Last week, CommerceLab hosted a Google Hangout that brought together a panel of experts who could provide some advice and direction to help academics determine the best option for their work. Hosted by consultant Rick Paradis, the Hangout was the second online extension of a live workshop series that was also produced by CommerceLab.
The full recording is below, but we’ve once again captured some of the key highlights and takeaways:
Beware the $10,000 mouse trap: According to Jennifer MacInnis, senior director, applied research and commercialization, and legal counsel at Ryerson University, some researchers work on technology that may lack a viable market. If they manage to ensure someone will buy what they’re selling, it’s more a matter of how much they are willing to put into it. Many startups are founded, she said, because there isn’t an obvious company that would license the intellectual property (IP) involved.
“Startups take a lot of work, time and energy. They take people devoted to bringing the startup forward,” she said. Although finding someone to take the IP can also be difficult, “Once you’ve found your licensee, you’re turning your baby over to boarding school.”
If IP is all you’ve got, prove it: Researchers may worry that they need to build a functioning product or at least a prototype before seeking to license their technology or create a startup, but that’s not always the case, said Tai Nam, a lawyer with Miller Thomson based in Kitchener-Waterloo.
“If you are looking to license (your research) and exit, try to capture the value of IP through a registration, whether it’s patents or industrial designs, to demonstrate to investors that you have captured it in some form that’s registered and transferable,” he said. “If at an early stage you haven’t fleshed out the details and you haven’t done some experimentation to figure out what the problems might be, it might be hard to file a patent that demonstrates you have possession of the invention.”
Want a partner? First, figure out the parameters: Academics may decide instead of merely creating a startup or licensing that they will partner with an established firm to further their IP. Paula Mendonça, technology commercialization officer for Life Sciences at Genesis Group Inc., recommended thinking carefully about what kind of partner you really need. For example, there are some companies that can do everything, but are specialized in working on certain stages of development. Do you need help to build a product, to market it, to sell it, or all three? Also, consider how IP should be managed when multiple researchers are involved.
“In our case, IP is jointly owned between inventors and the university. When there is IP that comes out and we evaluate it and it has commercial potential, it needs to be assigned to Genesis,” she said. “Having one institution managing that IP definitely makes things easier. We then work it out with the individual inventors in the sharing of royalties . . . It looks unprofessional if you’re dealing with a multinational and you have different inventors pitching different things. You want to present a united front.”
photo credit: Lincolnian (Brian) via photopin cc
]]>If you’ve ever wished for easier access to participants for your UX research, here’s a helpful guide on how to build your own UX research participant test. Included here are insights into the pros and cons of creating your own resource group. Part of that could include a dive into eye-tracking software as a unique way of judging User Experience design. And if your eyes are aching for inspiration, check out the list of winners of the International Design for Experience Awards.
The National Crowdfunding Association (NCFA) – yes, there’s a national crowdfunding association – says things are heading in the right direction in Canada. British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario are pushing forward on crowdfunding exemptions for startups and SMEs. That means startups would be able to raise up to $1.5 million per calendar year. According to the Association’s database, the number of Canadian crowdfunding portals more than tripled from 17 in 2012 to 70 in March 2014.
MaRS is now in its third week of Wearable Wednesdays, a meetup for Canada’s growing wearable tech startups to meet and mingle with those interested in the market. This past Wednesday focused on wearables in the health care industry.
Finally, in the spirit of improving the music listening experience for Canadians, Songza is now pushing out playlists that factor in the weather. This cold Spring is about to warm up.
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Earlier this week CommerceLab hosted a Google Hangout session on Startups for academic researchers, hosted by facilitator Rick Paradis. The online panel was a followup to live workshops he recently presented on behalf of CommerceLab for faculty and grad students at locations in Ontario and Nova Scotia, on commercializing academic research.
The full Hangout is available for on-demand viewing below, but if you can’t watch for the full hour, we’ve culled some of the best takeaways:
Publish before patenting, and you may perish: According to Rob Cowan, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper, it’s important researchers understand that after filing a patent, they will need to provide full details of their invention, which is then investigated in a process that sometimes takes years. Should a researcher publish a paper before doing so, however, their intellectual property rights could be at risk.
“The first step is really just keep it confidential,” he said. “With a startup, often the big consideration is, ‘Do I need a patent or is this something I can build a product around or have a service around?’ In some industries, like life sciences, a patent is more important. In ICT, perhaps less so, unless you’re going head to head with Google or Microsoft.”
Leave the lab behind occasionally: Mary Kilfoil teaches the Lean methodology at Dalhousie University’s faculty of Management in the Rowe School of Business. She said the Lean Canvas” approach, which is a way of documenting a business model, has proven particularly effective for a number of researchers turning their work into startups. But it’s not a one-time exercise.
