Winners of the TechAlliance 60-second pitch contest

A 60-second pitch – some think it would be a simple task to master, but as the 16 participants in TechAlliance’s recent pitch contest soon learned, a lot can happen in one minute.

While you may not have a timer ticking away behind you, as our competitors did, it’s important to keep in mind that you risk losing your audience the more complex or lengthy your pitch gets. No matter if your audience is an investor, a customer or if you’re trying to recruit a new employee - K.I.S.S., or risk getting the kiss-off.

In the first three weeks in June, sixteen representatives from London, Ontario-based companies signed up for TechAlliance’s annual pitch-off, a trio of events that included a workshop, the actual competition and a celebration where the winners were announced. In this three-part series, you’ll meet the top finalists of the 60-Second Pitch Contest and read about their tips and suggestions for crafting a perfect pitch (see their pitches here).

Watch Tina Gokstorp of CTAR give her pitch.

First up is Tina Gokstorp from CTAR Corp., who took top spot in the competition.

Q: What made you decide to sign-up for the 60-Second Pitch Contest?

A: It was a really great opportunity for us to think and learn about how we can present our business in a clear and effective way. The contest was a resource for technique, suggestions and ideas, as well as feedback and practice.

Q: What was the most challenging part about competing?

A: Remembering to stay calm, engaging and natural… and to breathe!

Q: Any tips for someone struggling with developing their pitch?

A: I would recommend people look outside of their organization for feedback and input make the process collaborative. You have to make sure that what you’re saying is something others, who may not be familiar with your business, want to hear.

Q: What sticks out in your mind as the most valuable lesson you learned from the competition?

A: Definitely identifying our pain and solution statements properly, essentially figuring out where the gap in the market is that our company fills. It’s easy to overlook simplicity, or take it for granted, when explaining what you offer or do. By having clear statements that show the pain in the market and how we solve it, it makes pitching a lot easier.

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Check in next week for my chat with second finalist Alexandra Reid from MITACS Inc. For more information about TechAlliance’s 60-Second Pitch Contest and to watch the video of the winning pitches, click here.

John Manley takes another role

The Honourable John Manley - a member of the MaRS Board of Directors and chair of MaRS’ inaugural fundraising cabinet - is set to take on his next role in a career of distinguished public service.

As of October 2009, Mr. Manley will succeed Thomas D’Aquino as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. The policies the council influences have an impact on all who work in Canadian business.

The CCCE is a not-for-profit and non-partisan organization composed of 150 chief executives and entrepreneurs heading Canada’s leading enterprises. The Council’s approach to advocacy is founded on its members’ dedication to building globally competitive Canadian enterprises and a more prosperous Canada. Council members help shape policy on a range of issues from fiscal and monetary policy to multilateral trade, the environment, innovation, education, health and national unity.

“The Council has forged a unique role as a constructive and non-partisan force for sound public policy in this country,” Mr. Manley said. “I am honoured by the opportunity to build on its impressive record of forging creative solutions and shaping national consensus on issues that matter to all Canadians.”

A former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and federal Cabinet member, Mr. Manley returned to practice law in 2004 as Counsel at McCarthy Tétrault. In 2005, he co-chaired an independent Task Force on the Future of North America for the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. In October 2007, he was named by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Chair of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan.

Read more in the press release: “John Manley to Succeed Thomas D’aquino As President and Chief Executive Officer of The Canadian Council of Chief Executives” (pdf)

Measuring wellbeing

“How are Canadians really doing?” This is the question posed by the first report of the Institute of Wellbeing. Why does it think that we don’t “really” understand Canadians’ wellbeing? Because GDP remains the most common measure, despite the fact that it wasn’t originally intended to be used as such, and that it implies a very narrow idea of what makes life good. Spending on tobacco, natural and human-made disasters, crime and accidents all make GDP go up, but they are hardly signs that Canadians are better off. The Report unveils a better measure, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), in the hope of re-centering public policy and discourse on a more relevant set of priorities.

