For Our Investors

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.

Commercialization Process Map and Disclosures by Discipline

Integration

When investors want to know what Toronto has to offer, they are invited to step through the door of the MaRS Innovation (MI) office, in the heart of the city and at the core of Canada’s research complex. Our one-stop-shop opens the window onto a range of only the most market-disruptive, most patentable technologies in therapeutics, medical devices and diagnostics, advanced engineering and materials, and ICT.

Investment

MI adheres to strict due diligence in evaluating members’ technologies, their IP status, and their market strength. We know investors will do the same. During the due-diligence phase, we seek feedback from potential licensees and investors on the technology opportunity.

MI also invests foundational funding in patent review and filing; and in costly technology development, at just the point when great Canadian inventions are in danger of languishing in the lab: at the early and pre-clinical stages.

Aggregation

Research clusters worldwide have remarked on an extraordinary feat: 14 diverse, productive research entities—in Toronto, one of the major hubs of North American health and engineering sciences— banding together to be formally represented by one commercialization agent, MaRs Innovation.

This achievement signals MI’s collaborative capacity to translate our members’ top, revolutionary science into business opportunities. We have phenomenal deal flow, with the resulting probability of isolating the jewels from a crown of possibilities. In 2009-2010, MI reviewed more than 200 disclosures and accepted approximately 10 percent into our commercialization pipeline based on rigorous review. All are now at progressive stages of early commercialization. Please see Assets Under Development for highlights.

In de-risking technologies at the early stages, MI aggregates their value to investors by a factor of five:

  • By capitalizing on our commercialization team’s extensive and varied experience in early-stage IP;
  • By bundling technologies from across our membership as they productively apply to a specific disease; to a range of diseases or treatment options; or to a range of applications in ICT or advanced engineering;
  • By leveraging value off the sizable public commitment to MaRS Innovation: $14.95 million from the federal government and $10 million from our member partners;
  • By leveraging this investment further through additional, third-party public funding for commercialization projects;
  • And by combining the “science case” with the “business case” for investors’ consideration.

MI sits at the hub of Toronto discovery in the health-based and physical sciences and ICT.

Toronto Is:

  • Home to more highly cited scientists per capita than the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany or Japan.
  • The venue for approximately $1.3 billion in federal funding for research, representing 20 percent of Canada’s total investment.
  • One of the largest medical-hospital complexes in North America and Canada’s largest research and education hub.
  • The fourth-largest urban region in North America by population.
  • The location of 79,000 science and technology workplaces.
  • The third-largest ICT cluster in North America.
  • Ranked #4 globally for ease of doing business (MasterCard Worldwide Center of Commerce Index, 2008).