Innovation + Job News

At the the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which could be considered the world series of the tech world (it's where Apple's iPod, iPhone and iPad were unveiled in past years), last week Markham's Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched a world-leading technology of its own. The Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are chips that AMD claims will revolutionize computing.

The Fusion APUs allow home computers, laptops and processing devices to perform tasks that were previously only available to industrial computers, including displaying high-definition graphics, supercomputing through access to GPUs and extending the battery life of laptops up to 10 hours. AMD senior VP Rick Bergman says the company believes this is "quite simply, the greatest advancement in processing since the introduction of the x86 architecture more than 40 years ago."

The development of the Fusion APU chips took place at AMD's GTA plant, helped along by an investment last year of $56.4 million from the provincial government. In addition to the previous AMD staff of 637, the development of this processor created an additional 122 jobs. Ontario Minister of Economic Development Sandra Pupatello congratulated AMD on their "game-changing" technological leap, noting that this APU will "help put made-in-Ontario technology inside millions of computers, laptops, notebooks, netbooks, tablets and other mobile devices," and said that AMD is continuing to help establish the Greater Toronto Area's reputation as a global hub for innovation in graphics and media processing.

Outside reviews were equally effusive. Matthew Murray of PC Magazine writes that the Fusion APU was one of two technologies at CES that are already "reshaping the industry as a whole," and notes that the APUs will put a surprising amount of power into very cheap laptops. Jeremy Laird of TechRadar writes that AMD has developed the "the most revolutionary CPU architecture in living memory," and that, "Its design fundamentally challenges the very concept of a CPU core."

AMD says it expects to announce soon that major laptop manufacturers will be shipping laptops containing the APU processors in the coming year.

Korean-born busniessman Jeffrey B.H. Min founded his first Galleria Korean supermarket in North York in 2003, which now (moved a block north into Vaughan) employs 120 people, and in November of last year opened a second location at Don Mills and York Mills, which created 120 new jobs. Between those milestones, Min has earned plenty of recognition: Grocer of the Year awards from the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers in 2009 and 2010, a Business Leader of Character Community Award in 2007 and the Ontario Newcomer Champion Award in 2008.

Min gets still more much-deserved recognition this spring, when he'll be awarded a New Pioneer Award for entrepreneurship from Skills for Change at a ceremony this March. The awards, known as the "Oscars of diversity," have been given out annually for the past 19 years to recognize the phenomenal achievements of Canadian newcomers in a variety of fields.

In their award citation, Skills for Change notes that Min overcame his initial lack of English to learn the Canadian business culture and create a bridge between Korean and Canadian markets. In addition to his supermarkets themselves, Min has created a Korean importing business and launched his own brand of Korean food products; innovated in the grocery business by developing a customer service management system that connects customers directly to suppliers in Korea, a real-time sales reporting system, and an inventory control system that links his stores directly to his warehouse.

Min is also active in community service, both for his employees who benefit from language and cultural training programs, and to the broader community, who have access to Galleria events spaces for community events.

The Skills for Change New Pioneer Awards take place on March 3 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. See their website for more information.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jessette Nepomuceno, Skills for Change

Savvica, founded and headquartered in Liberty Village in Toronto, is India's largest educational marketing and recruitment services company. Unpacking that sentence and the story behind teaches some lessons in how to succeed in the global technology market.

According to a history told on StartupNorth, the company was originally founded by Malgosia Green in Toronto in 2004, but was shelved when she took a job in San Francisco in 2006. However, she and her husband and co-founder John "kept burning a little midnight oil, still looking for a deal or an opportunity, and most of all, they kept their dream alive." In 2007, an India-based e-learning company provided investment to expand the company, and Green located the Savvica office right back here in Toronto.

Just over three years later, Green is the CEO of what has become a giant in the Indian educational marketing and recruiting industry, operating the student web hubs learnhub.com, studyplaces.com and jumbotest.com. In the words of the company, they offer marketers and recruiters "unique access to students in India and other countries." As their web list of clients shows, their dominance in India is not a limit to their reach -- since their core service is study abroad information, they provide services to hundreds of colleges in Canada, the US, the UK and in other countries.

