AXS helps users understand Glaucoma

AXS Studio specializes in the art of science communication. Recently, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) launched our latest collaboration: an animated, on-line learning tool, The Glaucoma Challenge.

Now, let’s just pause a sec – I don’t know about you, but I can look back on that last bit and ask:

“On-line animations for the blind?!”

However, armed with recent CNIB “schooling,” I can now answer: You bet!

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From candidates to handshakes

What is the biggest risk in any venture? Hands down, it is attracting and retaining a motivated, competent team. A group of people who trust each other, share the vision and possess a range of skills needed to make a new venture work. Having a team that has worked together in the past is a rare but much-prized feature of any new company.

Recently, I came across an approach that re-creates, to a degree, the effect of such a well-gelled team.

Imagine a venture creation scenario that starts with a high-growth (and, even better, a glamorous) industry, some clearly defined company objectives (things like profit margin, high/low technology and infrastructure investment) and several product concepts for specific market segments. After testing the market and validating your product assumption, you need a team to deliver it all: products, efficient operations and investment capital. There is no business plan yet but this approach creates every function within the company at once. The business plan will be written by a group empowered to run the company.

How do you do it?

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From Stanford Session courtesy SSIR

Kudos to Stanford for marking February 24^th Social Entrepreneurship day.

“More than 150 people attended the Social Entrepreneurship Day panel, which was sponsored by Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) and the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Center for Social Innovation. The second annual Stanford University event, held February 24, brought a diverse, standing-room-only crowd and featured a lively discussion on ways to fund social enterprises, moderated by Kriss Deiglmeier, Executive Director of the Center for Social Innovation. Panelists included dynamic social sector leaders Jenny Shilling Stein (Draper Richards Foundation), Jessica Jackley Flannery (Kiva.org), Amy Clark (Ashoka), and Suzanne McKechnie Klahr (BUILD).”

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Insights from San Fran

I just returned from a trip to San Francisco, Menlo Park/Palo Alto, and Mountain View with fellow classmates at Harvard Business School. Our small group had a fantastic opportunity to have some personal interactions with top Venture Capitalists in the area, where we were able to ask challenging questions and gain insights on the state of the industry and VC’s investment philosophies.

As a former MaRS Venture Group Associate, I wanted to share some thoughts on common messages and personal takeaways that I gathered from the trip.

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Biosign’s UFIT solution for personal health monitoring

A Workshop on Adverse Response Monitoring (WARM) catalyzed partnerships between MaRS tenant Biosign and IBM as well as with Telus with the aim of getting Biosign’s UFIT® health monitoring system to the commercial market.

Working with the IEEE, the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology, Biosign brought together this world-first, multi-disciplinary panel to address patient safety. This workshop launched an international initiative to find solutions for detecting and reporting adverse responses to medications, and to help optimize their efficacy.

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Electrons take the spotlight.

For the first time ever, scientists have captured on video one of the most fundamental elementary particles in the universe: the electron.

As one of the fastest objects in the universe, it has been impossible to photograph or film one until now. Led by Dr. J. Mauritsson at Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden, this new technology captures the entire movement of an electron using short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses.

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At last night’s Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, I went through a typical term sheet discussing the various items and their import to an entrepreneur on the receiving end of such a term sheet. Several audience members commented on the requirement that the potential investor has an out if “reasonable” due diligence gives them second thoughts.

How does one define “reasonable” in these circumstances?

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The definition of innovation can often be simplified as the act of introducing something new, be it an idea, a method, or a new product. Yet while the definition is easily understood, the method to achieve successful innovation is obviously challenging. The continuously evolving business landscape and the vastly different organizational designs and cultures within companies clearly reveal that there is no “one size fits all” recipe for innovation success. However, what is important to recognize is that the approach to innovation, like many other business practices over the past 50 years, needs to change with the times in order to be successful.

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Now that the Oscars have come and gone, awards junkies may be feeling a little let down. Luckily, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is now accepting applications for their 2008 awards. The competition, which makes up for what it lacks in glittery gowns with creativity and innovation, rewards student inventors in science, engineering and technology.

Corey Centen and Nilesh Patel, the McMaster students behind MaRS client Atreo Medical, were among the 2007 winners.

psiphon — an anti-internet-censorship tool designed by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — is the first recipient of a new award for digital pioneers chosen by an international group of specialists and awarded in Paris this month.

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