Transcript - Ontario’s Innovation Agenda: Direct Engagement

Ilse Treurnicht
CEO of the MaRS Discovery District

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Thank you very much, I may prompt to use the story of MaRS a little bit to illustrate the themes the Minister described, but also to provide a bit of an illustration for, I think, some of the important trends that we need to focus on, but also as one of the exciting opportunities that we have to build capacity in this province. 

In following on Ken’s comment the wonderful thing about MaRS is it’s a really front seat at the window of globalization.  We’re looking at that every day and certainly it conveys that sense of urgency. 

So for those of you who don’t know the story of MaRS, 12 very high-profile business leaders in Toronto, working with academic and community partners started the idea of MaRS in 2000, and it was singularly focused on the question of “how do we mobilize our history and our rich tradition of scientific excellence in discovery and put that to work for our economic future?”            

In the ensuing years the prime lands on the corner of College and University were purchased, international models were studied, the community was engaged.  Phase 1 was developed and opened in September 2005 and we are now building right on that prime location of College and University the Phase II development, which will double the innovation hub to a 1.5 million square foot facility – certainly of global scale.  What is more interesting about this, though, is that what has happened in the very brief two years since the facility has opened.  We now have a situation where 2,000 people from the previously disconnected communities of science, business and money come to work at MaRS every day.  Another 100,000 and more come every year come to workshops, networking events, skills-building, networking conferences; focused on that process of commercialization not just starting companies, not just taking scientific ideas and thinking about markets, but also how to build and scale companies into that global economy.  That capacity-building is multiplying every day as that web of networks gets stronger and it’s a really interesting – sort of an organic model – that is being put to work for our economy. 

I think the three things that are particularly interesting about MaRS in terms of what is Ontario’s competitive position in this very intense global competition is first: the unique public-private partnership nature of MaRS.  We will not be able to tackle any of these complex problems as academe, or as business, or as government.  We need to find new models to work together.  So, that business leadership at the beginning of MaRS enabled the mobilization of significant private capital and in fact, today we’re building Phase II with a $350 million investment of the world’s leading cluster development firm and that has been the role of the catalyst of government following that initial community leadership, and seeing that leap forward and engagement and connectivity to the outside world.  In the knowledge economy, that public-private partnership is critical because universities need strong companies and strong companies need strong universities so that synergy needs to be working for both sides of the equation. 

The second theme that’s interesting is that a place-based innovation hub, like MaRS, located in this incredibly diverse and vibrant city allows you to, first of all, create a global address because you’re building on the global address of the city and its assets and secondly, it allows you to aggregate and connect the local assets and put them out there for the outside world to find, so it’s interesting that the awareness of MaRS far exceeds anything we have done to market it internationally, but because the initial concept was bold, somewhat un-Canadian, it said we were strong in research, we can be the best in commercialization, and the scale of it is simply enough to draw that international attention. 

The third theme, which I find very interesting and one I totally underestimated when I first started there is – it’s a neutral place, it’s not government, it’s not business, it’s not academe but it’s a place that enables new conversations between those stakeholders and what’s particularly interesting about the place is it’s focused on building this culture of entrepreneurship and that allows a whole new sort of creative energy to come to bear, as well, because it’s not driven by the agendas of any one of those organizations. 

Final comment: for a project like MaRS or for navigating this very ambiguous territory of the global knowledge economy, there is no magic bullet.  You have to do a number of different things, and from a government perspective you need sustained effort and sustained investment because the payoffs come over time and you have to invest before the solutions are there. 

But secondly, I think the wonderful thing for Ontario is exactly as Ken described it.  I think as a jurisdiction we are very focused on this agenda and perhaps it is because we don’t have oil gushing out of the ground, but the answer and the opportunity for MaRS is what this public-private collaboration has done is it’s given us now a very powerful engine to put to work to drive this agenda forward, and it’s a very exciting time from that perspective.