What's more, Savvica is expanding now, hiring two developers in Toronto. (If you're reading this from afar, they are hiring a VP to work in their India office, too).

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Malgosia Green, Savvica; startupnorth.com

A new iPhone application called Rocket Radar shows TTC riders when the next streetcar will arrive at their stop. The application was developed and designed independently by Toronto interactive designer Adam Schwabe and is on sale at the iPhone App Store for $1.99.

Schwabe says that he'd been wanting for some time to create an application that would answer the question "Where's my streetcar?" (He notes wryly that sometimes the phrase would contain crude expletives.) But he says, "It wasn't until the City of Toronto and TTC released the Next Vehicle Arrival feed late last year at http://www.toronto.ca/open that the app became feasible." The feed provides real-time GPS data from streetcars in a format that allows independent developers to then use it in various other formats.

Schwabe works days as a designer for Teehan+Lax and developed the app in his spare time. For this project assembled a team including Jason S�o Bento, who executed the visual design, and Mohammad Kurabi and Jeremy Koch at nFuse Inc. to develop the application. Schwabe says the total time from rough sketches to finished product was about two months.

Schwabe says the data made available from the city was "absolutely critical" to delivering a project like this. "This is one of the best things the City of Toronto and TTC have done in years." He says he hopes this will be one of many apps that capitalize on the data initiative. "City officials need to recognize that Toronto is full of extremely talented designers and developers who are eager to build really cool applications, and just need the data to do so."

Schwabe says sales in the first week since the project launched have been "outstanding," topping the Navigation category in Canada on iTunes. He says that in many ways the project was a test for him to see how viable creating such an app with no up-front capital would be. Up next? "There's been a surprising amount of demand for an Android application, but for now, my plan is continue improving Rocket Radar, then I'll have some time to breathe and think about other platforms and future app ideas."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Adam Schwabe, Rocket Radar

The City of Toronto and its partners at Green Living Enterprises announced a call for nominations last week for the 2011 Green Toronto Awards, which aim to inspire and recognize environmental success. The awards give $5,000 and bragging rights to those who are "leading the way to a greener Toronto" in 10 categories (Green Home, Green Business, Local Food, Community Projects, Energy Conservation, Environmental Awareness, Green Design, Leadership, Water Efficiency and Youth Leadership).

Behind the awards, of course, is Green Living Enterprises, an environmental marketing and branding company that has been leading the way to a greener Canada since 2005. The company's story begins well before that, of course. It grew out of the environmental publishing program of its parent company, Key Publishers, who launched the EnviroGuide in 1999 in response to growing awareness of the importance of green issues. According to the company, the success of the guide led to establishing Green Living Enterprises as its own company. At the same time the Green Toronto Awards were launched and the name of the guide was changed to the Green Living Guide.

In 2007, the company launched the Green Living Show in Toronto, which has become the largest consumer environmental event in the country. All the while, the company has served a growing list of clients with their environmental programs, billing itself as one-stop shopping for environmental programming. Green Living Enterprises now claims to be the largest green marketing and branding firm in Canada.


Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Annette Borger, Green Living Enterprises

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.

You've likely heard of Amazon's eReader, The Kindle. You may also have heard of it's upstart competitor, Kobo, which was launched in December 2009. What you may not know is that Kobo, which was called a "global powerhouse" by TechVibes, is headquartered right here in Toronto -- the company's ownership is led by Canadian book retailing giant Chapters Indigo Books & Music.

According to company Marketing VP Liz Ridout, the company's strategy of open formats has led to explosive growth. Offering digital books and reading software and support for pretty much every device -- eReaders, smartphones, tablets -- on the market, including its own reader, the Kobo, the company has grown from 35 employees to 185 at its Toronto office in the past year. "We've definitely outgrown a few spaces," Ridout says.

