Thank you for being with us for the fourth month of our new blog. Although a bit late, here is a recap of our posts from May in case you missed them, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which covered a great swath of topics including government and education’s role in the startup ecosystem, cultures of risk, intellectual property, sustainable viable products and other pearls of wisdom.
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, now provides the fourth of his commentaries on the importance to a company of protecting its intellectual property.
By David French
In a previous post, I talked about the importance of having an IP Coordinator on the team and how this role fits into an organization. Part of the responsibilities of such an individual is to ensure that a company is obtaining value when it pays to patent its inventions. I identified the three principles that apply if the objective is to obtain meaningful patents:
- Right invention
- Right circumstances
- Right procedures
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By Alexandra Reid
I am a fortunate community manager because I get to both write social media strategies and carry them through. This seamless process allows me to have a firm grip on the day-to-day online activities of our clients with the foresight to effectively steer these activities to reach long-term goals.
While it is beneficial to have a team of professionals that handle the areas of social media in which they are specialized, there are some major obstacles to this approach, especially for new ventures that do not have bottomless budgets to devote to the cause. For social media to be planned and carried out in house requires a dramatic reorganization of the departments that would handle the accounts (usually a battle between marketing and sales) as well as a huge commitment of time and resources. Alternatively, if you wish to outsource social media to a large agency, you run the risk of paying a small fortune for senior professionals to handle your accounts, while, unbeknownst to you, the bulk of the tasks are handed down to the juniors.
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This is the 19th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Throughout this series, we have often referenced startup accelerators and the important role they play in the commercialization ecosystem, as well as where government support fits into the equation. So we thought it was time to take a closer look at these entities by profiling three different ones from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.
We continue this week with TechStars, a mentorship-driven seed-stage investment program that operates three-month sessions in Seattle, Boulder, Boston and New York. We caught up with Nicole Glaros, managing director of TechStars Boulder, to talk about what has made the program successful, how it works and why it chose the cities it did in which to operate.
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By Linda Forrest
Earlier this week, I traveled over to Canada’s newly-crowned Silicon Valley North with our Francis Moran. To say that the energy and dynamism of that tech community is inspiring and exciting would be a profound understatement. The place is positively electric, and everyone we encountered was friendly, welcoming and eager to interact, share and connect.
The timing of our jaunt was based largely around the Communitech Techworking Breakfast with the Boss, the guest of honour for which was Kunal Gupta, CEO and founder of Polar Mobile. While still in university, this impressive young man was responsible for starting the Impact Entrepreneurship Group, whose goal is to create the next generation of entrepreneurs and help young entrepreneurs realize their true potential. This group, as well as Kunal’s knack for networking, has rendered him a well-known professional within Canada’s Technology Triangle and well beyond. In fact, he’s quite the frequent flyer, jetting between Polar’s head office in Toronto, other Polar outposts in the U.S., and customers in New York, London, Dubai and elsewhere.
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Where’s your next VP of sales or marketing coming from?
June 02, 2011 by Francis Moran
It has been a common lament of technology companies in Canada that this country lacks high-quality sales and marketing talent, driving CEOs to source their c-level executives from south of the border […]
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Do you have the sound bites to drive your business?
June 01, 2011 by Tony Bailetti
When bringing technology to market, a supplier typically produces a set of sound bites in order to feature and describe how its products and services benefit potential customers, partners and investors. A sound bite is a very short piece of information considered to be an important feature the supplier wishes current and potential stakeholders to remember […]
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Five advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing social media
May 31, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
Outsourcing social media has received mixed reviews and it seems that this debate is growing fiercer as businesses become increasingly more aware of the enormous impact social media can have on their reputation […]
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Accelerated: Waterloo’s culture of collaboration
May 30, 2011 by Francis Moran
Throughout this series, we have often referenced startup accelerators and the important role they play in the commercialization ecosystem, as well as where government support fits into the equation […]
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Tech is a man’s man’s man’s man’s world…or is it?
May 27, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Reading yesterday’s post about the role formal education plays in entrepreneurship, I was reminded of an article I read a few months ago about the “real reason women quit engineering.” […]
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OMG! There’s an entrepreneur on campus
May 26, 2011 by Francis Moran
Over the past couple of weeks, we have explored where and how government can facilitate the process of commercialization to help technology entrepreneurs get their products to market. Throughout this series, we have talked about the entrepreneurial right stuff and the value of those soft skills collectively referred to as emotional intelligence […]
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QNX’s customer-centric culture pays dividends
May 25, 2011 by Leo Valiquette
It’s been a thirty-year journey for Ottawa’s QNX Software Systems, largely under what has jokingly been referred to as “stealth mode.” Last year, the company saw its brand boosted through its acquisition by Research in Motion […]
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Sustainable viable product: The next step
May 24, 2011 by Peter Hanschke
Up until now I’ve talked about getting to your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)and creating your Market Validation Plan. To re-cap, MVP is your product with the minimum set of features and capabilities to satisfy the needs of your early customers […]
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It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]