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.

Invest Atlantic concluded yesterday with a reasoned plea to allow the coming Regional Venture Capital Fund to make investments beyond the borders of Atlantic Canada.

The fund, being championed by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, will have a better chance of raising capital, rewarding its backers and supporting Atlantic Canadian companies if it invests in other markets as well as the four eastern provinces, experts said.

``Putting handcuffs on the management team to look only at opportunities in the Atlantic Region would in my mind be a mistake,’’ said Dominique Bélanger, Director,

In just two years, Invest Atlantic has established itself as a leading forum for an outward-looking and cooperative business policy in Atlantic Canada.

Though conference attendance is down across the country, Invest Atlantic in its sophomore year increased paid attendance to 165 and quadrupled its attendance from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Gerry Pond, the Saint John-based chairman of the event, made an impassioned plea for the provinces to work together in attracting investment into information technology and other innovative sectors. He recited his plea for six cities (Saint John,

Editor’s note: We’ve received a lot of emails in the week since we launched, but we wanted to post this one from Orville B. Pulsiver of Grapell Bioenergy. This note spoke to us because it highlights the importance of marrying innovation with traditional resource-based industries. It’s a theme we hope to revisit frequently. P&C.

 

Hello Peter & Carol,

Your article in today's Sunday Chronicle Herald (p A-12) awakened my interest in what you are trying to do and its importance.

In 1994 I inherited a farm in Middle Musquodoboit, just one of more than 2,000 smaller farms across N.S

On Friday night, I found myself wishing I’d attended the Moncton CyberSocial’s Angel Den in July. 

I was sitting in the packed auditorium at the Dalhousie University Computer Sciences Building enjoying the ten pitches at DemoCamp Halifax, arranged by Milan Vrekic and Tony Abou-Assaleh of TitanFile.  The program alternated between the presentations by developing companies and sage advice from seasoned veterans like Tim Burke of Tether and Brent Newsome of NewPace.  The proceeds from the evening were donated to Dalhousie’s Women in Technology Society.

The Angel Den in Moncton – which I

We’ve known for months that Radian6 Technologies Inc. was a great deal, but we’re only now understanding just how great a deal it was.

Canada’s Venture Capital and Private Equity Association on Wednesday awarded its Deal of the Year to the investment by venture capital firms Summerhill Venture Partners, Brightspark Ventures and BDC Venture Capital. The three firms invested a total of $9 million in the Fredericton group that analyses social media posts. When Radian6 sold out to Salesforce.com of San Francisco this year for $326 million, the VCs pocketed $205 million.

The Venture Capital

Sailing into the busiest week of the autumn, there might be a few innovators feeling a bit of stage fright today. At least 10 startups and researchers are pitching in public in the next five days in Halifax.

There will be five researchers pitching at the BioInnovation Challenge at BioPort on Wednesday, four at Invest Atlantic on Monday and a few at DemoCamp Halifax on Friday night.

The BioInnovation Challenge is presented by BioNova, Nova Scotia’s life science association, and the five pitchers are finalists in a lengthy process aimed at increasing the commercialization of biotech and