Tech & Science
New tech acronyms mean new investment opportunities. If you decided to leave the frenetic technology industry for a few years, pay little attention to it, then return, you might think a whole new set of industries has been born in your...
Regulatory bodies in Canada and in the US have yet to create specific rules for contract research organizations. INSIDERS CALL them a necessary evil, spawned by an industry that has itself been cast as the devil. “I prefer to call us the...
Clay Tippett and Kenny Duncan maybe aren’t the first two guys people would conjure up in their imaginations when they think of how the Internet and its social-networking possibilities are changing the world. They are not goateed 20-somethings with blogs...
It's time for us to sing the unsung. Could Burnaby's MetroLeap Media follow the march of Club Penguin? A couple of years ago, I wrote a column about a company that very few people in B.C. had heard about. I had been aware of this company since 2007 because my daughter was a fervent user of its massive online community. However, I had no idea it was located in Kelowna. I assumed it was a U.S.-based company with millions of dollars...
In April pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc. agreed to pay US$60 million upfront and offered a US$100-million line of credit for the right to develop the pill form of Vernakalant, a drug invented by Cardiome Pharma Corp. to treat...
What would it cost to get a better price for both customers and merchants? Name your price The haggling I’ve done in my life was all in a sprawling night market in a suburb of Taipei called Shilin. There, when the lao ban, or proprietor, tells you that the knock-off Oakley sunglasses cost $20, the key is to scrunch up your face, wave your palms and start to turn away from the stall. Then comes the appeal: “Wait, wait,” he calls.
Last week’s Technology Impact Awards, and this year’s New Ventures BC competition proved once again that clean technology and sustainability are beginning to dominate the technology industry in BC. Sure the TIA’s big winners were more old tech than clean tech. Sierra Wireless, for example, won the Company of the Year...
Green tech makes a move into the top corporate ranks. Touted as the next sector to attract the interest of investors, green and environment-friendly technology is already making its presence felt on the list of B.C.’s top companies. While wind energy companies pull together the resources needed for the massive investments planned for the province’s north coast, the foundation laid by Ballard Power Systems Inc. is bearing fruit in a host of small-scale successors.
QuestAir Technologies Inc. ’s big score was snatched away in the mid-2000s when it became clear that no one would be building fleets of hydrogen-fuelled cars in the near future. What’s a maker of sophisticated gas-purification equipment to do next?
We need venture capitalists (and the Maple Leafs) to have a good season. The venture capital industry in Canada is looking a bit like the Toronto Maple Leafs these days. Like the Leafs, the venture capitalists (VCs) are vital to a lot of passionate Canadians. And as with hockey rivalries, VCs and entrepreneurs coexist with a mix of admiration and hatred – sort of like Maple Leafs fans and Montreal Canadiens fans.