Ridout says that for all this rapid growth, more is on the horizon, as the service will be pre-loaded on over 20 million devices sold in the coming year. "I don't see the pace of growth slowing down," she says, "we're really focused right now on developing global markets." While Ridout says the future may soon seen more offices established around the globe, the growth here in Toronto continues: the company is currently hiring 17 new staff.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Liz Ridout, VP Marketing, Kobo, Inc.

In the internet age, bidding has gone way beyond its roots at online auction site eBay. Consumers now expect to see competitive bids on everything from travel at Travelocity.ca to car insurance at Toronto-based InsuranceHotline.com to cellular phones at Toronto-based mycellphonemyterms.com.

Last week, the launch of Mississauga-based Ratesheet.ca brought the same principal to the mortgage market. "The website eliminates the need to visit mulitple offices and agents in person to obtain rate quotes," says company president Vik Palan. Instead, applicants submit their information at the Ratesheet website and multiple mortgage brokers bid with the lowest interest rates they're able to offer. "The website strives to make the process of securing a mortgage hassle-free," Palan says.

Palan notes than in addition to being a benefit to consumers, his innovation also offers mortgage brokers a pool of leads who come to them online without any marketing. As the site launches, 369 brokers are currently listed with them. A review mechanism on the site allows consumers to rate various brokers they've encountered through the site, which can help further serve the site's users and help brokers build credibility.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Vik Palan, President, Ratesheet.ca

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada announced a $10 million investment in its Canada Summer Jobs program last week, a move that is expected to create summer employment for 3,500 students this year. The Honourable Jean-Pierre Blackburn, announcing the program on behalf of the government, said the program will give students skills and experience, prop up the economy and "strengthen the local economies of communities across the country."

The program will offer funding for student jobs to non-profits, small businesses and public sector employers, all of whom can apply for funding through the program at the Service Canada website beginning February 1, 2011. (Submissions for this year must be received by the end of February.)

A spokesperson for the federal government said that it was impossible to estimate right now how many of the jobs the program creates would be in Toronto, but noted that "The Ministry is committed to creating jobs and stimulating the economy in the Greater Toronto Area."

Noting that this was the first increase in the Canada Summer Jobs program budget since that program's funding was cut in 2006, David Molenhuis of the Canadian Federation of Students welcomed the announcement. "The Canada Summer Jobs program creates jobs for students that would not otherwise exist," he said. "After record levels of unemployment and the vast majority of students facing tuition increases, it is high time that the federal government do something about it."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Michelle Bakos, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development; David Molenhuis, National Chairperson, Canadian Federation of Students

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

In 2006, Poly Placements was founded in the kitchen of Virginia Poly. She based her recruiting firm's philosophy on the novel prospect that when it comes to recruiting, "people should actually like the process. Our clients, the candidates, they should enjoy it."

Poly's observation that too many companies viewed a looming job opening as a dreaded task to be done rather than an exciting opportunity to make the business better led to the development of the firm's "ROI of Happiness" philosophy, which, she says, "is not some airy-fairy hippy thing about eating organic vegetables together. It's about really improving your bottom line."

The work seems to be paying off. The company reports 2,600 per cent revenue growth in just a few years, and made it onto PROFIT magazine's list of the fastest growing startup companies in Canada in 2009. The company has grown, Poly says, from a single employee in 2006 to 55 staff this year -- including about 10 hires in recent months. "At the rate we're growing, by the end of 2011 it will probably be closer to 100 employees," she says.

In addition to the company's difference in approach, Poly attributes the growth to a difference in the business arrangement. Since about the recession of 2008, she says, companies have been giving big contracts for multiple hires over a period of time -- sometimes for the staffing of an entire department -- to the company rather than hiring the recruiters for a single opening at a time. "These are big contract with big clients. That's been huge."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Virginia Poly, Poly Placements

Recently, Sally Daub was recognized in the trailblazer category at the RBC Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Awards. As the co-founder, president and CEO of ViXS systems, she's overseen the Toronto-based company's growth from semiconductor start-up to world leader in the production of smart network multimedia processors to fuel the digital video revolution.

