact that's worth noting. "Canadian firms run by women create new jobs at four times the rate of the national average," Lawrence points out, "collectively providing more jobs than the Canadian Top 100 companies combined."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Carolyn Lawrence, President and CEO, Women of Influence

Some of the neatest jobs we've come across this week...

International conservation organization World Wildlife Fund is looking for a digital content strategist. Working as part of the marketing and communications team, the successful candidate will both develop strategy and write content for a variety of platforms.

Also in the environmental sector is the Small Change Fund, which helps communities working on sustainability issues. They are on the lookout for a new operations manager. And one last one in this area: the Canada Green Building Council needs a new education manager to oversee the creation, marketing, and delivery of the organization's educational programs.

Planned Parenthood Toronto is seeking a director of community health services to manage clinical functions, and participate in organization-wide strategic development. Applicants should have at least five years of clinical experience and have a demonstrated commitment to PPT's equity goals.

Social Enterprise Toronto is a network that aims to support the growth of the social enterprise sector in Toronto. They need a community researcher to collect and process data, and to help them plan a forthcoming conference. There's an age requirement on this one: you must be between 15 and 30 years old to apply.

If you are just starting out and love flim, the Toronto International Film Festival has a four-month communications internship opportunity for someone to work in their press office this summer. And if national history is more your thing, the Historica-Dominica Institute has a number of positions now open, ranging from web officers to subject editors for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

And here is one more community organization looking for a lot of summer help: The Stop, which is a food-oriented non-profit that does everything from run cooking classes to build community gardens. You can see the many seasonal positions they have available here.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know. 

The federal government has announced that it will provide nearly $1 million in support to Toronto area start-up ThoughtWire. The funding will allow ThoughtWire to leverage another $1.95 million in private investments, and enable the company to complete development on a new software platform--a business tool that aims to substantially increase productivity.

The Unified Experience Platform has been designed to solve one of the most basic and vexing problems people often encounter while working: not all the applications, programs, and pieces of software that they use can talk to each other.

Transferring data from one to another, and allowing the information in one program to sync up with data from another, can seem like a mundane task, but it's one of those persistent annoyances that can eat up a lot of valuable time. ThoughtWire's goal, it explains in a primer on the platform, is to "liberate your data."

The government support comes from FedDev Ontario via a program called Investing in Business Innovation, which aims to "accelerate the development of new products…and help bring them to market." According to Gary Goodyear, the minister responsible for that program, the funding will lead to the creation of "up to 29" new local jobs

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Office of Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario

Ontario public broadcaster TVO is hiring for two digital positions right now. They are looking for a digital media producer to help create online content and maintain existing TVO websites. For those with more seniority, TVO.org is also looking for a manager to lead the digital team.

Also in broadcasting, the CBC is on the hunt for a mobile developer to maintain current sites and build new mobile web pages.

If you have an interest in the arts, Canadian Stage is looking for a digital marketing manager for the summer (with a possible contract extention) to help develop web content, execute social media campaigns, and provide project management. Small World Music Society is also looking for some communications help: the charity needs a marketing coordinator with a background in graphic design, media relations, and social media.

Friends of the Greenbelt and the Greenbelt fund are a pair of non-profits that work closely together to support the permanent swath of green space that runs through southern Ontario. They are currently seeking a communications manager with at least five years of experience to take the lead on marketing and media relations, as well as an education and outreach specialist to develop an engagement plan for their local food-purchasing program. Meanwhile Fresh City, a Toronto farm, is looking for a research assistant to help them understand the environmental impact of their operations.

In the academic sector, OCAD University needs a manager of graduate studies to provide oversight of their administration and business affairs.

Toronto's best-known incubator, MaRS, is hiring again, this time for a project manager with a particular background in business analytics. Finally, the Centre for Social Innovation, which runs three shared-space facilities across the city, is looking for a manager to take the lead on day-to-day operations at their new Regent Park location.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know. 

If you, like many Torontonians who love their city and want to get more involved in it, have an idea for a neat new neighbourhood initiative or community project, but aren't quite sure how to go about implementing it, there's a new online platform that might be able to help.

It's called Projexity, and while it offers some familiar tools--notably, it serves as a crowd-funding platform--it also includes some distinctive elements such as design assistance and advice navigating the sometimes tangled webs of red tape at City Hall.

Projexity is the brainchild of a couple of urban designers, explains co-founder Marisa Bernstein. She saw, "a lot of the pitfalls in how urban design is carried out...due to many things like lack of resources, lack of guidance, and we think lack of transparency in the process--we think a lot of people don't know what is going on in the community."

Projexity is currently supporting projects in Toronto and Philadelphia, and hopes to expand to other major cities such as New York, Vancouver, Montreal, and San Francisco shortly.

Another way that Projexity differs from larger-scale crowd-funding platforms: there's an approval process potential projects needs to go through. You don't get to automatically put your project online.

