Halifax entrepreneur and lawyer Jeff Larsen has joined the Nova Scotia Department of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism as the Executive Director of Investment and Trade.

Until last month, Larsen had been an associate with McInnes Cooper in Halifax, and before that was Vice-President of Business Development and General Counsel at Seaforth Engineering Group Inc. and Seaforth Energy Inc.

The appointment is worth notice at the broadest level because it is great to have people from the private sector joining the government, especially in the formulation of economic policy. As well

Propel  ICT, the Saint John-based tech accelerator, will reveal a plan this month to work with more entrepreneurs in a program designed to increase each enterprise’s chance of success.

Over the next year, the group plans to implement Propel 2.0, a new accelerator format that will establish two so-called cohorts, each of which will allow about five companies to receive intense mentorship, encouragement and hopefully funding.

“Our intention is that through our network [of business contacts], you’re going to receive funding,” said executive director Trevor MacAusland in an interview last

Business people in the Miramichi Valley are hoping to put together an inaugural equity investment deal in the next three months involving two imaginative funding bodies – The Frank McKenna Technology Fund and Miramichi’s own angel network.

Brian Donovan,  Executive Director of Enterprise Miramichi and the brains behind  the Miramichi Angel Network, said the McKenna Fund and angel network are examining opportunities and hope – if due diligence is successful – to make their joint investment this year.

Assuming they do sign the deal, it will be the fruition of innovative thinking and

Globetrotting investor Permjot Valia will host MentorCamp for half a dozen Nova Scotian tech startups on Oct. 11. He will accept applications until Friday Oct. 7 from young companies that want to learn about developing businesses from seasoned experts.

The idea behind the camp is to bring together six companies with about a dozen mentors for an intense session, to help them refine their operations and improve their prospects. They will even be taught how to make the most of mentoring sessions. Valia is accepting applications and will narrow the group of young companies down to six so the

ClearRisk Inc., the St. John’s SAAS venture that helps mid-level insurance brokers assess risk, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this month by launching a mobile app.

The company led by Craig Rowe got a major boost this year when GrowthWorks Atlantic and the First Angel Network teamed up to back it with $1.2 million, now it is expanding its versatility by allowing clients to use its services on mobile phones and devices.

"We’re launching our first mobile app this week,’’ CEO and founder Rowe said in an interview at Invest Atlantic on Monday. "Our software is built and priced for the

Daniel Boyd and ABK Biomedical yesterday won the $30,000 BioInnovation Challenge presented by BioNova for its development of OccluRad particles in the treatment of fibroid tumors.

BioNova, the umbrella group for the Nova Scotian biotech industry, initiated the BioInnovation Challenge this year in conjunction with the BioPort 2011 conference to encourage commercialization of research at the province’s universities.

ABK Biomedical is commercializing a method to improve recent innovations in the treatment of benign tumors in women by making the process simpler, safer and cheaper.

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Thomas Rankin of Innovacorp has won national recognition for his work in the cleantech industry, including organizing Canada’s first global competition for cleantech entrepreneurs.

Rankin is in Toronto this week to attend the Clean50 Summit, where he has been named one of the 2012 Clean50, which recognizes 50 Canadians who have helped to develop the sustainable economy.  One of Rankin’s initiatives is the CleanTech Open contest, which is open to entrepreneurs around the world as long as the winner establishes a business in Nova Scotia.

Rankin explained earlier this week that Nova Scotia

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation revealed today that it earned $9.2 million from its Radian6 investment, but the really interesting news was in the final paragraph of the media release.

The not-for-profit organization that finances research and early stage companies said all – every last nickel – of the proceeds will go back into the fund and be used for further funding of academic research and startups.

``As a non-profit corporation, all of the investment return will be used to further the Foundation’s mandate through by replenishing its Venture Capital Fund,’’ said the

Resolution Optics, a Halifax maker of sophisticated microscopes, has hired Sandra Wood as its CEO, building on the trend of experienced business people collaborating with university researchers to commercialize a product.

Wood was most recently an account manager at the Greater Halifax Partnership and was previously a sales representative in the pharmaceutical field.  She will enhance the business team of a company formed by two Dalhousie University professors, Manfred Jericho and H. Juergen Kreuzer.

The company, which operates out of Innovacorp’s BioScience Enterprise Centre in

 Fredericton-based Inversa Systems, which makes scanning technology for the construction industry, has raised $500,000 from the New Brunswick Innovation Fund and private venture capital firm, Technology Venture Corp. of Moncton.  

The four-year-old company, which was spun out of the Laboratory for Threat Material Detection at the University of New Brunswick, manufactures inspection equipment that allows engineers to see inside large structures without taking them apart. It will use the proceeds to release a previously announced $2.1 million funding from Acoa’s Atlantic Innovation Fund.