So how does one identify the metrics of wellbeing? Getting it wrong means introducing a different set of distortions into policy discourse. The Institute’s answer: consult with Canadians about what matters to them and their families, their aspirations for their communities, the types of information they felt would help them understand whether things were getting better or worse and whom to hold accountable. The Institute condensed its findings into eight domains:

Simon Kuznets, the inventor of GDP, once said "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP."

• Arts, culture and recreation
• Civic engagement
• Community vitality
• Education
• Environment
• Healthy populations
• Living standards
• Time use

The report presented the Institute’s findings on three domains: living standards, healthy populations and community vitality. In my opinion, most of the findings were (obviously) very important, but not qualitatively different from previous studies. For example:

• GDP has increased since 1971, but inequality has increased and poverty remains the same;
• Five groups—lone parents, unattached individuals aged 45-64, recent immigrants (of which ¾ have been visible minorities since 2000), persons with work-limiting disabilities and Aboriginal peoples living off-reserve—represent one-quarter of the population but 62 per cent of people in persistent low-income.

What I think is especially innovative about the CIW is the emphasis that a holistic understanding of wellbeing should set our policy priorities: that social or environmental concerns are not a separate issue from the economy and vice versa. This, of course, is the name of the game at SiG@MaRS, where we’re trying to pioneer a way of doing business with a blended, more holistic, idea of value.

The reports and other cool information are available to the public at www.ciw.ca. Stay tuned: as the Institute releases reports for other domains, it plans to extensively account for the interactions between them.

Betting on management is quite the gamble.

An interesting study has recently been released which calls into question the validity of the “always bet on management” mantra.

To study the impact of management talent on fundraising, Dr. David Townsend (North Carolina State U.) and Dr. Lowell Busenitz (U. Oklahoma) followed the capitalization outcomes for 144 Oklahoma-based technology ventures ranked for management strength and technology strength.

Not surprisingly, ventures which had a combination of strong management and strong technology were able to raise funds to meet their development needs.

More unusual were the findings that

• ventures with weaker management teams and weaker technologies were also able to meet their capitalization goals; and

• ventures with a management and technology mismatch (e.g. strong management + weaker technology) struggled to reach their capitalization goals.

The authors concluded that the ventures with weaker management and technologies had set their fundraising targets lower and, thus, were able to meet their expectations.

The report also indicates that a moderate amount of under-capitalization is not fatal in itself since enterprising management can utilize a wide range of strategies to overcome the cash shortfall.

Read the report summary here (PDF) and the press release here: “Study: Lack of capital not a ‘death sentence’ for start-ups“.

Thanks to Dr. David Townsend for sharing his findings with us.

Here’s the round-up of the week in the newsfeeds. Below I highlight my favourite articles of the week from each category.

Today’s Top Pick - “Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone“. Find out more under Business and Entrepreneurship.

• Biotechnology “California Agency Offers Up To $210M In Stem-Cell Funding”
• Biopharmaceuticals “Merck Partners With Non-Profit For Neglected Diseases Initiative
• Cleantech “Obama Administration Announces $8 Billion in Loans for Ford, Nissan, and Tesla”
• Information and Communication Technology “Intel, Nokia team up for opportunities in PC-mobile convergence”
• Venture Capital “The 5 mHealth start-ups that received venture capital in 2009″
• Business and Entrepreneurship “Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone”
• Science and Innovation “Ice on fire: The next fossil fuel”
• Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship “The Top 100 Tweeps to Follow for Social Entrepreneurship”

Subscribe to the MaRS industry RSS feeds to read what we’re reading.

Download MaRS' industry briefing

The verdict is in: Brains are hotter than ever. You could say the whole field of neuroscience is on fire. Daily we are bombarded with news highlighting our expanding understanding of cognition, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Canada strongly holds its own in the world of neurotechnology. Canada’s neuroscience research is world-class, ranking fifth in the world in the number of neuroscience citations. For details check out MaRS’ latest industry briefing, “Neurotechnology: Focus on Aging“.

