MaRS

Outcomes of the Green Energy Finance Forum

Last Friday saw an extraordinary number of Ontario’s financiers in the MaRS auditorium. Why? The Green Energy Act has brought into being an entirely new class of financial asset: financing Feed-in Tariff based renewable energy projects. In easy terms: the FIT guarantees a good rate of return for wind, solar, hydro and biogas projects. It’s like a government guaranteed bond that pays upward of 10%.

On Friday, MaRS was educating Bay Street about the opportunity. The message: renewable energy projects are no longer a fringe play; they’re a strong, mainstream finance opportunity.

Trade secrets: Will you expose yourself?

Trade secrets. Everyone’s got them. But what’s the difference between them and patents or copyrights or trademarks? The legal difference, I mean?

And how and when you should use each one to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors?  Technology Transaction lawyer Arshia Tabrizi explained each of these IP tools and discussed their pros and cons in his engaging conversational style at last week’s CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 lecture on “How to Protect and Commercialize Intellectual Property”.

Money for the biotech industry?

BIOTECanada has made further announcements on the financial condition of the Canadian biotechnology industry.

A recent survey indicated that 70% of Canadian biotech companies have at least a year of cash on hand versus a mere 30% in July 2009.  According to the January 25 news release this turnaround was achieved by companies restructuring their operations (read “downsizing”) and increased access to foreign investment (read “fire sale”). With the important proviso that I haven’t seen the underlying survey data, I can’t help but wonder if the upswing in apparent financial viability was driven by closures of less financially fit companies than any genuine positive momentum.

In October, The Toronto Star published Mediacorp’s  Honour Roll of GTA’s Top 90 Employers for 2010. While there were some encore appearances from companies such as KPMG LLB, Bayer Inc and Ontario Power Generation,  what was particularly interesting was the number of non-profit organizations that made the list. Particularly notable was the increase in this number from 2008 to 2009. Of the 90 companies who made the cut, 22% are non-profit organizations with a few operating social enterprises.

The Toronto Star publication emphasizes that more and more social enterprises (defined as “a not for profit organizations with a primary social or environmental mission and an intent to generate revenue in the market economy by providing a good or services”) are being compared on the same standard as traditional for profit businesses. In this study, operations and HR practices were compared.

Don't be left in the dust.

When it comes to new media, it’s important to get beyond the buzz. The web has brought upon us a new communications paradigm for the 21st Century. To early adopters, the domain of “www” is a cinch, to others; it can be decidedly perplexing.

Some would say we suffer from perpetual information overload, an overwhelming stasis. However, paralysis – a common response to feeling overwhelmed – should not be the answer; nor should sticking your head in the sand. A reductionist approach that dismisses the web phenomenon as a “generational thing” will not work either.