Founded in Toronto in 2001, the company now has offices on three continents and has filed more than 240 patents. Daub's recognition (which follows her inclusion on the PROFIT magazine Woman 100 list last year) caps a year of recognition for the still-growing firm. This fall, ViXS was ranked the 106th fastest growing tech firm in North America and the 21st fastest growing tech firm in Canada by Deloitte. The company notes it has been a fixture on the Deloitte "Fast 50" list for four years running. Earlier in the year, ViXS was rated 44th on PROFIT magazine's annual list of the 100 fastest-growing companies in Canada.

"We are extremely pleased to continue to be ranked among the top growing companies in Canada," Daub has said. "As a world leader in transcoding and advanced hosting in smart network multimedia processors, we continue to benefit from consumers growing appetite to view and experience digital media content from multiple sources."

And that growth continues. Currently, ViXS is hiring for more than 30 positions in its Toronto office.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Janet Craig, ViXS

Through its Mentoring Partnership program, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) has helped more than 5,300 skilled immigrants in Toronto get closer to meaningful employment since 2004. Last year, it announced it would work collaboratively with local  professional immigrant networks to establish learning exchanges, an online learning platform, and a professional and social network for members, employers and other community members.

That effort got a major boost earlier this month when Scotiabank came on board as a corporate sponsor of the program. Scotiabank VP of Multicultural Banking Ahmad Dajani said the bank makes helping newcomers a priority. "Our sponsorship of TRIEC's Professional Immigrant Networks initiative is a natural extension of our focus on ... programs and services that will help newcomers get a head start."  Dajani says the program will help give newcomers the "tools they need to build their lives in Canada."

Both the provincial and federal governments recently recognized TRIEC's Mentoring Partnership for its impact on the employment picture for immigrants. Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Eric Hoskins also gave credit to Scotiabank for its sponsorship, saying "we welcome the leadership role Scotiabank is taking with ... supporting newcomers' success in joining the workforce." Federal MP Bob Dechert, on behalf of the federal Citizenship and Immigration ministry said, "The programs provided by TRIEC are instrumental in helping immigrants succeed in the Canadian economy."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: TRIEC

It was just in early may that Yonge Street reported on the launch of Cavet Technologies' lighting control system LumiSmart ILC. Then, weeks later, we reported that the company had already won an innovation award for the "Intelligent Lighting Controller" from the Canadian Advanced Technological Alliance Innovation Awards.

As the year comes to a close, the company has racked up nine more awards for the LumiSmart ILC, most recently the New Technology Award from the 2010 Ontario Regional Awards for New Technology presented by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) and the National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program.

Albert Behr, Cavet's president, says the company is "thrilled" to accept the award, and the slew of awards they've previously racked up. He adds that just months after launching, the company is now shipping to more than 30 countries across the world. "This thing is being installed everywhere," he says. "We're very proudly Canadian, but for sales Canada is a small part of the mix."

Behr notes that the product is manufactured at Celestica in Toronto, and that production there is going full-tilt. "We just officially launched -- as it had units ready for sale -- in November, and we've already got a run-rate most companies would kill for after two or three years."

The technology, designed and manufactured in Toronto, allows people to control their lighting automatically in a way that saves energy and money. It takes advantage of "adaptive lighting" by using sensors to increase or decrease lighting levels based on whether people are in a room or not. The company claims it can produce a 30 per cent power reduction instantly without the installation of any new lights or fixtures. Behr says this is a huge competitive advantage in a field in which most companies require installation of big infrastructural retrofits to conserve energy. He expects the company to grow exponentially in the next 12 months. "2010 was about commercializing the product. 2011 is really about harvesting sales from around the world."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Albert Behr, President, Cavet Technologies