My interest in the field has been bolstered through our partnering with Baycrest. I feel very lucky to be a member of the Baycrest community. Firstly, because it is an amazing institution and a constant source of inspiration for me.  This month, thanks to Baycrest, I experienced my own geeky nirvana while attending the frontal lobe conference in honour of Dr. Stuss. My favorite lecture was delivered by Dr. Terry Picton who mixed metaphors of art and hard data to describe the construction of a mind.

The frontal lobes are considered our emotional control centre, they are home to our personality. They are further involved in problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgment, impulse control, motor function, as well as social and sexual behavior.

Neuroscientists have two basic strategies for understanding brain function: the study of patients with certain damage (stroke, injury etc.) and employing imaging techniques (fMRI, EEG, MEG). The combination of these approaches makes it possible to understand and model how neural regional action and interaction relate to perception, attention, and memory. This understanding guides researchers in the development of rehabilitation strategies.

Frontal lobes make us human. It is interesting that damage to the frontal lobes may have an insignificant effect upon traditional IQ test results while impacting considerably our problem solving and understanding the mental processes of others. One of the most common characteristics of frontal lobe damage is difficulty in correctly interpreting feedback from one’s environment.

Don’t you think it is time to start working on our frontal lobes?

From Body & Soul, a play for fearless women

Our social innovation program (SiG@MaRS) works with many female social entrepreneurs who are creating a new path outside stereotypical roles. To celebrate them and the other “fearless women” making a difference, SiG held an event featuring Judith Thompson’s play, Body & Soul at the Tarragon Theatre last Tuesday. There, SiG@MaRS and the Ontario Trillium Foundation announced a feasibility study for the School for Social Entrepreneurs based on the UK model.

Julia Moulden, author of We are the New Radicals, asked the room of 100+ entrepreneurial women, “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of women rising”. Her position is that today’s fearless women are on a mission, “and this time we intend to save the world.”

Judith Thompson, playwright, at her play, Body & Soul, presented by SiG@MaRS

Judith Thompson is known for giving voice to people whose voices are not heard. She identifies her work as “investing time and research that turned into a career … and those voices got out into the world.”

Body & Soul represents a leap of faith taken by Judith and her collaborators, Lois Fine and Brenda Surminski, which together with time, energy, a $20K loan and a $10K grant, has paid off – the run is completely sold out.

The play is a collective creation “about the second act of a woman’s life” – 12 women tell their own stories, bringing their lives to life onstage. Each woman represents the potential of every person to engage in life and respond to both joy and adversity with creativity and strength. From the post show discussion, I’d say we all left the theatre with 12 new friends and a good dose of inspiration.

The next day, my colleague, Jen White, who had to miss the event, asked me, “Did anyone Twitter?”

What? Twitter? As I was wagging my finger at her and saying, “It’s not the done thing in the theatre, darling,” I was struck by the thought, “Why not?” We are talking about voices rising, right? We are pro social tech and limitless networks and real time and all things good and open.

So, Jen and I propose the following Twitter rules for theatre:

1. soundless keyboard;
2. mute mode;
3. back row only;
4. low light.

Oh, and it goes without saying that you must tweet about something important. (Allyson Hewitt did tweet, but only after the event.)

Why not? The Fringe Festival (for Toronto’s theatre) is coming up July 1-12. To Tweet, or not to Tweet…

Judith Thompson’s Body & Soul - A celebration of fearless women from SiG @ MaRS on Vimeo.

Less radiation for thyroid cancer

Researchers from Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital have presented data at the ENDO 2009 Symposium (in Washington DC) indicating that lower doses of chemotherapy are just as effective as larger doses in adjuvant treatment of thyroid cancer.

Dr. Kumar and colleagues were able to reduce the radiation dose by 70 per cent and maintain the same treatment effect as the standard higher dose.

