For Inventors
Outlined in the chart below, MaRS Innovation has established an effective process to review, research, support and help transform disclosures from our member institutions into marketable products and processes. Our goal is always to build on an invention’s value, focusing on inventions in the life sciences, physical sciences, medical devices and ICT.
MaRS Innovation has expertise in all areas of new discovery development and commercialization. Our innovation team brings a remarkable depth of experience in market intelligence and analysis, investor sourcing, technical know-how, deal-making and licensing to the often confusing and intimidating process of turning a new idea into a sustainable business.
Just as important, we have strong entrepreneurial instincts: we know both sides of “the valley of death,” where so many bright ideas disappear for want of funding and expertise in creating and building an enterprise around a new discovery.
We offer not only expert advice, but also financial and other tools to help inventors from our member institutions begin the journey of taking their discovery from the bench to the bedside, not just in Canada, but to markets around the world.
A process to drive ideas to market
We will always try to build on an invention’s value, focusing on those in the life sciences, physical sciences, medical devices and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
That effort begins with an established process to review, research, support and help transform disclosures from our members into marketable products and processes.
Make no mistake: this is challenging at the best of times. Commercialization has become more stringent, costly and time-consuming. So it is harder to find funding in the early, dollar-intensive stages of development, especially with therapeutic technologies and medical devices. Conversely, with software and green technologies, the race for market success is often to the swiftest. In many cases as well, inventors from our member institutions are entering an overcrowded marketplace, with many ways to structure ‘the deal,’ and with industrial partners and investors looking mainly for so-called blockbuster opportunities to justify their investments.
Given these multiple challenges, we work to develop the best strategy for timely and sustained success. To do this effectively, we constantly interact with investors to stay alert to their changing interests and opportunities.
We always try to create the greatest benefit to our members’ intellectual property and the greatest return on investment for all concerned. This includes safeguarding the inventors’ time so they can continue to conduct research and clinical care.
Once we have chosen the most commercially promising discoveries from the hundreds of prospects initially examined, we then attract investors who we know are interested in such discoveries.
How we add value to invention
We establish an agency agreement between MaRS Innovation and the member organization for the commercialization of a specific discovery, ensuring that our policies are compatible with our members’ policies around Intellectual Property.
We then form a deal team from the member’s Technology Transfer Office; from the inventor or discoverer; and from MaRS Innovation. We may also bring on experts in product development or regulatory matters.
Where it makes scientific and business sense to do so, we will bundle compatible discoveries together from across our membership. By helping them “wrap” their research into a larger bundle, we are able to create a bigger and potentially more viable prospect for investors, for example in the area of imaging technologies. This process has just begun and will yield increasing investment activity and business opportunity in the years to come. The idea of bundling is not limited to public support for new discoveries; it is crucial to the marketability of the discoveries themselves. In our initial scan of those 400 discoveries, we found a number of them from different institutions that are closely-related and can be bundled for greater marketability.
We manage and fund the meticulous process of patent filing and issuance. We develop a business case for the intellectual property and undertake project planning on its commercialization.
We fund and find funds to bridge the technology gaps that will strengthen the discovery’s business case. We can provide early or pre-clinical funding for highly promising medical discoveries and also leverage third-party public sector funding for early technology development. We help to promote the discovery to appropriate investors at the very time when that discovery is “most ripe.”
We then ensure that the commercialization moves forward aggressively, based on reaching successive performance milestones.
Mars Innovation also creates new value not just by monetizing our members’ intellectual property, but their physical property as well. Through this initiative, called Monetizing Member Assets (MMA), we have helped fill the excess capacity of the new Toronto Centre of Phenogenomics. The Centre is jointly owned by four of our member hospitals: Mount Sinai Hospital, University Health Network, The Hospital for Sick Children and St. Michael’s Hospital.
Through our industry relationships and expertise, we have been able to sell the facility’s excess capacity to companies like Novartis whose interests align closely with the Centre.
In the months to come, we hope to provide similar services to the fill the capacity of Toronto’s large and growing clinical trials network, which now has 620 trials in progress.
By offering MMA, MaRS Innovation provides another service to our Members, generates new revenues to ourselves and our Members, and reinforces our role in bringing together buyers and sellers of many different kinds.
Finally, we bring monetary benefit back to our members. Typically, the proceeds are divided according to pre-set percentages between the inventor or inventor team; the member institution; and MaRS Innovation.