The Projexity team reviews applications from prospective participants, which Bernstein says is important "because we want to make sure the project has all the ducks in a row to ensure success."

In order to be accepted projects, "need to enhance the city in a definite way," she says. There must be a specific plan with a clear scope (so it isn't suitable for ongoing projects), and that plan must "improve the community." Bernstein concedes that can be hard to define more concretely--especially in urban contexts where not everyone agrees about how a community should develop or how a particular bit of public space should be used--but points out that the crowd-funding element also helps ensure there is strong support for a project. Even if approved, a proposal won't get off the ground unless there is sufficient local support for the fundraising effort.

For projects that are approved and which are successful in their fundraising, Projexity offers additional kinds of support. "One of the main ways that we differentiate ourselves is that we enable people to not only gather the funding but gather the design work and the volunteer work," Bernstein says.

Projexity is trying to give young designers exposure by helping connect them with "people who may have an idea in mind for a project they might want to spearhead, but don't know how it would look."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Marisa Bernstein, Co-founder, Projexity

The best of the job opportunities we've spotted this week:

Free the Children, the children’s rights organization founded by the Kielburger brothers, is looking for a graphic designer with "a passion for digital and social media" to work out of their Toronto office at 233 Carlton. They’re looking for a two-year commitment, with a six-month probationary period, and have advertised the position on ladieslearningcode.com.

If you have a post-secondary education and some experience in fundraising, preferably for an arts or cultural organization, Harbourfront Centre may have a position for you as a business development officer. The application deadline is April 5.

Foodshare, founded in 1985, tries to tackle hunger in local communities. They’re looking for a fundraiser and event co-ordinator, with responsibilities including direct mail campaigns, donor and funder relations, and grant writing. They’re offering $40,000 and a "generous benefits plan," with an application deadline of April 5.

The CBC is looking for three mobile web developers with three years of web development experience and at least one in mobile development.

Osteoporosis Canada seeks a fundraiser to start, with applications being accepted until April 12. They'd like someone with a university degree and a high level of knowledge of donor management tool Raisers Edge.

The Royal Astronomical Society is looking for a marketing co-ordinator to work in their Etobicoke office. You can send your resume in by April 19.

Writer: Bert Archer

Do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Let us know!

Frank Stronach paid a visit to George Brown College last month. Usually billionaires tend to visit places such as the University of Toronto or York, but Stronach chose George Brown to highlight the importance of the trades in our economy, an importance often overlooked in favour of more prestigious professions such as law and medicine.

"The college has a long and proud tradition of educating for skilled trades," says Nancy Sherman, the dean of the college’s Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies. "We regularly have information sessions and we can fill a classroom of 50 to 100 with people interested in getting into a trade."

Sherman says for a program like heating and air conditioning, there are "a couple of hundred" people on the waiting list every January and September, with a current limit of 100 to 150.

This is just the tip of the trades and apprenticeships iceberg in Ontario though. She says there are about 120,000 apprenticeships in 160 trades across the province.

For Stronach’s talk, some of Sherman’s students made a solid aluminum block to present to him, in honour of his own first assignment as a tool and die apprentice just blocks from the college’s Casa Loma campus.

"He was very proud of his education as a tradesman," Sherman says of Stronach’s talk, for which he had an audience of about 250 mostly students, but also including other trades luminaries such as Tridel CEO Leo Delzotto. "He thought that everybody should work at some point with their hands."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nancy Sherman

Excitement in the online literary world continues after news that Amazon is planning to buy Goodreads for an eight-figure sum, with Toronto’s own Wattpad looking to expand and rejuvenate its team of 45 by hiring seven new staff members.

Conceived along similar lines to Goodreads, Wattpad -- boosted by Margaret Atwood, among others -- recommends books and other literary bits and pieces based on its members' reading histories and proclivities. Unlike Goodreads, Wattpad's content is entirely user-generated, and entirely free.

They’re looking for a lead iOS engineer, a senior iOS developer, a platform developer, a senior Android developer, a senior front-end developer, as well as a PR manager and a product designer.

"We’re always keeping an eye out, and for us, our priority is always mobile developers," says marketing director Amy Martin, who was employee No. 9 when she was hired in 2011. "We really want the best engineers we can get on our team, so we’re pretty picky on our hiring."

Due to funding from venture capitalists in Canada and the US, Wattpad is able to offer not only health and dental benefits, but what they describe as "a generous equity stake."

"It was interesting to see Amazon picking up another independent operator," says Martin of the aforementioned eight-figure deal. She says it only serves to highlight Wattpad's own continued independence and its market differentation, which she characterizes as being "the Youtube of books."

Their plug to get you to apply? "Stop wondering what it would be like to work at Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare in their early days -- join us and find out!"