This innovative study helps establish a safer treatment for thyroid cancer - a disease that has shown increasing incidence over the last two decades.  Thyroid cancer occurs approximately three times more frequently in men than women.

Another example of great research being done in Toronto!

Here’s the round-up of the week in the newsfeeds. Below I highlight my favourite articles of the week from each category.

Today’s Top Pick - “Government of Canada Announces $450 Million in New Funding for BDC to Assist Canadian Businesses“. Find out more under Venture Capital.

• Biotechnology “Biologics will dominate in 2014″
• Biopharmaceuticals “Arena Lines Up $100 Million in Final Push for Obesity Drug”
• Cleantech “Researchers Light Up Bus Shelter With Flexible Solar Cells”
• Information and Communication Technology “FCC to Examine Mobile Phone Exclusives”
• Venture Capital “Government of Canada Announces $450 Million in New Funding for BDC to Assist Canadian Businesses”
• Business and Entrepreneurship “Crowdsourcing: What It Means for Innovation”
• Science and Innovation “Device detects heart disease using less than one drop of blood”
• Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship “Jobs for Change: Recruiting a new generation of leaders into the nonprofit, government, and social enterprise sectors”

Subscribe to the MaRS industry RSS feeds to read what we’re reading.

Making digerati out of changemakers

When new methods of communicating, organizing and mobilizing are brought to bear on chronic social issues, amazing change can happen. Between June 8-12, 2009, MaRS held our first ever Net Change, a week dedicated to exploring this intersection between social technology and social change.

What are the implications of new media, technology and strategies to social causes? Fourteen different Net Change events, including an art show, experimented with ways of creating and sharing information and knowledge on this question.

Bridging the “digital divide” between web professionals and people creating social change, participants were from all different sectors and leadership levels. They picked up not only critical skills and tactics in new disciplines, but also an understanding of how to apply them to their organizational strategy. Want to cross the divide too?

All of the week’s events were captured and are now posted online so you can get inspired too. Choose from:

• Web 2.0 training sessions for organizations, non-profits and social purpose ventures
• Conversations with keynotes and panel discussions hosted by community partners like Mobile Monday @MaRS, Toronto Net Tuesday and Wired Wednesday
• Immersion sessions that “prepare your mind” for innovative thought

Net Change also addressed critical concepts such as how to measure the impact of social technology, and what we really mean by social change, while including storytelling to hit theoretical concepts home.

Watch the video now

Check out some of the highlights from the week:

• Net Change video message from Don Tapscott: Tapscott speaks the social trend that makes Net Change Week training important. It’s something to take back to your organization to impart the essential messages and importance of social tech to create buy-in from their leadership.
• Capturing the Net Change story in real-time: Live-blogs and video coverage from all the week’s events.
• “The Skills Exchange”: Three organizations worked with three sharp Canadian interactive agencies for two weeks to find solutions to a wicked problems. Watch the teams present their outcomes.
• Cocktails and inspiration: Social Innovation guru, Ric Young discussed profound innovation and social change with Bill White, a member of MaRS’ Board of Directors at our evening “Fireside Chat”.
• Responsible style: Net Change organizers, roving reporters and volunteers were easily spotted in “Be the Change” T-shirts donated by Me to We Style, which supports the Free the Children organization. Get a 20 per cent discount by inputting NET20 on your order.
• Net Change Art Show: Visual representations of Social Technology, collected through a 24hr open-submission contest and curated by the Net Change team, for all us visual learners.

Also check out the interview with CP24’s “Homepage” and watch for us in TVO’s fall lineup of Digital Literacy. All videos and presentations can be viewed at http://netchangeweek.ca

The week in numbers looked something like this: 1 week, 1 hub, 4 lead organizers, 14 events, 30+ partners, 35+ unique videos to view, 1,500+ participants, 1,880+ following the conversation, and growing.

Be part of the change!

Follow us on Twitter @netchange Email us at info@netchangeweek.com