MaRS Innovation and its member institutions are is profiled in International Innovation‘s July issue (#191) in a feature interview with Dr. Rafi Hofstein, MI’s president and CEO, written by Rosemary Peters.

The article is posted on the publication’s website and viewable through a digital interface (pages 80 and 81).

Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Hofstein’s comments:

“Canada’s academic research community is internationally highly competitive, but it has been argued that its scientific commercial success tags behind other countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. While this remains a matter of debate, I do agree that we need to continually encourage additional sources of seed capital to join is so as to allow for accelerated advancement of early-stage technologies. Industry needs to become much more engaged in advancing early-stage (and promising!) technologies emerging from the academic sector, which are usually young and in significant attention, navigation, management expertise and seed capital provisions. These are areas of rising importance in Canada, as many innovations fall into the ‘valley of death’ due to a lack of proper funding, or they leave the country and flourish in the U.S. where funding is more abundant.

We’re serious about our role in ensuring the technology companies we incubate in Canada and contribute to the country’s economic growth. We are committed to job creation in Canada, keeping companies in the country is a key metric of our success. To date, MaRS Innovation’s efforts have created over 300 high-quality jobs and 37 out of 38 companies remain in the country. At a certain point, our vision is to build a critical talent mass whereby seasoned management can move from one company to the next as opportunities emerge, similar to the ecosystem we see in other innovation hubs.”

The full article is available on International Innovation.