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Amy Martin

For nine years, the Centre for Social Innovation has been exploring new ways of building communities of common interest--though shared workspaces, incubation, and developing supportive networks to help social entrepreneurs learn and flourish. The next step in CSI's community-building efforts: a new crowdfunding platform dedicated specifically to social entrepreneurs, called CSI Catalyst. (If you're not familiar with the term, "social entrepreneurship" just means using entrepreneurial approaches to develop organizations that bring about social change. Social enterprises in Toronto range from urban farming collectives to arts groups.)
 
Catalyst is not unlike other crowdfunding platforms you may be familiar with, such as Kickstarter. One difference, says CSI CEO Tonya Surman, is that this is a homegrown system: "It's actually a Canadian one, takes Canadian dollars, runs Canadian transactions." More broadly, organizations need to be CSI members either by joining their online network or by being tenants in one of their physical spaces, which, says Surman, is key. CSI's theory is that by starting with organizations who are already in their network, and thus are able to access other kinds of support and acceleration services, projects are more likely to do well.

According to their research, only 40 per cent of projects on crowdfunding platforms in general are actually getting funded; improving on that metric on Catalyst is one of CSI's main goals. "There's a real question of quality control" with the bigger crowdfunding platforms, says Surman.

Because CSI maintains an online network in addition to its shared workspaces (there are three locations in Toronto and one in New York), Catalyst will eventually be available to organizations across North America. Requiring membership isn't meant to be a major hurdle, in other words, so much as a tool for ensuring that participating projects are ones that are in a good position to do well.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Tonya Surman, CEO, Centre for Social Innovation

The best of the job opportunities we've spotted this week:

If you like public spectacles and are incredibly organized, Yonge-Dundas Square is looking for an event coordinator. Their season runs from April to October, and responsibilities are divided between administration and event production. Also in the performing arts, Luminato has a call out for an interactive marketing manager (a full-time position, even though the festival itself runs for just a few days).

A job about jobs: Youth Employment Services (YES) is hiring a job developer. The role involves matching up candidates that sometimes have trouble finding work with prospective positions.

For those with a literary bent, the Walrus is seeking a development coordinator to join its fundraising team. And for those whose interests lean to the visual arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario is on the hunt for a web developer to help manage its online presence.

If city-building organizations are of particular interest, the Jane-Finch community is hiring a graphic designer to help bring a new community engagement project to life.

A research centre we've profiled recently, the Ontario Brain Institute, needs a new program lead. OBI recently secured five years of funding, and is expanding its scope of research.

Finally, there are two opportunities in youth engagement to highlight. World Wildlife Fund is looking for a youth engagement officer, and Right to Play (which creates opportunities for underprivileged children around the world to get involved in sports) is hiring a development coordinator.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know. 

Attention digital media innovators: there's a new award that might have your name on it. The first annual Moonshot Awards, organized by the Canadian Digital Media Network, are now open for nominations.

"There are companies out there with great potential and great skill sets," Kevin Tuer, managing director of CDMN, told us this week, "and sometimes we don't celebrate them as much as we should."

The awards were launched in an effort to help rectify that reticence and shine a light on homegrown innovations in digital media. Awards will be distributed in four categories: dynamic company (for demonstrating "the greatest increase in productivity through the adoption of digital media"), globalizer (for increasing international interest in and support for Canadian digital media), innovator, and overall company of the year (chosen from nominees for the first three categories).

Tuer says CDMN hopes to see applications from companies of all kinds. The goal is to acknowledge companies that are making the most of the opportunities digital media offers, or creating new opportunities entirely. "Small companies can make a great impact as well," he points out.

Nominations close on April 12, 2013.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Kevin Tuer, Managing Director, Canadian Digital Media Network

Our weekly round-up of some of the most exciting innovation jobs in Toronto...

Online retailer eLuxe is looking for someone to lead their web development team. In addition to technical skills, the position requires project management and people management skills. For those just starting out, the company also has some internships available.

ScribbleLive, which provides liveblogging tools to media and other organizations, is also looking for someone with web development skills to add to their team.

If the environment is close to your heart, the Conservation Council of Ontario is hiring a general manager, who will work on strategic development in addition to overseeing daily operations. It's a senior position asking for 5-10 years experiences.

Independent web and mobile game maker BDA Entertainment has five positions open across their Toronto and Mississauga offices, including an HTML5 designer and a JavaScript expert.

For the musically inclined, there are opportunities at a couple of different (very different!) organizations. Exclaim! Media, which publishes both in print and online, is hiring a web app developer. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, meanwhile, is seeking an online marketing coordinator.

Finally, two hiring calls which close this week. The Ontario Genomics Institute is looking for a director of research programs; candidates should have experience both with research and with business administration and project management. And the Canadian Environmental Law Association has a call out for part-time a librarian and legal assistant.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know.