Wednesday, December 6, 2006:

Focus: Showcase the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, and Canada

• Pre-Conference session
  9:30 - 11:30 am at the MaRS Centre
  Accelerating Innovation in Ontario: The View from the Top
  Senior Ontario policymakers explore what makes the province of Ontario Canada's commercialization leader.
  John Marshall, Director (Acting), Economic Development and Innovation, Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI)
  Presentation (John Marshall)
  Bill Mantell, Director, Commercialization Branch, MRI
  Gregory Wootton, Director (Acting), Investment Branch, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT)
  Presentation (Gregory Wootton)
• 
  What will Define Success in the New Economy?
  2:00 - 2:30 pm
  Ilse Treurnicht, CEO, MaRS Discovery District
  Presentation
• 
  The View from Ontario's Hubs
  2:30 - 3:30 pm
  Michael Crowley, TechAlliance (London, Ontario)
  Presentation (Michael Crowley)
  Iain Klugman, President, Communitech (Waterloo, Ontario)
  Presentation (Iain Klugman)
  Ken Lawless, President, OLSC (Ottawa)
  Presentation (Ken Lawless)
  

• Leveraging our Innovation Foundation
  4:00 - 5:00 pm
  Emphasizing the importance of industry-university collaborations, and highlighting the Toronto Region.
  Ross McGregor, CEO, Toronto Region Research Alliance (TRRA)
  Presentation (Ross McGregor)
  Mark Romoff, President and CEO, Ontario Centres of Excellence
  Presentation (Mark Romoff)
• 
  Tour of the MaRS Centre  5:00 - 6:15 pm
  Including the MaRS Incubator and Toronto Medical Discovery Tower (TMDT)
• Reception and Dinner 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm
  
  

  Blueprint to a Billion: Seven Essentials to Exponential Growth 2:30 - 3:30 pm Keynote Speech by bestselling author David Thomson

  
  Back to top

Thursday, December 7, 2006:

Focus: Reports from Regions

• 
  Breakfast 8:00 am - 9:00 am
• 
  Tapping the Risk Capital Tree 9:15 am - 10:30 am
  Leaders of angel and venture capital organizations in Canada and the United States talk about how successful start-ups can access risk capital and traverse the Valley of Death.
  
  Session moderated by Greg Horowitt, Director, Global CONNECT™.  Panelists: Rick Nathan, President, Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA); Ken Nickerson, Founder, iBinary LLC; Tom Sweeney, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures (Montreal); Peter Tolnai, Founder and President, Orchard Capital.
• 
  Official Welcome from the Honourable Dalton McGuinty
  Premier of Ontario, and Minister of Research and Innovation
  11:30 - noon
• 
  

  Lunch and Keynote Speech 12:15 pm - 1:30 pm  Off the Venture Map: Entrepreneurship in Strange and Perilous Times Paul Kedrosky, Executive Director, William von Liebig Center, University of California, San Diego Venture capital is broken. Software is dead. And it's the best time in recent memory to be an entrepreneur, so long as you get off the map. Presentation

• 
  Global Tools for the New Economy 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
  Both entrepreneurs and business accelerators need access to global resources and partners from Day One. Speakers describe how to find the best tools, and how to use them to achieve international success.
  
  

  Mark Bradley, CEO, ATP Innovations (Sydney); Mike Krupp, Entrepreneur in Residence, CONNECT (San Diego); Veronika Litinski, Director, Venture Services, MaRS.
  
  Presentation (Mike Krupp)
  Presentation (Veronika Litinski)
• 
  Countering the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune: Mature
  Business Accelerators/Regional Collaboratives 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm
  Leaders of older North American accelerators talk about how their organizations have stayed sustained their success.
  
  Session moderated by Greg Horowitt, Director and Co-Founder, Global CONNECT™.  Panelists: Monica Doss, President and CEO, Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED, North Carolina); Victor Hwang, President, Larta Institute (Los Angeles); Mary Walshok, Co-founder, CONNECT (San Diego); Debbie Weinstein, Partner, Labarger-Weinstein, and Chair, OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation). 
  

• 
  Innovation and the Creative Environment 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
  Innovation means more than science and technology. It also includes arts, culture and the creative industries. After all, as Richard Florida and others have pointed out, you need more than nerds and money to make a successful region.
  
  Adam Bly, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, SEED magazine; Geoff Cape, CEO, Evergreen; Tim Jones, CEO, Artscape ; David Pecaut, Chair, Toronto City Summit Alliance and Senior Partner, Boston Consulting Group.
• Reception and Dinner in the MaRS Atrium 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm
  Remarks by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Poet Laureate, City of Toronto

Back to top

Friday, December 8, 2006:

Inter-Regional Collaboration New Programming

• Breakfast and Keynote Speech 8:00 am - 9:00 am The Future of the University in the Knowledge Economy David Naylor, President, University of Toronto

• 
  Driving Innovation out of the Ivory Tower 9:00 am - 10:30 am
  Universities play a pivotal role in generating ideas and transforming them into the companies of the future. A roundtable of experts compare best practices.
  
  Abigail Barrow, Founding Director, Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center; Natalie Dakers, President and CEO, Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD); Orjan Isacson, Innovation Enterprise Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and former Managing Director, CONNECT Sweden; Tim McTiernan, Assistant Vice-President, Research, University of Toronto, and Executive Director, Innovations at the University of Toronto.
  
• 
  System to System Collaborations 10:45 am - 12:15 pm
  Linking regions to each other is the wave of the future. This session explores two leading examples of this trend.
  
  Nick Smailes, Director, the SETsquared Partnership (UK); Peter Thomas, Director of Operations, Global CONNECT™; Jim Feir, Deputy Consul General of Canada, Consulate General of Canada, Los Angeles; Mary Walshok, Associate Vice Chancellor, University of California, San Diego, and Co-founder, CONNECT (San Diego).
  
  Presentation (Nick Smailes/Peter Thomas)
  Presentation (Jim Feir)

• Closing Lunch and Keynote Speech 12:15 noon to 2:15 pm Building Global Companies from Canada's Innovation Foundation Peter Brenders, President and CEO, BIOTECanada Presentation

  
  
• 
  This page last updated Sep 27, 07.

Back to top