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What Wayne Gretzky taught me about business in 20 minutes

Editor’s note: We don’t usually post personal essays on MI’s website, but we couldn’t pass on this one. Whether you’re a hockey fan or an entrepreneur looking for a fresh business perspective, we hope you’ll agree.

Last Wednesday, I was meeting an old friend for lunch in downtown Toronto. We’re both from Edmonton; we were classmates at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. And we’re hockey fans. So I said, “Let’s have lunch at Wayne Gretzky’s.”

We didn’t expect to meet Wayne himself, but that’s what happened. One minute I was eating fish tacos. The next minute, my friend’s pointing with his fork: “Dude, Wayne Gretzky’s right behind you.”

Wayne Gretzky (centre) and MI's Hassan Jaferi (right) with X.
Wayne Gretzky (centre) and MI’s Hassan Jaferi (right) with Matthew Killick.

I was in Grade 2 when Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1987. One of my classmates was the daughter of Andy Moog, the team goalie. He brought the cup into class after the Oilers won so we could all touch it. I grew up playing street hockey in Edmonton and idolizing Wayne. We all did.

So you’ll understand that we had to stop him and say hi. We just had to.

And then we were stunned when he put his glass down on our table and spent 20 minutes talking to us about his various business activities.

My hands were shaking as we left the restaurant an hour later. But here’s five things I managed to take away from this surreal and wonderful experience.

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What does MaRS Innovation’s funding extension mean for Toronto’s academic entrepreneurs?

Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.

Created in 2008, MaRS Innovation (MI) bridges the chasm between the early-stage technologies emerging from its 16 member institutions and successful startup companies and licensable technologies.

By offering early-stage funding in tandem with hands-on management, business development, mentorship and intellectual property protection strategy, MI acts as a commercialization agent for its members and researchers.

Networks of Centres of Excellence logoEarlier this year, the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada awarded MI $14.95 million to continue its mandate as a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR), matched by $25 million from membership fees and private sector investments.

So what does that success mean for MI’s ability to serve the needs of academic entrepreneurs based in Toronto?

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Dr. Raphael Hofstein’s guest column posted on Biotechnology Focus

Raphael Hofstein
Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation.

Biotechnology Focus, a compendium of the Canadian life sciences industry, has published a guest column by MaRS Innovation President & CEO, Raphael Hofstein.

The article examines how to build a strong biotechnology cluster from an academic base in the midst of a global recession.

Here’s an excerpt:

Gone are the days of large-scale, well-funded, in-house departments with resources to liberally support academic and start-up collaborations. Financial pressures and the economic downturn have made it clear that the go-it-alone model is no longer sustainable, and industry players are recognizing that they don’t have a monopoly on research acumen and disruptive ideas. Simultaneously, industry has expressed less interest in investing in early-stage technologies that carry significant risk. They remain receptive to the research emerging from academic enterprise, but need a means of bridging the gap that technologies face as they move from the bench to the market.

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VP Joel Liederman’s Financial Post article on mitigating innovation risk

Joel Liederman, vice-president (physical sciences)
Joel Liederman, MI’s vice-president of business development and physical sciences

MaRS Innovation’s Vice-President of Business Development and Physical Sciences Joel Liederman, has published an article in the Financial Post about strategies to mitigate risk within the innovation space.

The article, titled “Innovation Success Means Mitigating Risk,” is featured in the newspaper’s Productive Conversations section.

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