Dear MaRS… Revisited
Back in April of this year a friend who works at Toronto’s MaRS tech incubator kindly gave me a tour of the facility. I walked away feeling a little conflicted; I wrote: “…Mars is an incredibly well-funded tech incubator, but it isn’t yet offering much in the way of educating the broader community of people outside the four walls of the building…”. And I sent my tour buddy a way-too-long mail with some ideas for improvement.
I had all but forgotten about the visit, since I haven’t been tracking MaRS since then. But Veronika, who coordinates the MaRS venture services programs, just posted a response to my April comment: “It is frustrating to see such remarks because we’ve been getting amazing feedback from participants in MaRS programs and clients of the MaRS Venture Group. … So, what more should we be doing to reach this “broader community ?”
Well, I don’t know how useful my April thoughts are any more (or ever were!) but I did manage to find the email I sent after that first visit. Below is the “Ideas / suggestions for improvement” portion of that mail, with the outreach-related stuff bolded. Beyond what I wrote then, I would also push to get all the information resources online, for free, and I would broaden the focus beyond bio-tech. Veronika, I hope some of this is helpful.
We talked about the desire to get companies collaborating. I suspect MaRS may struggle with this because the tenants may well be competitors, and many of them will anyway be very secretive about certain areas of intellectual property. To get past this you might consider asking them to share with you what help they need and would like to receive, both from you and from other tenants. Then it will be obvious where the safe ground is for group collaboration.
Workshops: you said you’re already doing some of this… public speaking, how to pitch to VCs, etc. More is good. Entrepeneurs need that help and people are often embarassed to ask. This is definitely an area where all the tenants’ interests will be aligned and they should be able to collaborate.
Mixers: …
- Regular weekly “unwinder” events with beer and cheap eats
- Weekly “brown bag” speaker series: invited speakers, talking to tenants, 45 mins + 15 min q&a, bring your own lunch (hence “brown bag”)
- Host more events that invite the external community in. maybe see what ROM does in this regard?
Techfest / Science Fair
Read about it here and here. This concept may not work because of the IP disclosure issue, but perhaps you can approximate it in some other way. Basic idea is to get everyone to understand what everyone else is doing, and thereby foster connections and collaborations. It was an incredible success at Microsoft in that regard. It was also a lot of fun… a great big nerdfest social event. :-) (And I can say that because I was one of the nerds loving every second of it.)Cafeteria: really high quality food, and an upscale ambience. It’s amazing how much of a difference this makes.
Business Resource Center
Need a physical space – already in the works I’m sure, but this is a high priority. If someone has to make an appointment with a BRC staff member and then travel three floors to meet them, the interaction is less likely to happen. I’m sure I just don’t fully understand what’s available today and how it works.Improving the space
- Something to fill up the atrium and make it feel warm and welcoming. Chairs, lounge area? Like a hotel lobby.
- Other common areas in/near incubator: lounges, places sit down to chat, have coffee, etc. whiteboards, pens. Lego blocks. Toys.
- Art
- Add carpets in the incubator (linoleum right now, I think? Dismaying contrast with the granite and marble everywhere else.)
- From the atrium you can see right into everyone’s offices. Consider curtains or blinds for privacy.
- Mix and match incubator offices w/ other spaces in the building. Current setup is super corporate, most powerful people in outside and corner offices. And I understand why this is the case, I just think you have an opportunity to do something more egalitarian.
To sum up here, with the financial resources available to MaRS, a much bigger share should go into making the current incubator space great. Do this before further buildout. Otherwise you are sending a message to tenants that they don’t matter as much as everyone else… which is exactly the opposite of the goal, right?
Improving the Web site
- The site marsdd.com is quite hard to find on all of the major search engines. You need to know the exact title to find it.
- The title of the marsdd.com homepage should state what Mars is, e.g. “MaRS – [descriptive tagline here]”. Right now it says “Marsdd.com”. This will help site visitors know they’re at the right place. It will also help search engines make the site discoverable.
- The site content might be better organized around target audience segments. That would make it easier to understand and navigate. Maybe think about “Entrepeneurs”, “Investors”, etc. as more logical top-level tabs.
- The site content needs to be written more in plain English. Example (not to pick on anything in particular): “The MaRS Business Resource Centre (BRC) is your entryway to the core of MaRS: the convergence of resources, people and ideas to spur innovative collaboration. MaRS BRC is comprised of a set of physical and virtual resources designed to make the commercialization ecosystem more robust. The BRC is the strategic hub for the development and coordination of all MaRS commercialization programs.”
My 2 cents.
Thanks for the opportunity to see MaRS.
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