“You have to continue to do customer discovery — that’s the most critical piece,” she said. “It’s about always being in search mode and searching for your business model. Get out of the building and talk to customers.”
Be a rabbit, not a hippo: Jake Arsenault is an example of a researcher who’s been successful with commercialization, essentially turning his Ph.D thesis into a technology called Backscatter Computed Tomography and forming a business, Inversa Systems. He went even further than Kilfoil in suggesting his peers need to have “great big ears and a little mouth,” listening for feedback wherever they can.
“You want to wear out your shoes, you want to wear out that telephone. There’s (accelerator) programs and all this stuff, but the main thing is you travel, you’re in front of the customer, engaging,” he said. “Find a killer pain point. If you have the promise of taking away that pain, you’ve got their attention.”
Keep your HR hat handy: If and when a researcher launches a startup, the next big hurdle is having the right team surrounding you, said Josh Wright, co-founder of Decision.io.
“All you do is fundraise and hire engineers. It’s a necessary skill to find and retain talent,” he said. “That company culture piece is something that’s becoming very attractive to investors . . . you have to look at what you’re good at and what you’re not. You hire for the deficiencies you have as a person.”
photo credit: Nomadic Lass via photopin cc
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What our advisory board members are saying
“So few Canadian organizations really grasp how quickly things are changing in terms of consumer technology. CommerceLab is an indispensable resource not just for tech companies, but for anyone who wants to stay competitive in the mobile, cloud-based world we now live in.” - Morag Johnston, Director of User Experience, Rogers Communications
“In healthcare and education alone, gamification research is showing that we can measurably improve health and learning outcomes for Canadians. Gamification helps us navigate some otherwise overwhelming data in ways that really do change our behaviour for the better. We’re just starting to pay attention to this important opportunity.” - Neil Randall, Associate Professor, University of Waterloo, Director of the Games Institute
“Canada’s digital signage software companies are some of the most successful in the world, but we’re only beginning to realize the massive market opportunity in this space. That’s why CommerceLab is so important—it’s one of the few places Canadians can go to identify emerging technologies and their business applications, across a vast range of Canadian sectors.” - David Haynes, Founder, Preset Group
]]>The American-made, Vancouver-based Grow Conference is ascending Whistler’s Pacific ranges this year. Discussions will center around the future of connected devices and the Internet of Things, along with the conference’s perennial goal of bringing together people who are “passionate about identifying problems worth solving.”
Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology, Greg Rickford, announced a $20 million business innovation access program for small- and medium-size-businesses. The program aims to provide $50,000 in vouchers to entice entrepreneurs to partner with universities, colleges, and research facilities that are actively conducting research, while at the same time giving students experience tackling real-world business problems.
Toronto’s AisleLabs, which uses big data analytics to understand shopper’s in-store activities, just closed a round of funding. The company gathers data using wifi signals and iBeacons, transmitting intelligence to marketers that can make offline retailers understand buying patterns with as much analytic sophistication as their online counterparts. The data could also help dramatically improve the effectiveness of DOOH displays.
Which reminds us: If you happen to be passing through the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, get your hands on MasterCard’s new DOOH initiative, which includes two enormous flex screens, an eight-panel video wall and a 65-inch touchscreen. The campaign, called “Priceless,” allows passersby to check out behind-the-scenes sports moments and buy sports memorabilia – even if they’re not going to a game.
]]>A second spotlight at SXSW has been on education, with Canadian companies taking center stage. Montreal’s Learning Bird focused its talk on the power of the web to match teacher expertise with student learning styles. Meanwhile, Toronto’s Planboard focused on strategies that engage professional learning communities to build online resources and tools for students and educators.
Speaking of education, real-time publishing platform, ImgZine, has released a white paper on increasing employee engagement through a mobile first strategy. And Toronto’s Dx3 conference recently offered us lessons on why the future of work is play, with companies like PHD interested in how game mechanics can improve their business. Here, for example, is how the company is gamifying its approach to media planning.
And in education for interactive display readers, on March 25, Omnivex CEO and Director of Software Development Doug Bannister will be hosting a webinar on “Breaking Through the Digital Signage Hype.” Bannister plans to help set aside the current fixation with what digital signage “could” offer and turn our focus to what it can do now, covering the pros and cons of a wide range of offerings.
This week also saw the University of Waterloo announce the ten finalists of VeloCity‘s incubator, all of whom are vying for a slice of the $100,000 startup pie. Finalists who win the pitch competition will receive $25,000 and a chance to work in the VeloCity garage in downtown Waterloo. Check here for a full list of finalists.
And in news that’s simply out of this world, Toronto hosts the Space Apps 2014 hackathon in April. The competition is all about lacing up your moonboots and hacking out an app for space – with NASA’s assistance, of course. It’s an international event with entries of all sorts, from “silly to serious, fantastical to feasible.” Space App entrants will get to lay hands on NASA’s vast troves of data and work with a selection of its scientists and mentors.
