As a follow-up to my September 13 post about SciVee, TheScientist.com recently alerted me to a new video service with a Canadian connection. ScienceHack was created by a Halifax-based electrical engineer studying at the Dalhousie School of Business as a video search engine for science videos that meet production quality and scientific criteria. Launched in May 2007, the website does not host videos; it only indexes videos from other sites like YouTube and MetaCafe and receives over 2,000 hits a day.

While the two reviewers quoted in The Scientist article expressed reservations about the site’s review process and the quality of content, this still might be worth checking out, if only to see ScienceHack’s most popular video, “Gummy Bear (Sucrose) in molten potassium chlorate”.

Read The Scientist’s take on ScienceHack >>

®© The Nobel Foundation

Earlier this month, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was announced for three scientists who co-discovered a method of gene targeting and “knockout mice”.

The three scientists are Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah, Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Martin Evans of Cardiff University . It’s interesting to note that one of the Nobel laureates, Oliver Smithies, after receiving his doctorate in biochemistry at Oxford, started his career at the University of Toronto, Connaught Medical Research laboratories, where he worked for seven years.

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November 7th, take your kid to work

On October 17th, in a speech to the Royal Society of Canada, Dr. David Naylor, President of the University of Toronto, warned guests about the state of research and higher education in Canada.

“The Conference Board study of 17 OECD nations,” he said, “found that only Italy awarded fewer Ph.D. degrees per capita than Canada. Compared to the United States, Canada awards a third fewer doctoral degrees and half as many master’s degrees per capita.”

And when the science talent decreases so too does the output of scientific innovation. In fact, Naylor reported that “the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada’s performance in innovation a lowly 14th out of 17 OECD comparator countries.”

What does one do about this sad state of affairs?

Well, one option — an option that you as a parent can control — is to excite your kids about science and innovation. On November 7, Grade 9 kids across the country will be pouring out of their history and French classes to join their parents in their places of employment through the Take Our Kids to Work program. And where better to take them than to MaRS?

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The MaRS Atrium “Convergence Innovation” banner

Anyone who comes into the MaRS Centre would notice the large “Convergence Innovation” banner in the Atrium of MaRS. Convergence occurs when multiple products come together to form one product with the advantages of all of them. The benefits of such an approach are most striking in medical technologies: by providing multiple and complementary modes of action, these convergent products have the potential to offer greater therapeutic benefits than the individuals components. New classes of products, such as implantable glucose sensors, scaffolds covered with growth factors to promote bone regeneration and, a classic example, stents coated with pharmaceuticals are already multi-billion-dollar industries.

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Check out the lean mean green machine

It’s cute and green and can withstand a monsoon.

A month shy of its official product launch, the world’s first $100 laptop (OK, it’s actually US$186) made an appearance at MaRS last week in the capable hands of developer Mike Fletcher, who offered a spirited demo to a meeting of Toronto’s Overlap group, a collection of experimental thinkers dedicated to innovation in design and business.

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Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s new book, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, examines the erosion of citizenship and democracy by consumerism and capitalism (a topic near and dear to my heart). Last week, he bolstered his argument by examining the trend of corporations jumping on the green bandwagon. Reich turns a skeptical eye to the corporate social responsibility movement, flagging British Petroleum’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign as a particularly egregious example of corporate greenwashing. He argues that corporations are not to blame for their environmental record since “it’s naive to think corporations can or will sacrifice profits and shareholder returns in order to fight global warming.” That job, Reich concludes, properly belongs to governments.

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Just a quick last minute reminder that the deadline for applications to OGI’s Pre Commercialization Business Development Fund is quickly approaching (October 31st). While the fund is specific to opportunities based on genomics or proteomics, and in the proof-of-principle (validation) phase of research, it could provide much needed support to those projects that are just getting off the ground.

For complete details, visit OGI’s program details.

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Looking to get that idea off the ground?

CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101, a course for those thinking of building technology companies with limited or no prior knowledge of business.

Following the lectures, participants (dare we say students?) can join us for refreshments and networking – you just might find a new business partner there.

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I can’t tell you how many people ask me about MaRS every week. What happens here at MaRS? It’s certainly a long story, but you might want to start by finding out about our business advisory services here at MaRS.

The MaRS Venture Group is a multi-disciplinary team of knowledgeable and experienced advisors that can assist you in growing your business.

Get to know the MaRS Venture Group!

• What we do
• How we do it
• How to work with us
• What our clients say

Find out more!

www.marsdd.com/ventureservices

the carrot and the stick

Elections have dominated the public discourse lately, and it brings into focus a question of power in general.

I came across a fascinating discussion about soft power when exploring how graduate students are taught innovation at MIT (“Reflections on Leadership and Innovation” by Irving Wladawsky-Berger).

On a very basic level, soft power is about getting others to want the outcomes you want without threats or payments - through co-option rather than force. It is based on the ability to shape the preference of others.

Soft power is very different from the Industrial Age power of stick and carrot. Let me explain…

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