For the Public
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.
Toronto Is:
- One of the largest medical-hospital complexes in North America and Canada’s largest research and education hub.
- The source for 36 percent of all Canadian scientific publications and 30 percent of Canada’s most highly cited scientists.
- Home to more highly cited scientists per capita than the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany or Japan
With stats like these, Toronto universities and health centres are among the world’s top achievers in science.
Yet great ideas need a lot of targeted, real-world planning and funding to get them into the market as products and services for people, especially in a fiercly competitive global market.
Canada has many things to be proud of in our public commitment to social benefits of all kinds. But on the business side of the equation, the productivity of our economy—how it grows in sustainable ways to make high-end products and services and provide high-quality jobs for Canadians—has dropped over the past generation in comparison to other advanced countries.
MaRS Innovation is here to help reverse that trend for the largest and most active research hub in the country, Toronto. We are proof of the Government of Canada’s decision to build a Canadian advantage for Canadians, and for our standard of living. The Canadian strategy is to invest long term in diverse science and technology—in unique new healthcare devices, diagnostics and therapeutics, advanced engineering and information technologies—that will make it to market and strengthen our economy and our personal health and well-being, in the good times and the bad.
MI will ensure that the major funding that Canadians already provide to research translates into results that we can see and use, through MI’s own efforts and the investment of relevant, reputable companies and investors.
When Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier said, at the Ottawa Canadian Club in 1904, “I think that we can claim that it is Canada that shall fill the twentieth century,” he was referring largely to anticipated economic success and prosperity. Over a century later, MI is here to make that phrase come true for a new innovation-based economy and a changing Canada today.
Please see Assets Under Development for examples of what MI is doing to move the best Canadian ideas to market.