]]>Meanwhile, in Calgary, Slyce acquired $10.5 million of its own in VC funding for its visual product search application, which places retailers’ offerings in front of mobile consumers. And BlackBerry is back in the news this week with tests of a targeted social ad offering. The smartphone maker is testing an advertising model in its BBM Channels that would allow advertisers to select specific market segments to get eyes on their digital ads.
Back in Toronto, Vantage Analytics is announcing it’s now monitoring 600 different Shopify stores with its easy-on-the-eyes analytics dashboards. In numbers, they’ve analyzed over 800,000 transactions worth more than $65 million.
In Canadian digital signage news, Buffalo Wild Wings will be rolling out digital tablets and displays to a BBQ-sauced tabletop near you. The digital screens will not only take food and drink orders, but let us play games, listen to our incessant requests for a better playlist, and allow us to pay our bills. The interactive displays will be in all North American Wild Wings locations by the end of 2015.
If you’re looking for UX inspiration, this article is here to remind you to keep it clean and clear. If that sounds too complex, check out this 17-year-old Indian student’s Chrome plugin that aims to improve UX for Color Blind Internet users. The program, called ReColor, adjusts image output for the best experience by the user and has already passed its fundraising goal on Indiegogo.
And, finally, in rapid-fire startup news, Toronto’s Extreme Startups accelerator is announcing its fifth cohort this week. Startups include Dub, a professional networking app; Fora, a marketplace for accredited courses for young professionals in Africa; Hurrier, an on-demand delivery app; Preo, an app for ordering at bars and restaurants; and Innohub Uplette, which delivers context-aware mobile landing pages to devices that can be tailored and optimized in real-time.
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These questions and more will be addressed by an online panel whose expertise includes: evaluating startups and their potential, funding, legal questions, HR, growth planning and more.
On Wednesday, March 26th, 1pm EDT, VIEW online at the CommerceLab YouTube channel: youtube.com/theCommerceLab
JOIN in with your questions via Twitter addressed to @theCommerceLab.
This online panel will be run as a Google Hangout On Air. If you would like to join the panel, we have spots for 2 academic researchers exploring the startup option. If you would like to participate, email [email protected] with a couple sentences on where you are in your commercialization process and why you would like to join.
]]>As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the Ontario Government was wrapping up its Green Button app challenge for Ontario Energy. Now a winner has been chosen: Wattson, a personal butler that let’s you gauge usage habits in close to real time. A full list of winners can be found here, including Wattermelon, which, in true game-like fashion, allows you to compare your energy usage to your neighbors’.
Password authentication was a hot topic at Mobile World Congress, and Toronto’s Bionym took home the top spot in its annual Bluetooth Breakthrough Award, winning both Breakthrough Prototype and Overall Winner for its Nymi device. Nymi reads the user’s heart rate and translates it into a signature for unlocking devices.
Waterloo’s Desire2Learn has a new Sao Paulo office. The company has seen significant growth, and is edging up offerings in Latin America with new tech support and sales teams. This comes on the heels of a recent office opening in St. John’s.
Elsewhere in education, Ontario’s CoreFour just closed its first round of funding for “multiple millions of dollars” for its Edsby program, which helps students track and trace their progress through an online social application. And Samsung is in the process of giving one million dollars in grants to select schools across Canada to provide tech for young learners.
And at the intersection of education, art and digital signage, is Toronto-bound Art in Transit—A new DOOH program by Pattison that will display Cybele Young’s award-winning children’s picture book Ten Birds, and its follow-up, Ten Birds Meet a Monster, on Toronto’s digital subway screens and above ground video boards.
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The former chief data scientist of URL shortening service Bit.ly and data scientist in residence at Accel Partners is the keynote speaker at this Friday’s CODE 2014 Inspiration Day at the University of Waterloo’s campus in Stratford, Ont. CODE, or the Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE) event, is a three-day hackathon for students, entrepreneurs and innovators. Mason will be discussing the visualization of big data, or unstructured information that is presenting new opportunities for companies and researchers to find valuable insights. Open data, meanwhile, refers to the release of digitized public sector information that could redefine the user experience of citizens.
In an interview with the University published Tuesday, Mason offered her take on how to achieve success with big data:
Mason says the startup community needs people who can solve problems and create and work without a step-by-step plan. “You also need the ability to play – to know how to go from the data you have to an interesting question that is relevant,” says Mason . . . “when we start to play with it and think about it we can learn about things we never would have had the opportunity to learn. There are applications in both business and science.”
Get more information on the CODE Inspiration Day program on Feb. 28 and watch the clip below to learn more about Mason’s approach to data science.
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