Montreal Startup Changing the Face of Global Innovation

1595 Avenue du Docteur-Penfield Montreal, Quebec H3G 1C6, November 5, 2014 (Newswire.com) - The face of innovation is changing, and it is happening right here in Montreal.

Cutting-edge Montreal start-up Sparkup Inc. has a mission to unleash the innovations lying dormant in universities and companies. “Less than 5% of innovations coming out of universities are commercialized,” pointed out Sparkup Inc.’s Founding CEO Jeremy Lee Jonas, a lifelong Montrealer. Sparkup’s response to the challenge: its web-based innovation marketplace where intellectual property can be posted, accessible to businesses hungry for new ideas. “That’s why we are building a new approach to unleashing innovations that never make it into the light. The health and economic benefits will be enormous.”

Many companies are rebuilding their R&D pipeline now through external innovation. Sparkup Inc. provided a quick and cost-effective way for us to achieve this, while bringing us strong connections to top institutions.

Dr. Wolfgang Renz, Former VP Business Model & Healthcare Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim

Montreal has long been an international innovation leader, especially in life sciences. Yet the city’s research institutions – such as Sparkup Inc. members McGill University, Concordia University, and Aligo Innovation (which represents Université du Québec à Montréal and École de Technologie Supérieure) – face the same obstacles as their counterparts worldwide in connecting to corporations and commercializing their innovations.

Universities face three big problems when they set out to commercialize an idea. First, the technology transfer offices (TTOs) that do this work have limited budgets and staff, so can patent and develop only a small portion of their institution’s research. Second, it is difficult for them to pick the potential winners out from that research pipeline. Indeed, venture capital firms do well when about 1 in 10 of their bets are winners, and that is with later-stage ideas whose potential is typically clearer than with early-stage research. Finally, it is hard to find the right buyers – one Ivy League TTO discovered that serendipity, rather than their own outreach efforts, was the top source of their recent deals. Sparkup Inc.’s system allows universities to cost-effectively expose all of their innovations to the global market and have that market decide where the value is, which solves all three of the TTO’s problems at once.

Complementing the online marketplace, Sparkup Inc. actively helps its clients buy and sell innovations through a strategic dialogue that pinpoints their needs and priorities. “Sparkup Inc.’s approach addresses issues with the earlier generation of innovation marketplaces, which were passive listings with no buy-side. Leading universities told us they got zero corporate leads from these services even after several years,” said Jonas.

Sparkup Inc.’s solution – and the million of dollars in deals it has done – has attracted the interest of universities and corporations from North America, Europe, and recently South America and Asia. The company’s international membership includes, among many others, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Inserm-Transfert representing 41 institutions in France, and Oxford, as well as 5 of the top 15 pharma companies.

“Sparkup Inc. is well-positioned by being in Montreal – an international, bilingual, research-intensive city. It is a fantastic place to build this commercialization infrastructure for the world,” said Montrealer and Founding COO John Knechtel. “We recruited a brilliant young team, all recent graduates from Montreal’s universities, and we have them working with some of the world’s most important corporations and research centres. Montreal has been an important part of our success.”

Sparkup Inc. is planning to open offices in New York, London, San Francisco, and Asia, having launched its presence in Europe last year. “The core talent is in place now, and we expect to grow our outreach and client service teams,” said Knechtel. “Montreal’s brand is helpful when launching a global business – in London, New York, Frankfurt, I meet people all the time who want to tell me how much they love Montreal. To them the city stands for intelligence, creativity, entrepreneurial élan – a perfect fit for Sparkup Inc.” 
 

ABOUT SPARKUP INC. 
Sparkup Inc.'s head office is located in the iconic turreted Bulmer House (designed by architect A.F. Dunlop in the 1890s) at 1595 Avenue du Docteur-Penfield in downtown Montreal. 

CONTACT
John Knechtel
Founding COO
jknechtel@sparkupinc.com
+1.514.562.5673

Français:
Viviane Chilton
vchilton@sparkupinc.com
+33 6 77 68 12 02